#18 - PASSENGER

A woman waiting at the door of a streetcar - 2018.

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It was ’18 - I was 22 - and I had avoided city life entirely. Until then, I had grown up in rural Niagara and had never experienced the true hustle of city living. After a fall work term spent on set in Toronto, a family friend offered to rent their one-bedroom condo to me for a miraculous $750/month . I was down for the new adventure alone, and once I had co-opted my good friend Dave to rent the pull out couch in the living room as his “room” - living for 350/month on the corner of Yonge and Lakeshore was too good an opportunity to pass  up on.

With so much to see and do, I became easily overwhelmed with the sheer magnitude of the city and the possibilities within it. I had never before felt the luxury of having a pizza/sushi place within a 2 minute walk, a building pool/gym/hottub that required zero maintenance, the ease of über and übereats, and the ability to pretty much do anything or be anywhere within a quick transit journey around the city.

I was able to pick up a few Toronto set jobs during my five-ish months living in Toronto, trying to absorb all of the possibilities for what future city living could look like. Thankfully I had people close to me around to show me their own urban ambitions, as well as their favourite sights, sounds, tastes and experiences. My heart for the city grew, as well as for those that inhabited it.

I spent a lot of that year in transit, going back and forth between Niagara and Toronto, working at Camp multiple times in the summer, and visiting friends in Waterloo in the fall (planting the seeds for my 2020 move to Kitchener). It was, and still is, sometimes easy to feel like the woman in this photograph - alone, colourless, standing at the door of a streetcar, watching the world go by. When remembering the people and places that touched my heart that year, I feel thankful for the time we got to spend together exploring a city and a new life I wasn’t used to, and I rest in the hope that even though we may be apart, our tracks may cross again in the future.

“What the hell are we gonna do?

A black mile to the surface”

• The Gold, Manchester Orchestra