I must say that I do enjoy working from the grounds at city hall. Being in a tent almost makes the office feel like we are outside. The area is alive and vibrant and full of picketers as 30,000 City of Toronto workers are on strike. No garbage pickup, no city run daycare, and many city sponsored events have been cancelled. The strike, now twenty days and counting, has really hurt a lot of people. There was a counter demonstration the other day of people who can't go to their summer jobs because of the strike. People hired as lifeguards and such for the summer, but because the pools are closed, they can't work, even though they aren't even in the union.
For me the inconvenience is minimal, garbage being my biggest obstacle. Luckily, the bar I work at uses private pickup and the boss was kind enough to let me take advantage of the service that she pays for. I finally had to get the garbage out as my little apartment was getting rank in the summer heat, and an odd looking orange mold had formed in my garbage bin.
But I digress. One delicious absurdity of the dispute is the security guard I saw guarding a garbage bin to stop other people from using it. How low in the pecking order must one be to get the garbage bin beat?
Another interesting facet of life at city hall is the soup kitchen that operates a couple of days per week by our neighbour to the west, The Law Society of Upper Canada, and I salute whoever is involved.
Toronto, like any other major city, is home to a complex cornucopia of people, who for a myriad of reasons live on the fringe of our society and twice a week many of them flock here to get a decent meal.
City hall is an odd place. There are a lot of people who use the square as their home, which is tolerated by the city, but there seems to be an agreement that panhandling is not permitted. Aside from the occasional request for a cigarette, I never get panhandled, which is more than I can say for The Danforth.
Anyway, during one of the "soup kitchen days", I saw something I had never seen before, and I've seen a lot of odd behaviour in this city over the years. I had been watching this young man frolic crazily all afternoon, when he suddenly walked up to a tree, pulled a branch down to mouth level and began to dig in. Now, I don't mean that he took a bite out of a leaf but he scarfed down several in short order and really seemed to enjoy them.
Later he came into our office and asked a few questions about what we do. Clearly, this is a soul that needs help, but he was also quite harmless. I answered his questions and he left.
After he departed I began thinking about his mother holding him in his arms when he was born and how that moment connected to the moment I had with him. Then I began to wonder what happened in between to make his life go so badly off track. Then it occurred to me that the cruelties of life hit some of us much harder than others and a wave of gratitude washed over me.
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