Matt
Toronto in September is really quite lovely. Sophie and I spent our final two days in Ontario in the heart of Toronto's Old Town, by which time the temperature had cooled down to a nice, autumnal ten degrees. We spent our first day staying in the city wandering around the beautiful parks there and visiting the Allen Gardens, which was a wonderful surprise to find in the middle of such a big city. I love that Canada has such a green conscience and their appreciation for the outdoors and nature is so intrinsic to their lifestyle.
At the end of a delightful day, we met Matt, an intelligent, full of life Aussie who has been in Canada for five years after originally coming here for a semester abroad with university. Matt works Downtown, just round the corner from the hostel we were staying in, so after he finished work for the evening we met him at a Starbucks for a coffee and a chat.
Again, we got on instantly; Matt is such an open-minded person and has such a curiosity towards travel and life which radiates off of him. Having grown up in Casino, a small town in North South Wales, he wanted a chance to see what else there was out there, instead of settling down like everyone else, "It's a town of about 10,000 people so very much a town where you grow up there, don't leave there, you have kids there. I'm one of the first in my entire family to leave Australia, the first one to live overseas definitely." Matt went to school at his local university, when he was offered the chance to participate in an exchange programme which effectively paid for itself, he jumped at it: "I'd always wanted to travel and that was the perfect opportunity."
I asked Matt what it was like to have studied at home in Australia and what he found university life to be like when he got to North America; we've all seen the films of colleges in America where campus life is huge and wild, which Matt confirmed. "It was completely black and white; in Australia, university is still quite a new thing, only about 50% of people go, compared to North America where its about 90%, I would say. Here, even if you have no prospects, if you're not sure what you want to do, you go to university and you take like a general degree...Here there's a lot more infrastructure around collegiate stuff, there's a lot more sports, a lot of facilities, activities, school pride's a whole thing, homecoming's a whole thing. To get wrapped up in it for just a year was the most amazing experience, especially coming from an isolated town where the only thing I ever got to know about it was from TV shows. It always seemed like it was a bit of a trope, and it was great to get here and see that's how it was. Here it was like a 180, and when I left it was kind of boring going back to an Australian university. [Coming here] was the best choice I ever made."
Living in Canada, Matt had the opportunity to live the life he felt he craved at home "I made so many friends here, I got to travel so much, it was so much cheaper, I had so many more opportunities for work. I went home to Australia because I had to graduate from there, and I realised just before I graduated, that at the end of the day I have more friends in Toronto than in any other city, and I fell in love with Toronto so I've been here for five years since then and I've never regretted it."
Matt studied business with a major in finance at university, so since he's graduated he's worked for a lot of start up businesses around Toronto. He's currently doing bookkeeping for a start up businesses where he has room for progression following some more study, after he's obtained his permanent residency. "Currently on my work permit you can't professionally study, so you cannot go for a designation. If I was to go for a chartered practise accountant which I would eventually like to do to be come a CEO of a company, I actually can't do that until I get my PR later this year."
Matt was clearly an ambitious person, and he spoke with such an informed voice that we had such an interesting conversation. I asked if he saw himself staying in Canada, or would his curiosity in regards to travel take him anywhere else "I would love to live in London for two years, however when you get PR you cannot leave Canada for more than four months. That's the key condition of permanent residency, they want people to apply for PR who are going to stay in Canada and work in Canada. They don't want people to get PR and then just go home and travel in and out whenever they want. So it's kind of a catch 22 unfortunately where I kind of have to come back to Canada every four months at least until I get my citizenship. To get citizenship isn't too difficult after that, but then I might have to give up my Australian citizenship to get my Canadian one. Also I'd have to organise it before I'm thirty, because I cannot go to the UK after I'm thirty years old on the Commonwealth Immigration Visa, I'm not sure about that though. Ultimately I see myself long term in Canada, most likely in Toronto but maybe Vancouver or Montreal. I would definitely want to have a family here and find a Canadian girl."
