An engaging walk after TTC breakdown

It was about 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, just as the evening rush hour was kicking off, and just after Toronto had experienced the full range of what springtime weather has to offer in a weird quick rush of thunder and rain that became hail and then snow and then sunshine. On the fare-gate level of St. Patrick subway station, masses of people were gathered around the collector’s booth, where a TTC employee was addressing them through a tinny speaker, in a manner familiar to users of the system.

“WOMP WOMP streetcar WOMP Dundas WOMP WOMP WOMP WOMP” he said, as indecipherable as a teacher on the old Charlie Brown cartoons, save for the odd discernable word. “Union WOMP WOMP WOMP Bloor,” he carried on, gesturing with his hands to signal we should all go back upstairs to the street.

We riders looked to each other. This seemed like important information if we were hoping to get home anytime soon.

A young woman said she’d just come up from being on the subway, and that the system was shut down between Union and St. George.

“How can I get to the Green Line?” an older woman said in English accented with what might’ve been an Eastern European flavour.

“WOMP WOMP streetcar WOMP WOMP WOMP WOMP” said the TTC employee, making elaborate directional gestures.

I spoke up, as I am prone to do: “I think he’s saying people who want to get to Bloor should take the Dundas streetcar over to Yonge and then transfer to a subway there,” I said.

“OK, but how do I get to St. George?” the young woman said.

“Well, I’m going to walk there, because it’s probably only about 15 minutes up University,” I said. “But you could transfer at Yonge-Bloor to a westbound train and then get off at St. George.”

The older woman grabbed a bundle buggy and pulled it over beside me: “You’re walking to Bloor? I come with you, OK?” I nodded.

“Do you mind if I join you?” the young woman asked. “I live in Mississauga. The only subway stations I know are Union and St. George.”

Another man standing nearby, maybe 40 years old and possibly from the Middle East, wanted to join too. “I need to get to Victoria Park. This has happened to me twice this week, the walking.”

And so the four of us headed up University Avenue, like some updated Toronto version of “The Breakfast Club” — the young student, the senior citizen, the man, and me — a demographic sampling of Toronto: two of us evidently born in some other country, two of us people of colour, one of us from Mississauga, two of us from Scarborough, one of us living in the old city of Toronto. Together we were sentenced not to detention, but to the all-too-familiar drudgery of navigating the city in the absence of the subway.

This came during a grim and depressing week on the transit news front. I had just come from City Hall where the deputy mayor had kicked off the day by saying the absence of funding from provincial and federal governments might mean deeper transit service cuts to go with the ones implemented last weekend. Toronto was still reeling from the apparently random and unprovoked stabbing death of a teenage boy at a subway station on Saturday, which added to a sense of unease with the safety of the transit system and the city — suddenly more than ever this seemed like a place where every stranger might be a threat. And then there was the frustration of the moment.

The young woman said she’d been on a train that had to reverse through the tunnel.

“This is part of living in Toronto. That’s why so many people here ride bicycles,” the man said, gesturing at the protected bike lanes on the street.

Over the announcements, the young woman said, it was announced that it was a “personal injury at track level.”

“In Hong Kong they have barriers on the platform,” the older woman said. “We should have them here.” We nodded at the suggestion.

We talked as we walked. The young woman was in her third year at University of Toronto studying immunology, but this was her first year actually attending in person — she commuted every day from Mississauga and only really knew the area of the city around school and agreed this was a bit of an adventure getting to see part of the city she otherwise only rolled past underground. The man lived in the far north of Scarborough and had a long subway and bus ride still ahead of him — he’d left work early to avoid the forecast bad weather, but had managed to time things to ensure a long walk. The older woman, it turned out, lived near my old high school and her own adult children had attended a nearby school — it seemed likely we’d had friends in common.

When we reached College, we saw ambulances outside the subway entrance and reflected again on how it seemed like the cause of our delay was someone going through much worse than we were. Perspective.

I apologized as we passed the provincial legislature that the walk was a bit longer than I’d initially estimated.

“It’s OK,” said the older woman, setting a quick pace with purposeful strides past the masses of others walking along the sidewalk. “It’s a nice day for a walk.”

Folks, this isn’t leading to grand revelation — despite our “Wizard of Oz”-style journey along the road together, there was no behind-the curtain reveal at the end of it. We didn’t resolve lifelong insecurities together, or even exchange names. We weren’t forever changed by our encounter. But our day was changed, for the better. By a bit of friendly human contact with kind strangers stuck in the same lessthan-ideal circumstances.

“If this hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have met all of you,” the young woman said by way of farewell. “What a lucky thing.”

After a week of news like we’ve had, in an atmosphere of fear and at a moment of potential sadness and frustration, some pleasant moments with people going through it together: It was a little thing, for sure. But it did feel lucky.