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Pique n' your interest

Going ‘home’

There’s a weird thing that happens out here when you tell people you’re from Toronto.

You get a look of pity, a shake of the head, a big sigh and the distinct impression that people feel terribly sorry for you for having the misfortune to be born and raised in Hogtown.

I’ve been getting the same performance more often recently as I mention that I’m going home for a wedding next week.

Seven days in flat as a pancake, smog-filled, SARS-spooked Toronto is akin to a lifetime of torment for mountain folk around here. They shudder just thinking about it and, I hate to sound like a traitor to my hometown, but it’s starting to rub off.

I can sort of see where these people who are born and breed in B.C. are coming from, despite all the good things Mike Myers has to say about TO these days.

Right about when my plane touches down the smog warnings should be just coming into effect. It’s usually about the beginning of the summer that smog starts to become a hazy issue over the city. Residents will be told not to do excessive physical activity outdoors, not use their lawnmowers, drink lots of water, stay in shaded areas.

Unless you’re elderly or have heart problems, you have nothing much to worry about anyway except maybe a few guilt pangs about how you’re actually contributing to the problem.

They ask you to cut back on your addiction to air conditioning but spend a summer in the city just to see how hot, humid, muggy and oppressive it actually gets. Sometimes you can’t help but move from office, to car, to grocery store, to home without the AC cranked all the way.

Sitting on my back deck in Emerald at the height of summer after a hard mountain bike ride with the wind rustling through the tall trees, you feel a little sorry for the rat racers.

You just can’t help but breathe a deep sigh of relief, not to mention fresh clean air, when you hear about smog warnings in Toronto or the Humidex reaching never-before-seen heights.

You never think much about it when you’re living it.

Plus there’s a mass exodus out of the city every Friday afternoon as people head to cottage country for the weekend to catch their breaths.

Fortunately as smog season fast approaches many Torontonians will have their SARS masks handy this year to protect them. When you think about it, as funny as it seems, there’s nothing funny about it at all.

People died, others were very sick, many were in a state of nervous panic and, let’s face it, a good portion of population couldn’t have cared less.

Here in B.C. where we were miraculously spared the SARS scare, the antics in Toronto seem surreal – people boycotting Chinese restaurants, the racial slurs, the refusal to go into quarantine, the bishop urging compliance during Holy Week.

And just as SARS seems to be under control, the first dead crow was found in the city. The West Nile virus is back. And all the panic once focused on clean hands will now be transferred to the deadly mosquitoes.

But smog, humidity, SARS and West Nile aside, Toronto’s not all that bad.

For all you west coasters who say west is best, Toronto has a lot of offer too. Perhaps not the snow-capped mountains or the laid-back lifestyle but there’s the restaurants, the theatre, the cottages, the choices, the variety, the excitement.

Still I need to stay focused on slagging Toronto right now in preparation of my trip home, less my parents start to wear me down.

Over the next seven days I’ll be bombarded with the inevitable questions, ‘when are you coming home?’ ‘you’re not really happy out there snowboarding and mountain biking all the time, are you?’, ‘it’s not really your cup of tea, is it?’ and did I mention ‘how soon can we expect you home?’

As tiresome as the campaign to bring me back to Toronto is, it’s always nice to know that at least two people want me around!

I don’t think that was always the case either. In my more tempestuous teenage years when we could all barely sit around the dinner table without a heated argument, I think there may have been a slight sigh of relief that I was moving away to university. Perhaps Halifax was too far away, but at least I was out of the house. They’ll deny that to the fullest but I think the house was a more peaceful place in my absence.

After graduating and travelling for a few years, it was time to do what most people do these days and move back to the nest to save some money. We got along great then. It would seem I had matured.

So when I first took the job in Whistler my parents thought that I’d last maybe the winter season. It wouldn’t be long ’til I was back in the family fold again or at least near enough to visit every day.

They tune it out now when I talk about how much I love it out here.

They agree that the pictures are nice but certainly not nice enough to keep me here.

They cannot understand that I don’t have any imminent plans to return to Toronto.

In reality the only thing I miss about ‘home’ is my family. There’s nothing much else drawing me back there. When I see the Coast Mountains from the plane on my way back to Whistler, it feels like I’m coming ‘home’ rather than the other way around.

Maybe I’m fickle but it’s funny how your concept of ‘home’ can change in such a short time.