I will always remem­ber the first time I came to Toronto.

It was in 2002, after our crazy long trip from Mex­ico to Brazil. I had never been to North Amer­ica before and I wanted to see Canada, so I flew back to Toronto with Feng. It was Feb­ru­ary and I didn’t have any warm clothes after a few months in Latin Amer­ica. The only jacket I had was a thin leather jacket I had bought in Argentina dur­ing the Peso cri­sis. Feng had warned me: it was going to be cold.

We flew from Rio de Janeiro to Hous­ton, and then from Hous­ton to Toronto. I stood in the airport’s arrival lounge for a few min­utes mus­ter­ing the courage to step out. It didn’t look that cold.

I walked out­side and started to cough. The air was so dry and the wind was so cold it felt as though I had walked right into a giant freezer. My skin was burn­ing and I couldn’t keep my hands out of my pock­ets for more than two sec­onds. We took the sub­way and walked to an hos­tel. Later that night, we had a North Amer­i­can style meal in a small din­ner. It smelled of wood and cof­fee. I loved it.

We walked around in the Eaton Cen­ter, had a cof­fee at Star­bucks, spot­ted fun graf­fi­tis and observed peo­ple. A few days later, we had taken the Grey­hound to Ottawa.

Every time I go to Toronto, it reminds me of my first time in Canada. Back then, I had no clue I would even­tu­ally immi­grate there, and then become Cana­dian. Funny how life turns out sometimes.

The Eaton Center	Shop­ping Around Box­ing Day
Bay Street	Bay Street
The CN Tower	Build­ing Buildings…
Cana­dian Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism: French and Chi­nese Restaurants	Under­ground Passages
The Crashed Car	Mail­boxes With Postal Codes

Related arti­cles:

1. Yonge & Dundas
2. A Sun­day In Toronto
3. The 416 Escape
4. New Year In Toronto
5. Kens­ing­ton Mar­ket In The Spring
6. Of a Flight Back Home