Historical center of Toronto
In Toronto, teaching positions probably have the largest number of applicants. Newly minted teachers often leave to work in England, up north, in Asian or Arab countries, because there is almost no work here. The few openings each year are filled either through connections or by the best candidates. Public education in Canada is rather good, especially compared to the States.
Ah, if only I knew French! It is the only subject with which you can find a teaching job in a public school even in Toronto right after finishing teacher's college.
Official data for Ontario: only 2 percent of the population speaks French regularly. The second official language is heard in Toronto much less often than Russian, Ukrainian, or Romanian. It is so bad that I couldn't even find any free French courses for adults. Interestingly, in New Brunswick (a tiny island province in Canada), a third of the population speaks French at home.
Toronto is both like and unlike other North American cities. The city is still in a stage of self-definition and changing. At different times, "Toronto" referred to very different things. Literally 30 years ago, it was a geographically rather small city, mostly developed back when people moved around on foot and horseback. Everything outside its borders (though those borders were externally invisible) had its own names and had its own administration, its own laws, and so on. There were East York, North York, Etobicoke, and so on. These names remain now, but as names of districts, because 30 years ago the unification of historic Toronto, sometimes called the old City of Toronto, and the nearby settlements occurred. Now Toronto is the fourth largest city in North America. Local patriots still hotly argue whether this amalgamation was necessary or whether it did more harm than good.
Now Toronto is already decorating for Christmas. In the malls, Christmas and New Year songs play, which quickly drive you crazy. I don't know how salespeople survive the pre-Christmas season.
But "white Christmas," celebrated in all sorts of famous songs, does not happen very often in Toronto. However, for Orthodox Christmas, there is always snow. For New Year's, it's 50-50. Compared to Moscow, winter here is shorter and there is less snow. Autumn and spring are drier and sunnier, winter is windier and wetter. Last year, just before New Year's, it rained for 24 hours, all the trees became icy. Wires also became icy, and breaks began. Most of Toronto was without power. We were lucky—we were without power for just under three days. But in some areas, it was two weeks. After these events, we bought a generator. This year, Buffalo is taking the brunt. The same geographic and climatic conditions (the so-called lake effect) sometimes also lead to large localized snowfalls.
My parents moved here with us in 1997. We lived in a "Russian" area for six months (here, Russian is anyone who, yes, speaks Russian), and then we moved to a land of unafraid native Anglo-Saxon Canadians, and after three and a half years I returned to Toronto for good—to enter university. There is not much desire to move. Vancouver is cool, but even more expensive than Toronto. Montreal is closer to Europe, women dress beautifully, but we don't speak French. The central provinces are a blue (the color of the Conservative Party of Canada) region of temperature extremes and vast distances.
In Canada, there are significantly fewer overweight people than in the USA. In the US, the further south you go, the thicker the waistlines of those around you. By the way, in Canada, the accent is roughly the same across the country, there is no such difference in pronunciation as between the northern and southern states of America.
Toronto is the financial capital of Canada. People work hard here and rest little (unless they are lucky enough to land a government job). No two-week Christmas vacation. The most common option in private companies: December 25 and January 1 are days off, the 24th and 31st are shortened days. All stores follow the same schedule.
Our pain and trouble is the subway. It is also an endless topic of election campaigns at the city level, and sometimes even discussed at the provincial or federal elections, because the subway is subsidized by the government.
The subway starts running at 9 am on Sundays. Buses run but infrequently, so getting somewhere on a Sunday morning without a car can be difficult. In general, the subway has been here for a long time, but, being tied hand and foot by unions, it works poorly. In Vancouver and Montreal, not to mention New York (let alone Russia and Europe), the underground is much better organized.
To enter the subway, we use tokens. They are pretty coins, similar in size and weight to the former Soviet kopek, designed for losing. To be fair, there has been a technological innovation for quite some time now—a magnetic card for a monthly pass. Which now costs, roughly converted into rubles, about 4,000 rubles for an adult. Also, the subway is an example of humanity and care. If someone becomes ill during rush hour—a frequent occurrence—all trains on the line stop and wait for medics to arrive. Once we stood in the tunnel for 20 minutes. The ventilation wasn't working—they had just launched new trains and hadn't adjusted them yet.
In 18 years, one small line with five stations over eight kilometers has been built in Toronto. There is no internet in the subway. They say that several stations in the center have it, and there is an ambitious project to extend this advanced achievement to other stations, but there is no talk of internet in the tunnels. However, all stations, all trains, and buses are accessible to people with limited mobility or simply moms with strollers: there is either an elevator or at least an escalator.
