A trip to Toronto in which I felt supremely stupid

Things I felt stupid about: My belief in the Mariners, my ability to appreciate literary fiction, and my knowledge about Canadian sovereignty

A book to (maybe) read: IN THE SKIN OF A LION

Somehow, I’ve long held the belief that the USA holds the sole distinction of being a “nation of immigrants.” This erroenous belief likely stems from:

• The prevalence of the phrase “melting pot” during my formative years

• My country’s tendency to annex areas and inform inhabitants that they are now part of the USA, like it or not. (Hi Hawaiians!)

• The Statue of Liberty

• The US starting wars with Mexico for Manifest Destiny purposes. As my students in Colorado told me: “We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us.”

• Hamilton: An American Musical: “Immigrants, we get the job done!” (*high five*)

Or maybe I’m desperate to hold onto this belief because I think the United State’s biggest strength is the very fact that we are a nation of immigrants. Most of my students are first or second-generation Americans and they make me hopeful for a brighter future for America.

This week I realized something I already knew: Canada is a nation of immigrants too.

Michael Ondaatje’s book IN THE SKIN OF A LION is set in Toronto in the early 1900s. Sharing themes with The Jungle (i.e. immigrants trade Old World poverty for New World poverty during the crushing capitalism of the Industrial Revolution), the book drives home the message that immigrants did the heavy lifting to build Toronto.

To be honest, I don’t think I’m smart enough for this book.

It’s one of those literary novels where the oh-so-lyrical prose sometimes keeps you from ascertaining what is actually happening, plot-wise. Sometimes, I latched onto the poetry of the words and the atmosphere of the novel, and loved it. While in this reading mode, Ondaatje’s place-based writing style reminded me a little of Montana’s Rick Bass which is a compliment because I freakin’ LOVE Rick Bass.

But sometimes, I stared at the words on the page and felt as lost as a freshman in her first college-level English class.

I brought this book on the airplane ride from Vancouver to Toronto, but quickly abandoned it for Geraldine DeRuiter’s IF YOU CAN’T TAKE THE HEAT: Tales of FOOD, FEMINISM, and FURY. If you need an engaging airplane read, definitely pick Geraldine’s book. The only problem is you’ll look silly trying to hold in your riotous laughter, which is a very good problem to have.

Photo by Jenna Vandenberg. I wish my fingernails were red in this photo.

Anyway, back to In the Skin of a Lion. The story follows Patrick Lewis and (to a lesser degree) Nicholas Temelcoff, as they tromp through snow, build the bridges and tunnels of Toronto, fall in love, escape from prison, try to track down missing millionaires, play it fast-and-loose with explosives, and watch labor union leaders get murdered. Some of the characters apparently show up in Ondaatje’s much more famous THE ENGLISH PATIENT, so maybe I should read that next.

A lesson to teach:

I rarely even mention Canada while teaching World History, but after reading about/visiting Toronto, I decided to learn a little something and insert it into my lessons. My students just wrapped up their unit on how Africans resisted European colonialism, and this week we're studying WWI.

Always a fan of teaching with visuals, I paired students up and gave each pair all these pictures. (I cut them up and mixed them up first). The students’s task was to lay out the pictures, thusly creating a timeline of how WWI started and how various countries got involved. Then they recorded the information on this sheet here. On the back is a map, which students and I color in together as I tell the story of Gavrilo assassinating the Austrian Archduke and all that followed.

Side note: I’ve always described the WWI alliance system as a middle school fight - you know, when two 7th graders decide they are going to fight and they each get their friends on their side and pretty soon half the school is mad at the other half of the school? Usually, this analogy leads to knowing laughs and nods of understanding.

This year: Blank stares.

“We were online during middle school,” one of my students reminded me.

“And not allowed to fight,” another student added.

It’s so fascinating to get old and have to update your teaching analogies.

