A Loiterer in Toronto

From twenty thousand feet above, the earth below appears in inky purples and murky greens. Rivers glint like strands of silver hair, twisting and clinging to the landscape. Here and there lie soft patches of pale green—new crops, small forests. And then, wide mirrors of light flash back the blue and white of the sky, scattering discs of reflected sun. Lakes. Large and small, pressed against the earth like oversized tears. The biggest of them is Lake Ontario.

Every time I fly into or out of Toronto, this tableau reappears beneath the aircraft window. For over a century, waves of immigrants have arrived here from all corners of the world. Among Chinese immigrants, Hongkongers were among the earliest. Like the old man sitting across from me now—one of them.

The Hong Kong Elder

One evening I wandered into the park across the street. Children played around the sandbox; I chose a bench, sat down, and drifted into idleness. A thin, white-haired man in a sleeveless undershirt approached and sat across from me. He must have lived nearby—he came here often, it seemed.

After a polite nod, he recognized I was from the mainland and greeted me in half-remembered Mandarin.

“Where are you from?”

“Beijing.”

“Oh, Beijing. Here on vacation?”

“No. We’re new immigrants.”

“Good, good. Do you speak Cantonese?” He must have exhausted his Mandarin in that one question.

“Sai ting, ng sai gong,” I fumbled, scraping together every Cantonese phrase I’d ever stored.

And so we began. Bit by bit I learned he came here from Hong Kong in 1985—Hong Kong at its most prosperous. That same year, I was a dazed teenager in the mainland, hearing for the first time a vinyl record brought by a neighbour from Guangzhou—Alan Tam’s Love in Late Autumn. The dizziness of discovery. Hong Kong instantly became, for the boy I was, the glittering fantasy of the world beyond.

The old man had opened a small food stall after arriving in Toronto, then a restaurant. He worked hard, raised his children, watched them leave home one by one. Eventually he sold the business and retired—not rich, but with enough to live out his days in modest comfort. Now he wanders, chats, rests—an elderly immigrant completing the quiet final chapters of his life.

The Artist SUE

A friend messaged me:

A painter is organizing a session and needs a figure model. Interested?

I had nothing to do, so I agreed. Soon my friend arrived to pick me up; I tossed my easel, drawing board, and paints into his car, and we headed off.

The painter—an elderly lady—was born and raised here in Richmond Hill. Her ancestors came from England generations ago. No matter how the world changed, the old white residents of this town rarely moved away. She kept her old white house and tiny garden, directly across from a United Church with a Gothic steeple. The storefronts nearby remained one or two stories high, sidewalks paved in brick—a faint echo of old Europe.

Her name was Sue. I told her my daughter’s name was also Sue, from the Chinese word 素—simple. She burst into laughter, leaned back, and declared, “It is me. I am simple!”

She had invited a plump woman to model for us that day, along with several local artists. We sat in her garden chatting until the model disrobed and settled into pose. The soft scraping of charcoal filled the air. Looking at her, I couldn’t help smiling—she was straight out of a Rubens canvas, having stepped down from an ornate frame to sit before me. I hadn’t drawn the human figure for years; my hand was rusty, my strokes clumsy. The sketch was, frankly, a failure.

Sue spent the session tending to everyone—checking seats, asking the model if she was tired, offering sweet wine and tea during the break. Her joy was not in the drawing but in gathering people, filling her garden with voices. Otherwise, in old age, the quiet could eat a person alive.

Stan, the Neighbour

The community where I live is usually silent—quiet enough for the ears to ring. Across the street sits my neighbour Stan’s garden, meticulously tended with daisies and pansies, splashing colour across the façade of his house.

Stan is a white man in his sixties or seventies, with snowy hair and beard, and the slightly stooped posture that comes with age. He spends his days fussing with his lawn, flowers, garage, and two cars: a white Mercedes and a navy-blue convertible BMW. And a dog the size of a small person.

He dresses in pale T-shirts and pink tailored shorts—a kind of British leisure style. In China, such attire would mark him as wealthy. But here it simply means he worked steadily during the ’80s and ’90s, invested a bit, bought a house when it was affordable, and now enjoys a comfortable retirement.

Today he lounged on his porch with a chair and speaker, blasting jazz and classical tunes down the whole street. I waved at him; he didn’t notice, but his dog immediately trotted over before being called back.

I seldom speak with him, though once we walked home together. He had worked in Shanghai for a while and remembered getting lost on the street. Locals eagerly helped him find his way—something that deeply impressed him, perhaps because he expected less and received more. Shanghai tends to leave Westerners with good memories. But those impressions, like everything else, belong to their particular moment in time.

A Stranger on a Walk

From my house, paths stretch both left and right—quiet trails from Boake Trail to Spadina Road. Days pass without encountering more than a handful of people. Bayview Hill is always serene. For newcomers from China, the peace can feel dull, yet undeniably beautiful. We waver: nostalgic for the noise of home, grateful for the gentleness here.

Walking along, the forest flanking both sides glowed with evening light. One entrance led into a dim trail, opening suddenly into a broad grassy field and another park. Only a few passersby lingered. I sat on a bench; the lawn unfurled from my feet in every direction. Under a distant maple, a couple leaned close, unmoving, like a sculpture. This quiet sanctuary suited me—I could have sat still for hours.

Lost in thought, I heard footsteps behind me—two voices, one middle-aged, one older:

“Yes, we’ll need to report this to the leadership. Better spend more time at the grassroots level…”

“Yes, yes, I’ll follow up on it.”

The cadence stopped me cold. That tone, those phrases—I’d heard them my whole life in China. How, in Toronto, eleven thousand kilometres away, was I listening to bureaucratic jargon again? Who were they? Why here? I would never know. Perhaps many cadres love to escape to capitalist cities for a season, to decompress, to observe these supposedly inferior systems—before returning home to continue the revolution.

The Idle Ones

Most working people here leave for the city during the day. Those who remain in these quiet, wooded houses are, in their own ways, the idle ones of the world—some living vividly, some drifting through empty days. Every person who passes by—the jogger, the driver, the stroller—carries a story too long to tell.

And those who notice the idle ones are themselves idle. Like me. My days revolve around school drop-offs, cooking, chores, then writing and painting. A life ordinary, dispensable.

As Chen Danqing once said,

“Life has no inherent meaning. The things I love—literature, painting, music—are all illusions. They only make a meaningless life feel a little more interesting.”