I wonder if it’s a coincidence that Canada’s national holiday and America’s national holiday happen to be in the middle of summer when the weather is prime BBQ-n-beer time. Could it be that those early settlers just wanted to bask in the sun and do nothing for a weekend? Too bad they weren’t all Italians, or we might have the whole month of July off.
Our weekend was indeed quite beautiful. Saturday we woke up late, got hungry and decided to go get some Indian dosas for lunch. Eating dosa reminds me of my NYU days when I would wait in a long line to get it from the Dosa Man by Washington Square park: “fresh made dosas! want some veggie drumstick with that?”. This place we went to, South Indian Dosa Mahal on Bloor West also made really great masala dosa. The neighborhood is a little far out for us (taking 20 minutes to bike as opposed to 4 like everything else), so it was quite a treat.
Then we went to hang out on our friend Jason’s deck in Little Italy. Jason lives in the neighborhood where that infamous scene of “Canadians don’t lock their front door” from Fahrenheit 9/11 was shot, and I was quite amazed to find out that he really doesn’t lock his front door. His 3rd floor deck hung right above the Italian neighbors’ backyard, who were cooking up all kinds of meat on the grill, drinking wine and speaking loudly in their jolly quasi-fighting ways. I had a peak at their spread on the table, it was gorgeous. Say what you will about their productivity, economy, etc., I still think the Italians, hands down, have the best lifestyle.
On Sunday, our friends Nalis (whose blog is great by the way) and Adam were in town from India, and we went to Toronto’s biggest party, the Pride Parade. Canadians celebrate their diversity and minorities like Americans wear their red-white-and-blue pride, so the Toronto Pride Parade was unsurprisingly huge. We watched the parade go by from beginning to end, didn’t really have a good spot, but it was OK enough to see everything. The parade started with elder people’s homes, the elder queer folks all dressed up in rainbow color and followed with all types of gay people (and by ‘gay’ i mean the whole LGBT community and their supporters): gay city workers, gay chinese, gay indians, gay south americans, gay south asians, gay japanese, gay teachers, gay medics, gay firemen, gay cops, gay church-goers with a gay church. more union representatives than you can count. Most floats had some kind of corporate sponsor (someone’s gotta pay for the gas, right?), donning different branding. The one float that stood out for me, however, is the Thailand float. no other country had a float representative, if it was an ethnic float, then it was more about their identity and nationality, not the country. Thailand’s float, however, had the Thai national flags, a huge signs that says “Thailand” (no other ethnic group had a country sign), and all the people raving to techno music on the float were wearing Thai traditional dance costume of angels. The float was huge as they were on what looks like the biggest flat-bed truck you could find in North America. It was pretty amusing.
Naked people were all over the streets with their bits hanging out in the open. Actually one group was about “no underwear” - a bunch of big men wearing absolutely nothing. The cops just look on with amusement, ‘we’ll let ‘em have it for a day, eh?’.
Tuesday was Canada Day, after eating pancake breakfast at noon, we hung around our back deck in the bright sun and then went to the park to play some frisbee. Made grill meat for dinner and watched some Canadians joke about Canada Day on TV (Canadians are also notoriously good at making fun of themselves). At night we biked out to the water front and watch the fireworks from afar, and I thought it was cute how everybody sang and hummed along to O Canada like how they would their favorite indy song.
One thing I was very impressed with is that on Canada Day, they hold a citizenship ceremony and celebration for new citizens. I’m not a Canadian citizen and thus have nothing to celebrate, but it’s great to know that immigrants here are not only welcomed, but celebrated. If only in principle, it’s still a better a principle than elsewhere.
And we’re now back to work, with more weekend-festivals to look forward to all summer long.