Back to Canada: Unlike my students in middle school, Canada did fight in WWI. Once Britain joined the war,¹ Canada joined as well, per their legal status as a British Dominion. Thousands of Canadians showed up at recruiting offices and found themselves in French trenches by early 1915.

This propaganda poster and the description of Canada’s entry into WWI is included in the student timeline pictures

The article I read reported that WWI allowed Canada to become more independent, as they fought “as a distinct entity” for the first time in history. However, total independence didn’t come along until much, much later.

When I was a wee lass of six days old, (on March 25th, 1982), Canada’s constitution was approved by the British Parliament, making Canada wholly independent. This explains why there were so many Royalty references in Toronto. Because 1982 wasn’t THAT long ago, people!

A place to explore: Toronto

I wasn’t in Toronto last week for historical purposes. I was there for baseball. And love.

Some personal history: For our anniversary every year, my husband and I go wherever the Mariners are playing. Sometimes this leads to odd vacation choices, but who else has gone to Kansas City TWICE for their anniversary?²

Picture taken, selfie style, by Jenna Vandenberg. I took the pictures of poutine and the Roger’s Centre hotel room below as well.

This year, they were playing in Toronto! This was fortunate for several reasons:

• We’ve never been to Toronto! In the nine years we’ve been married, the Mariners have been to Minneapolis, Kansas City, Chicago, and Seattle - all cities I’d already been to. Although I love returning to familiar destinations, it’s more fun to explore somewhere new.

• The Seattle Mariners and the Toronto Blue Jays have a weird geographic rivalry. Toronto and Seattle are on different sides of the continent, but Canada only has one major league team. Therefore, whenever the Blue Jays are in Seattle, the whole city of Vancouver comes and takes over T-Mobile Park. This series used to be pretty much a home series for the Blue Jays. See below for Mariner pitcher Felix Hernandez yelling “THIS IS MY HOUSE” at Blue Jay fans (yes, there is also a T-shirt)

  In recent years, Mariners fans have been showing up to these games to make our presence known. It’s pretty fun to go to these games because Canadians are so nice and friendly :)

• Poutine is delicious.

  

• Toronto’s Rogers Centre (originally called the SkyDome) has a hotel INSIDE the stadium! It’s that crazy?!? You can get a hotel room in center field that overlooks the field. I was skeptical about the quality of the view, but shouldn’t have been. It was even better than some of the seats inside the stadium! Our hotel was just to the right of the scoreboard.

  

• Our vacation also lined up the eclipse, and Toronto was just outside the path of totality, so that was fun. It was cloudy during the eclipse, so the experience wasn’t exactly life-changing, but still cool. IN THE SKIN OF A LION also had an eclipse scene in Toronto, so that was a weird coincidence.

The only problem with the trip was that the Mariners lost in spectacular fashion, both the night we watched from our room and the night we had seats. The next day, while we were on the plane back home they won. They heartbreak was compounded by the fact that we took our kids to an Aquasox game a couple days later (Aquasox lost) and a Mariners game after that (the Mariners - you guessed it - lost). So we went 0-4 for our week of baseball.

Oh well, it’s early. Right,

Amanda Lane Cumming

?

If you are here for some Toronto history, may I recommend

Adam Bunch

. All the Toronto history can be found in his newsletter and, like me, he’s leaned into baseball vibes since Spring Training started. The story below is about an aging baseball star hoping for a comeback. Adam’s story is set in 1917, but the theme is timeless, isn’t it?

How Napoleon Lajoie Won The Pennant

Happy teaching, reading, traveling, and baseballing, friends! May you (and the Mariners) have a great week!

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1. Which happened because the Germans marched through Belgium (Britain’s ally) to get to France, who was allied with Russia, who was allied with Serbia, who was being attacked by the Austria-Hungarian Empire because a Serbian terrorist killed an Austrian archduke and Germany, desperate to go to war encouraged/supported Austria to declare war. Got it?

2. I love Kansas City: BBQ! Fountains! Jazz! The Negro League Baseball Museum!