Of course, all houses, shops, offices, and so on have ramps and self-opening doors. Even in the Orthodox church, which occupies the building of a former early-century synagogue, an elevator was installed.
Incidentally, there is an interesting feature of the repurposing of various religious buildings. The waves of immigration passing through Toronto lead to the reassignment of buildings of different faiths. Some Catholic and Protestant churches in the center, as the white religious population flows out and Christianity declines overall, become residential buildings. That is, a condominium is built around the church and the church becomes part of the new building. And in the former altar – someone's apartment.
Now about student life. Those who can live with their parents during studies usually do so, as there are no free dormitories here. A dormitory is somewhat cheaper than renting housing of similar quality, and besides, it is of course located either on the university (college) campus or very close by. But overall, renting is expensive, many rent far from the university.
What don't students rent! While I was looking for a room, I even saw, in all seriousness, an attic for rent that you had to access by a ladder. After reaching adulthood, living with parents is not customary, but anything can happen. Still, in Toronto, despite being the second most expensive city in Canada after Vancouver, a working family with a normal income can buy if not a house, then an apartment, and not necessarily in the suburbs or a bad area.
In the last 10-15 years, infill development has been taking place in the very center of Toronto between office skyscrapers, in blocks where there were previously theaters, studios, and nightclubs. However, urban planning in these zones includes neither parks nor kindergartens. As recently noted in the local press, it was very strange of the city authorities to issue licenses for new buildings designed and arranged solely for the adult life of single people, and not to expect that such a number of unmarried young people of both sexes, gathered in one place, would not start reproducing. So now, along with men in suits, mothers with strollers walk on the stone pavements in the center, and various mom groups spontaneously organize.
We ourselves lived in the center for two and a half years after the birth of our child. In the evenings we walked near the parliament buildings and on the university grounds where my husband and I studied. In the cold, my child and I walked through the underground mall starting under the neighboring house.
Toronto is a safe city. As everywhere in Canada, weapons are prohibited (except hunting rifles, and even for those you need a license and can only use them for hunting or at a shooting range). However, bicycle theft is rampant. It's an epidemic. Personally, we had four bikes stolen completely. Despite locks and surveillance cameras. Occasionally there are teenage killings or essentially unmotivated murders on domestic grounds or in the heat of passion, but still the crime statistics are such that fewer than 100 people die violent deaths in the city per year (out of almost 3 million residents).
We often don't lock doors and windows in the house. Our neighborhood is quite expensive, and break-ins happen periodically, but they usually target homes where there is something to profit from. Jewelry, expensive electronics. No one steals things from the garden in front of the house, although it would seem you could come at night and take them. If you disdain the perishable values of this world, you can live completely peacefully. Because, even if theoretically there is an expensive refrigerator, icons, many books, and my husband's engineering equipment in the house, everything valuable is either too heavy to carry or very difficult to sell later. It also helps for 'deterrence' to drive old cars. An expensive car in front of the house is a sure tip-off for thieves.
The police arrive quickly when called, even if the problem is just neighbors celebrating late into the night. In the center, a small number of police officers patrol the streets on horses. I don't know what the animals feel on streets packed with cars, cyclists, and pedestrians, but it's a nice tradition. It's pleasant to see a good horse.
The culture of waste recycling and, in general, the green movement in Toronto is weaker than in Europe, but overall close to European standards. Trash is divided into three parts: food waste (where diapers can also be placed), recyclables, and actual trash. The less trash you throw away, the less you pay. Food waste is composted together with leaves that people collect in paper bags in the fall, and the resulting soil is given out for free to the public, one cubic meter per person. Mostly Chinese and our former compatriots come for the soil.
You can grow a garden in Toronto, but you cannot keep chickens. Periodically the issue of chickens is raised in the municipal council, but due to an abundance of more important matters, it keeps getting postponed and postponed.
When we immigrated, there was almost no green movement as such, no concept of 'organic' or farmers' markets in the city. But now there are a huge number of markets. Toronto has only one large park. Everyone says Toronto is greener than Moscow, but for some reason it seems to me the opposite. Maybe it's just that the cars are better here, there are no factories within the city limits, and the city itself is at least five times smaller than Moscow in population, so it turns out the air is much cleaner: again, it is well ventilated from the lake.
You can now swim in Lake Ontario (until recently it was considered unsafe for health). A very long beach. Surfing, several yacht clubs... They fly kites. Once a man played the piano on the shore. He specially brought a piano on wheels to the beach. It seems such a thing could only happen in Toronto.
