Day 47 (12.viii.08)

Apart from the large numbers of responses I penned this morning to the various criticisms that emerged about my first article on South Ossetia, I decided to use today for another one of my extended walks. I decided to wander along Bloor Street to find the hostel where I’ll be staying briefly just before my return to England, and thought that I would use this opportunity to push even further the boundaries of my knowledge of coastal Toronto. Westwards along Bloor Street I went, past Spadina Avenue (the first big road by which I’ve got used to calculating relative distances here) through an area called Mirvish Village, through Bloorcourt Village and the Korean Business District (all of which where a sort of cross between a village high street and Camden Town), past Bathurst Avenue (the next big road), past Ossington Avenue (the previous Western border of my knowledge of Toronto), and even past Dufferin Road (which is not far from the edge of even my most detailed map of Toronto). The place really is miles away, and I couldn’t find any nearby public transport links, which doesn’t exactly bode well for when I’ll be lugging my suitcase up and down the street come mid-September…

On the way back I managed to perform an elaborate inspection of Dufferin Mall, and I headed back into more familiar territory along College Road, beginning in the heart of Little Italy. It was another two-and-a-half-hour job, this journey, and thus probably in the region of 10km again, so I was rather tired when I got back. I emailed the summer programme people at Woodworth College to ask about getting some sort of certificate for my course, watched some more Eddie Izzard, nearly drowned in the number of comments and emails Gmail had accrued in my absence, and will now wind down with the Olympics, my puzzles (how I will miss them!) and probably some more Queens of the Stone Age…

~ by Marius Ostrowski on August 12, 2008.