Our brief, but spectacular time away — in Toronto with friends — & what actually happens in airports

Izzy, me, Thao, Jeff with baby William in the carrier, just to the side of a man-made beach along a harbour walk by Lake Ontario

So one evening while we walked along the shoreline of Lake Ontario (where the part of Torono is located where our friends live), Thao asked a passerby to take this photo of us: left to right, Izzy, me. Thao, Jeff and baby William. Along this long slender park area, there are many things to do in the evening. A tall ship takes passengers for rides, and other ferries and party kind of boats fill with people. Out & indoor cafes, taverns, British style pubs, concerts, “cottage” chairs to sit on, and at the end a beach called a fake beach because it is wholly man-made, but it has the water, the sand and all the things needed for sitting and playing by a beach. So we were standing between where the shoreline ends and the beach begins.

Be sure and remember your traveling experience and let it direct who you vote for next. Choose progressive people who will vote for gov’t regulation and fund consumer protection agencies and bureaus

Dear friends and readers,

So we are back safely home, and we did have a good time, both when we were with our friends, and when we went off on our alone to explore Toronto a little further afield than central downtown where our friends live in a very tall hotel-like (to my eyes) apartment building (they are on the 59th floor and there are several more floors above them) from which they can see from their front room (three walls of which are very strong glass) much of Toronto nearby, the airport from far, other islands in the blue, closer to (imaginary hand) the iconic CN building — kind of Eiffel Tower exhibit for tourists. A block and a half way is a long harbor street we walked across on two different evenings (see above).

We arrived later Tuesday afternoon and just rested in our two guest rooms (“suites” they were called) in the apartment building and talked and stay with Jeff and Thao and ate with them on the (to me) scary balcony. Here you see us on a couch and to the back some of the glass walls — Thao is holding the present of 6 stretchies for William

Good conversation.

In a hard fought many hour match we watched Coco Gauff beat out a Russian woman who had had an important win recently

Wednesday: The day included 5 hours at tennis tournament. Train ride revealed the suburbs — which looked very suburb-like, complete with expected malls and communities of different income levels. Once there, remarkable and absorbing matches between women athletes – a couple very famous. After we left, Serena Williams herself came to that court. She lost but then she’s about to retire. Evening we walked all around Toronto cultural and sport centers and blocks: theaters, arenas, iconic tower, restaurants, central cultural places, people all about in yellow chairs (a friendly social atmosphere), also versions of London East End, an aquarium, another beautiful park along the lake. Sat on high terrace (our friends’ apartment on 59th floor) had dinner again there, yummy take out, sky a rainbow, just gorgeous view of city and lake spreading hues of blue … My feet quivered and I felt raddled because the fear was so strong but I sat there in order not to interrupt the good time …

Inside the museum, many of the walls reminded me of churches

Thursday: In the morning we took the train to the Royal Ontario Museum, which in the mode of modern museums did not emphasize elite art (paintings on walls or sculptures) but rather mirrored the way people once lived in their houses (furnished rooms of the elite in Europe) and in different wings all the kinds of artefacts and household stuff people have needed and made over the centuries across the globe. Cultures was what we saw. Museum caters to children and families and the second floor was given up mostly to dinosaur exhibits (one video showed how they are factory made; you don’t need a degree to be hired). I thought of Cary Grant as the dinosaur curator in the wonderfully witty comedy with Katherine Hepburn, Bringing up Baby (one of them has adopted a baby tiger as I recall). In the afternoon with Thao and baby William in his carriage, we walked to another part of central Toronto and saw the university (beautiful campus) and hospitals (where Jeff works as a physician and where Thao used to work, also as a physician). I was very tired by this time but we did try to go to the aquarium too (Thao left to return to Ten York), but once there we discovered three different lines, a crowd of families and what seemed a poor excuse for an aquarium (small, commercialized) and so returned home too.

The harbor front

Each of the three nights we bought different take-out (ordered it, walked there and back, had it in cafes). This last night was the one were we got to a man-made beach. Early the following morning we were in a cab before 6 am headed back to Toronto-Pearson airport for a 10:30 flight to Washington, DC.

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And now I come to what might be of real interest, our times traveling or in airports. This is what counts, what is important. Most trips people don’t tell much about these experiences as if they are what is to be forgotten. The mere bookends to a trip: but I met an Irish man from Cork while at Toronto Pearson around noon:he had left Dublin on Tuesday morning, expecting/hoping to be in Columbus, Ohio by Wednesday afternoon. He was telling me this on Friday afternoon. Each time a plane was cancelled, he had to find another, or delayed, he didn’t make his connection. A woman and husband deemed “overbook” were told they should contact the airlines if they wanted refunds (everyone knows they will get nothing) when she said she’d drive it but she had spent the money for renting a car on this fare. Another woman also told she is “overbook” looked so miserable and then sat down. She was told if someone doesn’t show up, she can take that seat. Someone did not show up, and I saw her on the plane. This woman was treated as Izzy and I were recently when we tried to go on a boat-ride around DC with an Aspergers group: the boat deliberately overbooked; people encouraged not to buy tickets before, but those with tickets let on first. The aim to fill every space no matter how this inconveniences and exploits the customers.

Toronto-Pearson Airport on a typical day …

Let’s take a step back and I invite you my reader to read an essay called “The Boss Will See You Now” in the New York Review of Books by Zephyr Teachout. Airport misery is created by the airlines with a view of making as much profit as possible, at the same time as underfunded, understaffed, underpaid people are coercing everyone through mazes where you must give up vital information about yourself if you are to continue to the next step nearer “your” plane.

