A break in the clouds

Toronto in 1960 had the flavour of boiled zucchini floating in too thin a broth. But even then the air hung with the scents of more interesting courses to come. The snowflakes around me in Kensington floated here and there on the odd word of Hindi or the first intonations of Cantonese, cultural tendrils of the first shoots of foreign blossoms arriving on these shores. That had been the nature of the country centuries before, and was about to be again. But for now, the flowers were rarified and even the prissiest of waspy gardeners was still able to pretend that, while weeds they were, they would soon wither and die of their own accord in unpromising soil, this environment too hostile for their like. The young, open to possibilities, could imagine alternatives, and with mingled trepidation and excitement, I imagined a future that did not in every aspect, feature, and nuance, identically resemble the past. A new flag, a new pride, a new people... it was easy to imagine, but who could really have believed it?