Since the ecology in Toronto is good, the city is home to huge numbers of squirrels, raccoons, hawks, many small birds, Canada geese, as well as bats, cicadas, deer, beavers, chipmunks, foxes, and coyotes. Raccoons and squirrels live alongside pigeons even in the concrete-bound downtown. In our condo, a raccoon periodically fell into the trash bin, and the janitor would put a board for it to climb out. Many companies have a profitable business in evicting squirrels and raccoons from attics, air ducts, and chimney pipes. Canada geese graze in cemeteries, parks, football fields, and generally anywhere there is grass. In many particularly goose-filled places, there are road signs warning of geese crossing the road. During my university days, a pair of geese made a nest right on a flowerbed near the main entrance and even hatched chicks there.
Toronto is proud of its gay pride parade and its gay district. When a former mayor of traditional orientation did not attend the gay pride parade but chose to go to a cottage with his family that weekend, everyone condemned and vilified him. After that, I realized that although I love Toronto very much and wish to work for the city's benefit, I do not want to be mayor.
In general, something paradoxical is happening. Christians here (truly believing, not formally, and belonging to one of the traditional denominations: Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant) do not have it easy. Political correctness and tolerance of non-traditional sexual orientations prevail over freedom of religion. That is, if your social position obliges you to treat sexual minorities in accordance with local policy, then your religion is no excuse. It doesn't matter that the Bible says bad company corrupts good morals and that homosexuals will not inherit the Kingdom of God. Those are your personal problems.
There are, of course, other parades: Saint Patrick's Day, Santa Claus parade, the Caribana festival parade (dedicated to Caribbean and West Indian culture), and others. Bright and early, people in whole families take spots along the route with food, folding chairs, and cameras. We, however, prefer to entertain ourselves with trips to symphony music: tickets for youth are cheap, and the orchestra is very good.
But with theaters, it's a real problem. There are many of them, they stage various things, but I don't know... Not impressive. There is only one children's theater with a small program (they stage only five or six plays for different ages, so a six-year-old can go to one or two plays, older children also to one or two). So I go to theaters in Moscow.
What I really love about Toronto is the city library, or rather, many district libraries united into a single network. You can take a book from one branch and return it to another. If the book is not available at the local branch, you can order it from another library. Lots of programs for children. Great hours of operation. And all for free!
People not burdened with intellectual needs mostly relax in front of the TV, in summer they barbecue near the house or in the park, where there are often pre-built grills; they go to malls and restaurants. Movie theaters are still frequented.
High-quality cinema also exists in Toronto. The Toronto International Film Festival is well-known, and world-class stars are not uncommon here. But we go to the documentary film festival, which is perhaps only second to the American Sundance in scope, quality, and number of films presented.
Toronto is no longer a white city. According to the latest statistics, white residents are a minority, though a visible one. Of course, there are white neighborhoods. But there are more immigrants, many of whom settle in Toronto and its suburbs. There are Chinese, Filipino, Indian, Black, and other neighborhoods. Signs are all in languages other than English, locals speak English poorly, but what isn't there in the shops! In these neighborhoods, ethnic festivals take place: you don't need to go to Italy—grapes are stomped in vats right on the streets of Toronto. And at the Greek festival, they grill lamb innards.
For some reason, whites in Toronto, as in other developed countries, do not want to reproduce. Many couples have no children or have only one or two, and even then they delay childbirth. They give birth for the first time at 35 or 40. First they take birth control pills, then they undergo long and tedious fertility treatments. So the problem is stark. The retirement age keeps being pushed back.
Nevertheless, everyone wants to go on vacation, buy new cars and houses. Although social welfare in Canada is better than in the US, the queue for a good daycare or nursery is two years or more; it is very difficult to survive on government maternity benefits in Toronto, and they are only for a year, and daycare upon returning to work can cost half a month's salary. Inexpensive after-school activities for children must be snatched up quickly by signing up, and children's leisure is not cheap.
But the pleasantness of life in Toronto is that if you don't travel far for vacations, cook at home, don't spend money on mobile phones and TVs, handle the kids yourselves, you can live quite wonderfully and fully on one normal salary, and even pay off the house by retirement. And then go traveling!
As I said earlier, Toronto is still developing. Many neighborhoods change literally before your eyes, one flows into another, old coexists with new, and completely different cultures get along quite well together.
Irina YERUSHOVA,
Toronto, Canada.