Testing Toronto's public transport system

Early 1900s houses or even earlier

I had volunteered to cook on Monday night for Joly and Lisa, who was coming around for dinner that night. I found a recipe and all we had to do was get some supplies in for the meal. Joly was working from home as builders were there to do some maintenance on his house.

Paul, Yvette, Lisa and Joly had said we ought to go to the Kensington Market and do the west side of Queen Street. Apparently, it was quite a funky area and a bit like Cuba Street in New Zealand. With Joly’s help we figured out how to use the public transport.

I like using public transport because you get to see other parts of the city. And sometimes it is a reasonably quick way to get between points A and B. They have a subway system and we all needed to do was find the station and take the westbound line to Spadina. However, we decided to check out the local supermarket first to ensure that they had most of the ingredients we needed in case we would have to get some in town. Fortunately it did which meant we could do the shopping on the way back. The only thing we couldn’t get was lamb mince. I had discovered that lamb in Canada is very expensive and much of it comes from New Zealand. Normally there would have been some available but it seemed to have sold out over the weekend. Beef seems to be the main meat protein with pork, veal and bison the other meats available. There is also lots of chicken.

The little café in our neighbourhood

The two us in the café

After stopping at the supermarket (called grocery stores in Canada) we spied a little café in the local area. It was humming when we went indoors but there were no seats. however, while Bev got the coffees a person offered me his seat as he was about to leave. It was quite local meeting place with many of the patrons seeming to know each other.

The trip to our first stop (the Kensington Market) was quick with us taking the subway and light rail. People were very helpful in guiding us to our destination and before we knew it there was a sign pointing the way to Kensington Market. The market comprises a number of streets where many of the houses have been turned into businesses. The people populating the place looked very similar to the people who live and frequent Cuba Street. For example, there were a few people with mental health issues and in the park was a tidy collection of tents which must have housed some of the homeless. There was an interesting delicatessen where we got some nice cheeses for the evening including a couple of Canadian cheeses. Cheese making has improved significantly since I first visited. A further coffee was had in a quaint house with one of the rooms completely wallpapered by the pages from paperbacks.

Queen Street was interesting as well. We had walked through Chinatown to get to it and it was a mixture of old Toronto and new Toronto. It was very quiet; probably more buzzy on the weekends. I just loved the way little houses were towered over by modern multi-storeyed apartments and office towers.

After some more exploring we found our way back to Joly’s having been unable to find any lamb mince so I substituted with veal. The subway was much busier than it had been earlier in the day.. There were several vagrant passengers and it was interesting that generally others gave them a wide berth - more for hygiene reasons than any threat they posed to others. It is always sad to see.

It was nice cooking in Joly’s kitchen, something I had not done for two weeks. Lisa came just as the meal was due to go into the oven. The evening was full of conversation, laughter and a reasonable amount of very good wine compliments of Joly including two interesting British Colombian red wines by Porter, a Syrah that was very powerful and had a few years to go for optimum drinking plus a softer Cabernet Franc. It was rather late when we retired to bed. My idea of being abstemious was completely abandoned after Joly insisted we try some of his very good wines.