Odourless Canadian birthday
It’s a wonderful day.
The sky is blue, sunny, not to hot thanks to the wind that especially on the harbour front is always blowing. I am so luck to live right in front of the lake, and it’s on days like this – summer holydays – that I understand how much I miss the ocean.
Today is Canada Day, and the crowd has been walking in the area since this morning. Tall ships are at the waterfront for The Redpath Toronto Waterfront Festival 2010, coordinated by the American Sail Training – ASTA – across all five Great Lakes.
Over the 5 day Festival that started today, 15 international and local ships will participate, a fleet not seen here in Toronto since 1994, first and only Canadian port. The Festival is enhancing the Toronto lakeside experience by delivering a premiere event that also provides environmental educational programming through its interactive Green Village, as well as cultural entertainment through unique tall ship experiences.
But I still miss something, and even if it took me a while to understand what it was, now any time I feel like that I know it’s about the smell of the sea. It’s something difficult to understand for those who did not grow up close to the ocean, that are not used to walking on the sand 9 months per year and taste the salt on your lips.
Looking at the lake on this sunny busy day, I feel like watching all this through a window. I’m not part of that. I don’t belong to that. I cannot smell it. It’s like watching Food channel on TV and wishing all that beautiful food was in your kitchen instead.
But this is Canada, country famous for lots of things, beside the ocean. So it’s ok, I’m invited to this big birthday party of somebody who I love, but that is very different from what I am used to. There is no birthday cake, but big stands with Caribbean and Asian food, no candles but fireworks in the night, and the water looks almost fake because nobody can touch it, or jump in it, or swim in it. I don’t understand it, and I wish I could smell something.
But looking at the fireworks I feel better, because the sky it’s the same, and tells me that everybody is under the same sky, I’m not so far from where I wish to be.
Happy birthday Canada! ©
