Toronto Is Still Standing

The Contrary, Jane Ash Poitras (1999)

Yesterday, holy smokes! Busier than the day before. No one has been deported yet.

After a terrible breakfast at the dorm, we took a streetcar to subway to a bus to a beach. Toronto has a fabulous beach west of downtown with big boulders and a smoothed-out area for beach soccer and the coldest water I've ever tested. The nearby neighborhood is called The Beaches.

Back into the center of town and then over to Chinatown for an incredible dim sum meal at Rol San on Spadina, our home street. From there we caught the 510 streetcar, our home on wheels, to Bloor Street and the Royal Ontario Museum. Highlights there included dinosaurs (of course) and a wide range of amazing materials from First Nations peoples, especially some paintings from Jane Ash Poitras (above).

We walked back through the University campus and then relaxed for maybe half an hour before braving rush hour to get way up to Yonge-Eglinton and Sheila's Caribbean Bistro, a tiny place that we absolutely filled with our sixteen Americans. We ate roti, sahiena, phulourie, and jerk chicken, and bowed down to Sheila on the sidewalk afterward. Then we went to the movies, where everyone opted for Pitch Perfect 2.

Then we came home and fell into our rooms at one in the morning. 

Next: walking tour of Kensington Market, Indian lunch, time on Queen Street, CN Tower, Big Drum Social and dinner at the Native Canadian Centre. . . . .