It seemed to me that Matt wanted to travel everywhere, but I'm always curious as to what comes first on people's lists, where we would prioritise our travels. I asked Matt where else in the world appealed to him "I want to do a big US road trip, I think that would be really fun, just cause there's so many different aspects to it. I'd love to go down to the north of South America and eventually go down to Argentina. A lot of my co-workers come from Argentina and Ecuador so it's been really great hearing about their culture. Funnily enough, [out of] all my co-workers only one is Canadian, all the rest are Philippine, Indonesian, Egyptian, a lot of countries from all over the world, so just through work I get to learn a lot about the different cultures and customs. I'd like to see Japan and then Eastern and then Western Europe."
We began talking about Europe and how rich it is in terms of history, Sophie and I admitting that living in the UK, how much we take for granted that we are spoilt with our proximity to Europe. Matt told us that for someone like himself having grown up in Australia, Europe's rich history makes it very easy to romanticise the continent, "Australia only turned 100 years old in 2001, then Canada's only 150 this year as well so I've only ever lived in countries that are very, very new. I'm very excited to see old Europe and see how much of the history is still preserved in every day life, we just don't have that here at all."
Matt then told us a story about a park just round the corner from us in Old Town, Toronto's oldest district, which isn't old as far as European's are concerned, but still has some great landmarks that people don't know about anymore. "There's a free walk here you can do in Toronto, called Free Guided Tours, and then at the end you can tip whatever you want. They'll take you around and show you the old buildings. Actually this park over here, there used to be a really important hospital, one of the first hospitals just round this neighbourhood, and they went through a massive syphilis epidemic, I think, and essentially everyone got hit when Toronto was first getting started and so they just buried them all in the park. There's like 15,000 people in one of the nicest gardens over there, so they take you up to the fountain and are like "So we''re standing on a lot of people" and everyone just looks around because now its all pigeons and flowers...It's my favourite fun fact, I walk past there every day at lunch and think 'Oh yeah, there's that nice park where everyone died'. In a zombie apocalypse, that's the worst place to be!"
We began talking about Europe and how rich it is in terms of history, Sophie and I admitting that living in the UK, how much we take for granted that we are spoilt with our proximity to Europe. Matt told us that for someone like himself having grown up in Australia, Europe's rich history makes it very easy to romanticise the continent, "Australia only turned 100 years old in 2001, then Canada's only 150 this year as well so I've only ever lived in countries that are very, very new. I'm very excited to see old Europe and see how much of the history is still preserved in every day life, we just don't have that here at all."
Matt then told us a story about a park just round the corner from us in Old Town, Toronto's oldest district, which isn't old as far as European's are concerned, but still has some great landmarks that people don't know about anymore. "There's a free walk here you can do in Toronto, called Free Guided Tours, and then at the end you can tip whatever you want. They'll take you around and show you the old buildings. Actually this park over here, there used to be a really important hospital, one of the first hospitals just round this neighbourhood, and they went through a massive syphilis epidemic, I think, and essentially everyone got hit when Toronto was first getting started and so they just buried them all in the park. There's like 15,000 people in one of the nicest gardens over there, so they take you up to the fountain and are like "So we''re standing on a lot of people" and everyone just looks around because now its all pigeons and flowers...It's my favourite fun fact, I walk past there every day at lunch and think 'Oh yeah, there's that nice park where everyone died'. In a zombie apocalypse, that's the worst place to be!"
Although Matt loves the history in Toronto, he wants more. Matt told us that in just a weeks time from our interview, he would actually be travelling to Europe for the first time on vacation. I was actually a little envious of his upcoming trip, Matt would be travelling to Amsterdam, then to Copenhagen, next Stockholm, back to Copenhagen and then to a little town in Holland called Zwolle, where a friend he met at summer camp is now living. It sounded like a great route and Matt was clearly so happy to be going, "I'm super excited to see what a small, Dutch town's going to be like, because especially when you travel you generally just stay in towns or by transit hubs so I'll be excited to have a local show me around."
