The train
The city has a very simplified public transport system and i will indulge myself here, i got my first travel document on 28th Feb 2008, todate that document has helped me traverse 17 countries and in all of them, i have not found honest businesses practices as there are in Canada.
The city's transport system works till 2am and whats more, you can pay for your entire travel at the beginning of the month and you are presented with a card, all ypu need is to move with you card, you swipe the plastic thing which is like a credit card-which is another story of interest and then you enter the train-whcih reaches most parts of the city, and where it doesnot reach there are buses that also allow the same card. The transport is just superb and you will be late for work or an appointment and blame it on you failure to get transport means because the trains and buses come almost every minute. Also there are maps of the city at most terminal points of the city and they are free and if you speak English, it is very helpful to ask because for all their faults Canadians will not hold back information. They will answer you back very politely whatever you ask of necessity and this a country of immigrants chances are abound that whomever you ask will have gone through what you are going through.
Toronto City is home to over five million people, if you compared it to London with 10 million or Sao Paulo with 21 million it would look like a miniature......... The city is a growing testimony about the importance of cultural diversity in the in the modern world. For any Canadian that will read this post you can appreciate that Toronto is home to a melting pot of cultures, if Canada wants to be like the US, Toronto is the closest testimony to the power of mixing different cultures in one city.
Canadians will further appreciate that Torontonians are not considered as representative if Canada because they are very diverse and mixed. It must be said here that Canadians are to a large extent a very conservative society, they are very weary of other people and the spirit of multi culturalism is being forced upon them by the influence of Toronto. The city is not a capital city of the great Canada neither is it a capital of the wealthiest province-Ontario.
However, its blend of immigrants from different regions of the world has made it the most important multicultural and economical centres in this huge country.
The Capital of Ontario and the country Ottawa remians quite conservative and largely 'white' as one writer with The Ottawa Citizen put it.
Because of its power, many people that reside in Toronto are not very popular in other cities and regions f Canada. Toronto is the only city in Canada that welcomes citizens from other parts of the world
.. The city is among the most diverse capitals in the world however currently the most dominant people both in terms of number and influence are Asians, and for all their attributes these people can not be classified as very welcoming of other races.
Even with the a huge numbers of people with Asian descent, Toronto remains the most diverse city in Canada. It is also said that Canadians from Toronto are not very popular themselves in othr parts of the country because they have the country be infiltrated by many people from other areas and so Canadians from other parts of the huge country say that most of the financial power in Toronto is in the hands of other people not Canadians.
Toronto also is home to other salient features only unique to the country, it is home to the longest street in the world-Yonge street and even the world's tallest structure as i write this resides in Toronto=The CN towers. It is because of such features that the city is rich and blessed with other cultures, to put it simply, wherever you come you will find your staple food in this city, your music and even your traditional custom.
Personally after staying here for less than a moth i have been able to meet Jimmy Cliff-the man credited with introducing reggae music to the mainstream market, i have attended a great Reggae show by Te Abyssinians-another great reggae band and this weekend i will got to watch Naught by Nature who are in town from the US.
It is worth writing more about the food in Toronto.
It has been said that may Rwandans who come to Canada bitch about the food, they say it is very sweet, others say it makes people fat as one girl-woman put it, yet others say it not fresh. This could be explained by two things, in Rwanda the food variety is limited only to irish potatoes, rice, carrots, beans, sombe. So the people there are used to a routine, when they see variety they are intimidated because they cannot figureout what to eat and in most times it is because we fail or don't know the names of the foods from other societies. In a nutshell we are a closed unit like a circle.
That said, when i arrived here i ate all the foods that were considered a taboo in my family, i ate bacon for days before i knew it was actually pork, i ate lamb before knowing it was sheep. We had been told as children that if we ate lamb out noses would be flowing with mucus non stop, i had an allergy and i was the butt of jokes because i was suspected to have eaten lamb once in my childhood one Musoga man Walumbe.
Anyhow i ate lamb and nothing happened and for bacon it actually tasted good before i asked what it was, ater these two episodes i decided to abandon food discrimination. Some people are starving and iam dismissing food just because it was available and i had choices.
There is food in all its manifestations here, all tribes, nations, religions and castes have their foods available here. wherever you come from. there will be a dish for you in Toronto and the potions are very liberal. Canada as i wrote earlier is a huge country, whatever quantity of anything you desire will be availed if you know what you want.
The city is also home to some of the best theatres in the world, there's a vibrant culture in regard to performances and shows. The Mirvin family which has a humble and rich background from a corner street home appliances shop in the 50s now owns the best theatres in Toronto where the world's best plays are staged.
There's the fabulous Canon which i was lucky to visit first in the company of John and Barbara Judd, next i visited The Princess of Wales where i watched the legendary Jimmy Cliff with Barbara Judd. The Mirvin family owns an entire street of theatres and other business related to the culture like art galleries, book stores and many more. David Mirvin the current of the family is involved every aspect of the family business and he inherited his father's acumen for investment.
Ed Mirvin affectionately known as Mr. Honest started the flagship of the family business with a simple a home and Kitchen hardware shop on Bloor street this shop evolved to an empire that is one of the most powerful in the country today. On top of the two afore mentioned theatres they also own the Panasonic and Alexandria theatres.
Theatres aside, there's a wide difference between Toronto and the other cities that i have had the chance to live in or visit, n Nairobi, Kigali, Kampala, Arusha, Entebbe and Johannesburg the wealthy class build castles and fortresses around their residences complete with a large number of guards keeping things and people away from the vicinity of their neighbourhoods. In Toronto, the richest people live downtown and stay in simple homes that are not barricaded by high rising walls. They have dogs here but the dogs are kept for company purposes not guarding ones. Canadians don't like to talk to each other much, they hate it even much more talking to strangers unless they really have to, but when it comes to dogs they are very very very caring, the dogs here and very healthy, they don;t bark or threaten to bite, there are more health centres for dogs here than bars.
Natacha is coming to pick me to go and watch great reggea band-Abysinians
write more later.
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