People wear face masks as they walk in a park in Montreal on April 4, 2021.Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press
Alyssa Ages is a Toronto-based journalist, writing a book about the life-changing impact of strength.
I was unpacking groceries from my car when the garbage truck came to a halt at my driveway. The driver stepped out – not to reprimand me for the placement of my can, but to inquire about how I liked my Volkswagen. Ten minutes later, I knew the ages of his four children and his plan to keep his youngest daughter off the dating scene until she turns 34.
Since the start of the pandemic, my toddler’s treasured weekly activity has been “Trucks Day,” when we sit outside (or pressed up against the window on cold days) and listen for the familiar grunts and crunches of the organics truck. We jump up and down like lunatics and in turn the driver waves and honks. Such has been our ritual with him for a year. This week was the first time we had a full conversation, and I quickly realized how much I miss spontaneous conversations with strangers.
Most Canadians will argue that Toronto is the country’s least friendly city. But as a transplant from New York City, where a fellow straphanger once hit me over the head with a newspaper for cutting him off at the subway turnstile, I see things a little differently.
I see a city where our farmer’s market vendors know my daughter’s name. It’s the place where a construction worker once approached my parked car, and instead of the catcalls or expletives I was accustomed to in New York, he shared that the driver of the vehicle parked in front of mine had hit my car. He wanted me to see that he’d left that driver a note: “I know what you did.”
With our city in yet another lockdown, I find myself pining for those weird and wonderful interactions.
Arriving in Toronto six years ago, I approached this city as I did my hometown: I moved through the streets quickly, head down. As a fourth-generation New Yorker, aversion was my birthright.
I grew up with dueling opinions on interacting with strangers. Like me, my mother excelled at pretending strangers don’t exist. My stepfather, by contrast, talked at length to everyone, and I always enjoyed observing the perfect, brief moment when the first words of introduction to a stranger would leave his mouth, and my mother’s soul would leave her body.
I spent the majority of my life suffering that same sense of mortification when I was forced into conversation, but moving here wore down my resistance. Strangers smiled, and were disarmingly kind. People initiated interactions so often, I had to reciprocate, lest I quickly become the town misanthrope. So I held my end of the conversation – at first hesitantly, with a trepidatious nod or a well-placed chuckle, and later with excitement. I went from being the dutiful recipient of an introduction to leading the charge.
I’ll never forget my first time. On the TTC one rush hour, I spotted an Ironman logo on the bag of my seat mate. I had considered my opener. Would I try “Hey, you like sadistic athletic endeavours too?!” Or the cool and casual “Running, eh?” I considered how embarrassed I might feel if he failed to match my enthusiasm, but I went for it, and we chatted for the next five stops.
After my initial success, I tried out my new skill across the GTA. I commented on the athleisure of a fellow pregnant woman at a workout class, who has since become a dear friend. I approached a neighbour on Halloween and ended up joining a committee of local moms who co-ordinate community birthday card drop-offs and welcome new residents with baked goods.
Still, as the lockdown policy continues to enforce distance, I find a little of that “outta my way” mentality creeping in again. I notice the city’s residents, who had so charmed me with their disarming friendliness, averting their gaze as we pass one another on the street, as if lack of eye contact helps mitigate the risk of transmission. I have begun to do the same, and with each missed opportunity for a smile or a wave, I long for those spontaneous, uncomfortably long conversations about the weather, or the Raptors, or territorial raccoons.
These days, I find my eyes darting frantically at our neighbourhood playground, searching for new families so I can practice my skill set from an appropriate distance, before my daughter is old enough to be mortified by my bumbling.
And I wait patiently for the day I can sit uncomfortably close to someone on the subway and shock them out of their scrolling by saying something perfectly awkward like, “So much for social distancing, eh?”
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