When about ten miles south of our exit into downtown Toronto, my wife and I turned on a local radio station and found out that  a celebratory parade was being held for the Raptors NBA championship crown-- approximately two million people being expected, all amassing in the bulls eye for where we were headed, pretty much bringing infrastructure to a standstill. Not being at all familiar with the city, options were limited and the best seemed to be to drive on into the heart of the tempest and then take it from there. And what followed was very quickly finding ourselves locked beneath skyscrapers in go-nowhere-traffic and throngs of revelers steadily swarming around the car. A situation where annoyance could easily creep in but since we were are on vacation, so be it. Safe, relaxing, quiet times are what home is for. When traveling its about the experience and to truly make an experience rise up from the bland and on into the memorable, a little peppering from the unexpected helps out. Although my patience was still with limitations and after about an hour, our Google directions got tossed out the window and it was time to instead rely upon back-channels of some slightly reckless improvisation. What my mom calls ‘creative driving‘. Eventually we made it to the hotel, with are wits more alive than ever.

Concerning the victory parade, not surprisingly it got a bit out of hand. When we were sitting there helpless in the bubble of our Prius, the riot potential was increasingly palpable. Fortunately things didn’t quite escalate to that level, however there was a shooter that caused some non life threatening injuries, an unrelated stabbing, some property destruction, and several people taken away on stretchers after losing consciousness from dehydration or what I presume were anxiety attacks. Interestingly, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was speaking at the event. Considering that there was little to no security to manage the open crowds, who were not just at ground level but also atop delivery trucks, sandwiched into the upper floors of parking garages, looming above rooftop ledges, I guess Canada doesn’t concern itself with hidden assassins the way we do in the United States.  The morning news largely echoed this optimism, declaring the parade nothing less than a roaring success. Though I might raise an ironic eyebrow, I would still heartily agree. Life has an inherent level of risk and while reasonably minimizing the potential for where things can take a turn for the worse makes good sense, doing so at the expense of trust and a willingness to allow the human spirit to freely flourish how it may only stifles the vibrancy needed to bring smiles to our faces (I write this as a siren twirling fire truck and ambulance fly through busy traffic from a street fair the next block over...).