CITIES: Toronto Canada: “Our Pleasant City” – By Geoff Burrowes

Beautiful downtown Toronto Skyline at night taken from Center Island in Ontario Canada. Clear view of the Roger Centre and CN Tower along the Harbourfront.

Pleasant city

     Toronto in Northern North America (Canada) is truly a very pleasant city – to live in, to enjoy the diverse population and the wonderful variety of customs and foods we have brought with us: curries and other spicy treats, Chinese delicacies, Thai food, many European dishes: Italian, Greek, and others. Flavours from Africa: Morroco, Algeria, Syria,  and India, Pakistan, Albania, Turkey, Russia, the Balkans and of course, scrumptious dishes from the Caribbean: Jamaican Jerk, Goat Belly soup, Trinidadian  Roti and Guyanese Pepperpot, Metagee, Pattees and Pine Tarts!         

Let’s not forget the festivals that brighten our city, such as Caribbean Carnival, with all its bright costumes, many of which have taken a full year to prepare and the competitions such as the King and Queen of the bands.

The streets throughout Toronto are lined with trees (TO is doing its bit in fighting climate change) and ensuring that we, its citizens are breathing clean air. The trees are as diverse as the population, towering pines and spruces, planes, oaks, maples.

Fourteen lanes of traffic on highway # 401 across the top of Toronto Ontario Canada

Travel is made easy by the highways crisscrossing the city, including the 401 which is known as the “Highway of heroes” between Trenton,  where the RCAF Hercules and Globemaster transports bring our heroes home to be honoured and cremated and Toronto where the honouring takes place! However the rapid growth of the metropolis has resulted in overcrowding of vehicles on the Highways and resulting traffic jams during rush hour, which now seems to happen most of the day! The authorities, including the municipal and provincial governments are doing their best to correct this but people keep coming and manufacturers keep building cars so they are fighting an uphill battle.

The other problems in our beautiful city are poverty and crime. It seems to me that a city as wealthy as Toronto has no excuse for poverty and homelessness but, like most of North America the largest portion of the pie is in a relatively small number of hands and only a small few see any need to change that. Socialism and Communism are, on paper the answer, but the Russians and Chinese have shown us the fallacy of these isms as other powerful people hog the resources for themselves – sorry Andrea Horvath!

Our political systems seem to work fairly well but we still have poverty, homelessness and violent crime and my simple brain can’t think of a solution!

In Guyana we have a simple expression “Wha’ fo’ do?”.

I’m sure someone much cleverer than me will come up with the answer but until then we’ll just have to do the best each of us can!

  Given the drawbacks we still live in a pleasant city and I hope we will still enjoy our pleasant city.

        Our city and country are not perfect but I still wake up every day and say “Thank you Lord for Canada! Help me make her better today!”

        From a grateful Diasporian. A grateful Canadian!