A View of the downtown core at dusk… (Google Photos)

There comes a time once or twice a week, when my loving wife Naomi asks me if I have any regrets about moving from my native land of Quebec’s Eastern Townships, to the largest city on Canada, and fourth largest city in North America (after Mexico City, New York City and Los Angeles.)

My answer, invariably, to date, has been “not one bit.” There are many reasons for this, some are simple, others, less so.

To wit:

• As an entertainment writer and pop culture fanatic, you can’t beat that feeling of living in what I’ve come to call Hollywood North. That ability to naturally befriend artists, musicians and writers, most of whom whose work you’ve see on screen, who are yet very approachable as friends and neighbors. Some of them were journalists and actors I grew up watching or following on TV or the early internet, whom I’ve since been honored to now call friends. Others have offered moral and creative support when the odds were often against me, when they themselves had already made a career of their own in similar circles.
• The sheer diversity of a large metropolis, both culturally, culinarily and demographically. I was born and raised in a small town of about 2700 people, so it’s a given that I’d have much more to discover by making a life in the big city. Toronto’s amazing neighborhoods, its nightlife, its countless festivals, its public library system (more on that in a later post), its endless bounty of world cuisine, most of which I haven’t even discovered yet.
• To this day, I still marvel at the sheer size of Toronto; sure, I spent some years living in larger cities like Montreal and Sherbrooke, but I still marvel at the extent of the Greater Toronto Area, and how one could spend a lifetime exploring new areas, without repeating oneself. Simply amazing…
• Its views: You haven’t truly lived until you’ve experienced a beautiful sunset at Riverdale Park East (nearby my house, much to my delight), at that magic hour when the orange glow in the West hits the downtown core and its glass towers, turning a concrete maze into an Oz-like fortress.
• The city’s ability to connect you to new people and new experiences, every day. I can count good dear friends in the dozens, but can also easily recognize hundreds more, many whose names I don’t even know, but recognize as “that great guy at the cheese shop on Danforth” or “that friendly retired gentleman working the school crosswalk on Pape,” and so on. It’s a far cry from life in a small burg, where a loud burp or fart makes the local paper. Don’t get me wrong, there’s also a lot of positives to small town life, but there’s simply no viable comparison.

What’s your take on Toronto? What do you love or hate about it? There are no wrong answers, only different opinions, all of them valid! I welcome your thoughts on the matter!