Big City Life

Over the past few months, I have really felt the urge to move away from the big city. It's just so busy and polluted with no place to relax and enjoy. We are in Canada, land of the Rockies, Atlantic shores and beautiful lakes, and here I am spending my time in an apartment in the core of a big city.

I keep telling my husband that it is time to move - to go outside Toronto where most of us immigrants have ended up. Don't get me wrong, I love Toronto - the multiculturalism is truly amazing. Everyone comes from every where and on any given day you interact with over 10 different nationalities. Not even New York City is as multicultural as Toronto. And the strange part is that we all seem to live pretty peacefully here in the arctic cold. I guess the coldness melts away any animosity. Indians and Pakistanis live side by side, Jews and Arabs pray next to each other and Russians and Germans work together. No one really cares where you come from which is what makes this city so wonderful.

But as wonderful as multiculturalism is, Toronto is so very lacking in any kind of natural beauty. We don't have the mountains of Vancouver, the seaside of Halifax, the melting glacier of St. John or even the ever changing countryside of Montreal. It's about the only thing I really miss in Toronto and after almost 6 years of living here, I'm starting to get itchy for it.

We got married in Ancaster but apart from the Niagra Escarpment which is beautiful, there really is nothing there. I even thought of Peterborough with the Kawartha lakes next door, but really, what would we do in any of these places? There are no jobs for my husband there - even though he keeps telling me he is going to become a fisherman and catch fish everyday for me. (I will believe this only after I see him catch at least 1 fish !) The commute to Toronto would be horrendous, and we would leave behind all our friends.

I used to be allergic to the thought of moving to the suburbs - it just seemed like the kind of life that sucks all the interesting parts of you out. I've never lived suburbia, and being a city girl, I aways saw the "suburbanites" as a bit thick. They didn't seem as quick with their responses as the city folks - maybe that's because they didn't have to watch out for taxi drivers trying to kill them when they crossed the road, or had to hold their purse really tight when they were walking down the street. My husband tells me suburbia is not so bad. I'm not totally convinced about it.

But at the section of life we are in, we need nurseries, kindergarten, dance classes and the like for Baby M , and stuff like this is simply not in big supply in the core of downtown Toronto. It's certain we are moving, but we just have to find an area we are comfortable in.