It’s not COVID, but that Covid exacerbated the fundamental conditions the airlines set up so as to make as much profit as possible, criss-crossed by a vast surveillance system (you cannot go past either way without, e.g. having your photo taken and revealing information about yourself which can be used to discover other information). What you must keep your eye on is how little the gov’t or these corporations concern themselves with any customers, except the group as a whole (and keeping the plane minimally from falling out of the sky). What got me is all of them took this dreadful treatment silently and politely. I thought of people taken away to concentration camps where they did not know they would be killed. There was an overt bully in charge of customs at Toronto-Pearson, I admit that. Izzy and I got on our (delayed) plane because I kicked up a big fuss when we arrived at the Gate (among the first people to get there, after it was changed twice) and after we paid for economy premium. In true NYC style I wanted to know why we didn’t have assigned seats and I wanted them now; I objected to his explanations, parsed his sentences, and kept hammering on the main point, offered money and he actually went over to the computer, and put us on the plane.

Basically in the areas of surveillance, it’s yet worse: you are treated as if it’s perfectly fine to talk at you as a suspicious person with no civil rights. So don’t kick up any fusses or parse anyone’s sentences.

What a mirror of the public world of powerful groups today. Right in front of our very eyes, and how rare people describe what the ordeal consists of or tell why it actually exists. This is the backdrop to the loss of democracy we are seeing around the world: as private industry, large corporations and gov’ts work to deprive one of ordinary decent civil life, they create the docile desperate population needed to fill autocratic govts.

In all the complaints I’ve read, I have yet to come across anyone saying describing what happens, what causes many crises and why it needs hours to get through registering, and customs. So here it is: the traveler is confronted with rows of computer machines she must navigate. There are no instructions. Often the machine is not working perfectly. . And the airline has a skeleton staff to help hundreds of people. Why? For the same reason you are once again packed into planes in the smallest possible seats, the most people in a plane possible. To make more money. To get to our boarding passes, have have documents passed and then the gate to the plane to Toronto, we had to chase a woman to help us twice. Then we had to get through a second row of machines before security. Once past this part, the situation is in reverse—now you must get out of this space where in US places it’s understood normal civil rights don’t count. And more rows of machines: this time spying on you: you must take a photo; you must supply information on where you are going and why. Surveillance. These are vast surveillance systems collecting information on everyone who goes through, and the authorities can stop anyone they want.  Izzy and I were not among those random checked arriving and it is our understanding there are no random tests leaving. And our plane was not delayed or cancelled—this is when you despair.

I find it so strange that no one recounts why airports are fraught experiences.

Why did I begin with Teachout? It’s crucial to recognize the analogy here with “Just in Time” buying of essential products for health by for-profit medicine. To recognize that the cameras, and fogged out lack of information surrounding truck-drivers, Amazon employees, Uber and Lyft drivers, and endless working and middle class jobs put people in a similar helpless position against “the bosses.” I tried to buy some needed summer clothes two nights ago using a catalogue and discovered that not just a few, but hardly any of the clothing the catalogue claimed it had in a warehouse, it actually had. Once you ordered an item, if they could, they’d have it for you in 6 weeks.

Unions can try to fight for decent conditions, higher wages, other forms of benefits for airport employees, and other kinds of employment with the employees work together in similar jobs, but in the airport all the consumer has is gov’t regulation (according to the GOP horrifying) and consumer protection agencies, bureaus and explicit laws and rules promulgated by agencies. No one should be traveling 5 days and nights to get somewhere where he paid to travel 24 hours.

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Thao is just Izzy’s age; she came to George Mason University one summer to complete her BS (from the University of Toronto, one of its colleges). She was mostly alone and lacked a car, and emerged as a good student in my class. She came to my office and I began to drive her places, help her out, and we became friends. And then Izzy began to come with us: we all remember a happy afternoon together, which included seeing The City of Your Final Destination. This must’ve happened more than 15 years ago. We kept the friendship up over the years, and recently we have been face-timing once a month while she waited for her and Jeff’s first baby to arrive. I truly wanted to visit her, and Izzy was so comfortable with them. I saw her so relaxed on the balcony chatting away, and but for her I would not have begun to see all we did in Toronto. She had the spirit and the technical know-how — you need that on their subway. We needed a time away, it was so good to escape the ceaseless intense heat of the northern Virginia, Washington DC, southern Maryland area.

I had two delightful books with me: Anthony Trollope’s Last Chronicle of Barset and Joanna Trollope’s post-text to Austen’s Sense and Sensibility (the Austen book one of my very favorite of all texts). I had nothing else to type to, to watch, and could not fritter away time. I read in peace in our room. I tried to read at the airports but discovered I could not. Izzy had her cell phone (what a remarkable gadget) and her ipad and watched programs to enjoy the solitary and quieter times.

Maud Lewis, Three Black Cats (they are us too).

We did miss our cats, and I know they missed us, and we were glad to come home to them. I missed the fourth of Elaine Showalter’s wonderful series of classes on Difficult Women, Take Two, but was able to watch the recording last night. I miss my home and am eager to return to it as soon as a trip is done.

If you need to do research, if there is some place you so long to go and experience before you die, you might agree to yourself it’s worth it to experience this kind of abusive treatment. (I have said nothing of how crowded the planes are, how small the seats &c&c) — if you cannot get there by automobile, train, bus, or boat. But think many times.

And beyond that vote for people who want gov’t regulation, who want to protect our individual civil and other rights, who don’t want a world of helpless people treated as cogs for the economic exploitation of the few and powerful. Be sure and remember your experience and let it direct who you vote for.

Ellen

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