4. Experience the culture and nature

During my stay in Toronto, I was so lucky that I could Live with Pat’s family. It was a good opportunity to experience and observe the life of a western middle-class family.

 

Photo16: the room where I lived in Toronto.

I should say that Pat’s families are so kind and full of intellectual color, I am not sure if what I saw in Pat’s family is typical in Canada. They spent most of time on reading and writing. The girls are like angels, they even didn’t watch TV, didn’t play electronic games. However, the kids in Chinese cities usually watch a lot TV, quite a few are addicted to electronic games.

  When I arrived at Toronto, the Fringe Festival was just going on. About the Festival, I would like to quote the introduction from their website ( http://www.fringetoronto.com/ ):

  The first Fringe in Canada was established in Edmonton in 1982. The festival adapted the formula created by the Edinburgh Fringe Festival over 50 years ago, embracing the mandate to provide all artists, emerging and established, with the opportunity to produce their play no matter the content, form or style, and to make the event as affordable and accessible as possible for the members of the community.

  ……

  There are now twenty-three members of The Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals (CAFF). Canada now enjoys more Fringe Festivals than any other country in the world and each Festival is a leader in the development of theatre artists and audiences in their community.

The first Toronto Fringe Theatre Festival took place in 1989 with 4 venues and 40 productions. The festival has grown to become Toronto 's largest theatre festival, and the third largest Fringe in Canada . In 2005, the Toronto Fringe featured eleven venues and more than 130 theatre companies from Ontario , across Canada and around the world. Ticketed attendance surpasses 46,000. Over the years, many Fringe artists have gone on to become senior members of the Toronto and national theatre communities. Many of these artists continue to return from year to year to participate in the Fringe.

  Toronto is a city which maybe has the most abundant cultural diversity in the world. You can feel the diversity from the different colors of people wandering in the streets, from all sorts of flavors in different restaurants, and from the Fringe Festival. “embracing the mandate to provide all artists, emerging and established, with the opportunity to produce their play no matter the content, form or style”, the formula of the Festival exactly showed the Toronto people’s attitude to diversity.

In one afternoon, I went to see a play under the title of “The Christian Republican Fundraiser in Daytona Tennnessee”. I was told the play was one of the most popular in the Festival. The performance was given in a medium bar, which could contain less than 100 people, the environment was just like where the story happened. There were a lot of country songs during the play, I couldn’t understand it very well. But I could see the audience like the performance, they gave applause and cheers all along.

  One friend of mine who immigrated to Toronto has ever told me that the public library system in Toronto probably was the best in the world. Now I experienced it by myself. My feeling is the public libraries in Toronto really serve for the public, not like the public libraries in China- in China they don’t care how many people can use the libraries, most of all they care how to keep and protect the books. In Toronto, you don’t need any special certification to get the service from public library, you don’t need to pay any fee. All the public libraries form a network, you can borrow materials from anyone library of the net and return them to anyone library of the net, the whole procedure is very convenient. The books and magazines in the libraries are abundant, and they are updated frequently. The libraries are in the neighborhood, they also provide computer service, and adjust their service according to the need of the communities. In a public library at a Chinese neighborhood, I saw many new Chinese novels and magazines. I saw a lot of children reading in the public library, and they could do their homework in the library. Public libraries really become a beneficial portion of the communities.

The Science Center of Toronto and Royal Ontario Museum also gave me wonderful experiences. The ticket charge was not cheap for me, but I could go to the museum and Science Center in some special free term. I have stayed in the Science Center for one day and went to the Museum twice, but it’s not enough for me. In Science Center, I found a lot of information about Toronto’s environment. 

 

Photo17: there are abundant ancient Greek and Roman relics in Royal Ontario Museum.

Thanks for Pat’s and Gráinne’s kindness, they invited me to go to their cottages with their families for holiday, so I got opportunity to experience the beautiful nature beside the Georgain Bay. I swam in the beautiful lake, took a lot of photos of the scenery and flowers. That’s good memory I couldn’t forget forever.

 

 

Photo18: the lake beside Pat’s cottage.

 

 

 

Photo19: Lake Isabella beside Gráinne’s cottage.

 

When I was there, I visited the Wye Marsh and Ontario Huronia Historical Parks, Sainte-Marie among the Hurons. As a lover of the nature and history, I enjoyed myself so much as to forget to leave. The Wye Marsh was a special wildlife reserve run by NGO, how NGO run the reserve also interested me during the visiting. In the wetland park, I could see a lot of signs showing donation from individuals and organizations.

 

Photo20: the sign in Wye Marsh.

(to be continued)