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03/25/2006: "The Magnetic Pull of Don Mills"

Three of us met at Don Mills station to walk north into Willowdale, perhaps to go north beyond Finch and explore Sean's childhood haunts. We started our North York experience stereotypically, by wandering through a parking lot to a mall (actually, a rather nice mall), and then out through another parking lot to a stretch of apartment buildings.

I waxed political about how the apartment buildings were cut off from the street - they were protected by a wall of hedge and a moat of parking lot, and the entrances weren't even visible - we walked around one of the buildings just to try to locate the entrance, hidden behind the building at the end of a driveway. Theoretically, it makes sense to have these apartments within walking distance of a mall and a subway station, but what's the point if the whole design of building, street and mall screams "don't walk, use your car!"?

Past the buildings, we came to a park with a path that went north. We passed a group of three men conducting a rather surreal conversation loudly, and then continued along a pleasant linear park, between back yards, for quite a distance. Eventually, the path ended abruptly in the middle of a large grassy space, and we continued on a muddy track through a soccer field (if the path continued, it would have bisected the soccer ground), past a school and back to a street. We noticed along the way a veritable plethora of shiny colourful new playgrounds - there's plenty to do for kids in North York, it seems.

Coming upon another set of open spaces and tall buildings, we ducked eastwards into a subdivision to experience some suburban housing. Although the streets were amazingly winding, we kept turning left in order to keep going more or less northwards. For at least twenty minutes, we didn't see a single other human being, and hardly even a moving car. Finally, we crossed a larger street, and saw someone get off a bus, and a dog-walker.

We came to a school with a park behind, and decided to cross the park. As we approached the other side, we realized *we had come back to exactly where we started*!! We had somehow done a complete circle, while thinking we were going northward. Nadia pointed out that it was a much more pleasant discovery here than it would have been if we were lost in the woods. We agreed that it showed we had been truly pscychogeographic - wandering completely without direction. The best part was, the three guys were still carrying on their loud surreal conversation in the distance. It was like we'd entered a space-time warp and ended up exactly where and when we started.

We then crossed Don Mills and decided to head west towards Leslie station. Travelling more or less in a straight line, we thought, we went through high school grounds and behind some apartments, getting closer and closer to Sheppard. Finally, we went over to this main street - only to find that it was, in fact, Don Mills again. We'd somehow done another almost-circle. Admitting defeat, we realized that our destiny was to get back on the subway at Don Mills, and we must accept that destiny.

On the way back, we sat at the front of the subway to watch the tunnel, which is particularly good on the Sheppard line because it's really well-lit. Nadia took some great pictures.