Matt was completely right; broadly speaking, when travelling you tend to stay and travel to where is affordable and convenient, with amenities that tourists require and plenty of places to visit. Each location is different, but most tourist destinations give a much more commercialised and generic experience of what life is truly like for the local population. It's difficult to have a truly authentic travelling experience. For Matt, the local life is one of the most intriguing aspects of a trip; "That's the key to enjoying most of the trips I've had, I like romanticising what it would have been like to have grown up here. Compared to a very small town where I had no exposure to anything else; we never travelled abroad, we never visited major cities really, so for me I only had TV and books to go off. I just couldn't imagine what it would be like to grow up in Europe, I was so isolated...It's definitely eye opening, I'm very lucky to have had this opportunity."
After our interview, Matt offered to show Sophie and I around Toronto a little. First stop was the graveyard park, which we'd actually spent all day walking past, completely oblivious to it's creepy past...
We wandered round the neighbourhood where Matt worked, admiring the buildings while he told us little bits of trivia about each of them and giving us advice on the local cafes. He then suggested that we went down to The Path, Toronto's underground walkway that connects the skyscrapers so that commuters can escape the cold in the winter. The concept behind The Path I can completely understand, but for someone who doesn't know Toronto very well, its confusing as hell! After walking down there for while, Matt admitted that even he didn't know where we were, so we retreated to the more familiar level of the city streets.
We were heading in the direction of Chinatown and becoming rather hungry, so decided to stop for some dinner at a small restaurant called Fusaro's. The food was really good and tasted really authentic, we all chose different options and were all happy and full by the end of our bowls. The service was good too and it had a nice atmosphere for us to sit in and talk, I'd recommend it.
Matt was completely right; broadly speaking, when travelling you tend to stay and travel to where is affordable and convenient, with amenities that tourists require and plenty of places to visit. Each location is different, but most tourist destinations give a much more commercialised and generic experience of what life is truly like for the local population. It's difficult to have a truly authentic travelling experience. For Matt, the local life is one of the most intriguing aspects of a trip; "That's the key to enjoying most of the trips I've had, I like romanticising what it would have been like to have grown up here. Compared to a very small town where I had no exposure to anything else; we never travelled abroad, we never visited major cities really, so for me I only had TV and books to go off. I just couldn't imagine what it would be like to grow up in Europe, I was so isolated...It's definitely eye opening, I'm very lucky to have had this opportunity."
After our interview, Matt offered to show Sophie and I around Toronto a little. First stop was the graveyard park, which we'd actually spent all day walking past, completely oblivious to it's creepy past...
We wandered round the neighbourhood where Matt worked, admiring the buildings while he told us little bits of trivia about each of them and giving us advice on the local cafes. He then suggested that we went down to The Path, Toronto's underground walkway that connects the skyscrapers so that commuters can escape the cold in the winter. The concept behind The Path I can completely understand, but for someone who doesn't know Toronto very well, its confusing as hell! After walking down there for while, Matt admitted that even he didn't know where we were, so we retreated to the more familiar level of the city streets.
We were heading in the direction of Chinatown and becoming rather hungry, so decided to stop for some dinner at a small restaurant called Fusaro's. The food was really good and tasted really authentic, we all chose different options and were all happy and full by the end of our bowls. The service was good too and it had a nice atmosphere for us to sit in and talk, I'd recommend it.
After dinner we walked back to the Old Town together, where we parted with Matt as he had work in the morning and we'd spent all evening out in the city. He clearly loves it here and seems perfectly at home in Toronto, the city suits him. The freedom he feels here and the opportunities he's experienced here have inspired his curiosity and you can see the fun he's having here. Canada was definitely a good move for him.
We all had such a lovely time that evening and a really interesting conversation, I feel like we all learnt something that evening. I'd like to thank Matt for letting me interview him and for showing Sophie and I around Toronto, it was such good fun. I've linked Matt's Instagram at the bottom of this post so you can go look at his pictures from his recent trip to Europe and follow his adventures. Thank you for reading Matt's story, I hope you enjoyed it as much I did listening to it.
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