Canadian Gothic: Ontario Edition
(I don’t feel qualified at all to talk other provinces, help me out, people.)
Around two hours or so north of Toronto there’s a barrier you reach where each house is a lonely light on the endless, increasingly desolate plains. Stop at one of them if you can, but make you sure you know where you’re going. That lonely light will always seem just another twenty minutes away.
Everyone knows that we all live around the Great Lakes because that’s where the most fertile farming land is. It’s not because even here we can feel the outstretched fingers of the Boreal Forest. It’s not because even here we can feel its eyes on us.
In Toronto, everyone wears the Neutral Transit Face. Smile and they’ll know where you are, and then the whole streetcar may never get where it’s supposed to be going.
Every city breathes in and out, once in the morning and once at night. Sometimes Rush Hour feels like it takes forever because the weaker ones feel like each breath will be their last.
The Kawarthas and Muskoka are wonderful places to spend your summer; provided that you do like the locals and pretend you don’t see what walks across the sand bar at night.
Everyone hears it in Windsor, everyone knows what it is, no one will say.
The lake is dead. It simply decided to be. We had no chance to save it. We will never revive it.
It’s silent in North Bay, it’s a murmur in Sudbury, it’s a chant in Oshawa, it’s a roar in Niagara Falls “We’re not like them we’re not like them, we’re not like them, we’re not like them we’re not like them, we’re not like them, we’re not like them, we’re not like them we’re not like them, we’re not like them, we’re not like them, we’re not like them we’re not like them, we’re not like them, we’re not like them, we’re not like them we’re not like them, we’re not like them-”
Smile and nod to your neighbour. Smile and nod to the world. We wouldn’t want to make a fuss. We know what happens to people who make a fuss.