Toronto is generous

I was born and raised in São Paulo city's east side, in São Paulo, Brazil. It is considered a tough neighborhood due to its size and population. It’s a poor place where many migrants from Brazil’s northeast found a place to live after their running away from hunger in their original homes since São Paulo is the richest state. I grew up surrounded by Brazilian diversity, Christian churches close to Afro-Brazilian religious temples, all skin tones and hair colors, all levels of poverty, and a fair dose of reality to balance with childhood ingenuity. I remember I was 7 years old the first time I saw a dead body covered by a sheet and some policemen around very early in the morning on my way to school that day. My mother could not avoid that path and couldn’t make me not see, although she tried. I grew up very aware of my surroundings. As we say in São Paulo, one has to be clever to survive.

So I am used to living in a big city since I have done this most of my life. About eight years ago, I got tired of living in hell and moved to a small city close to the big one, but where I could afford to have a backyard and a dog. Back then, I had two sons, and my bae was working from home. I wanted to run away from the long time stuck in traffic, run away from only having malls and private clubs as entertainment. I wanted to learn how to plant in real life since I was obsessed with the Farmville game on Facebook. We rented a small house with a big backyard where we learned how to start it. After two years, we moved to a huge house with about thirty fruit trees, a playground, a big swimming pool, and a sports court. It was far from everything, really paradise, but no pizza delivery, though.

From this country house in the small city, we came to Toronto. I am still amazed. Almost two years of living in this beautiful city taught me that it is possible to be big and be generous. I agree that it is not perfect, although it is not so far from this in my humble third-world person’s opinion. Not only is the weather not so severe as it is in the rest of Canada, but the urban space is well planned and thought for the community, for gathering and sharing. Sure this is not possible during these pandemic times, but I was able to see part of this beautiful structure working. All the public parks my boys enjoyed the first summer we got here were kept in photos to remind us this will pass and it will be better. I promise them all the time it will be awesome again.

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