[URBAN NOTES] Three Sketches

[rfmcdonald]

• At 11 o'clock on Tuesday night, while I was waiting for the westbound Queen Street West streetcar on the corner of University and Queen, I was looking south towards the CN Tower, dimly illuminated. As I watched, an illuminated elevator raced up against the background of dark concrete and darker night.


• This morning at about a quarter after eight, as I sat bleary-eyed on the Queen Street West streetcar headed east, I noticed a Hispanic woman with her child, about six or seven years old, seated on the other side of the aisle. She herself had to have been in her 20s. At a stop halfway to my own (at the Osgoode subway station) she let her son leave her lap, craning her head to watch him as he left the streetcar. When the streetcar lurched forward again, she turned her attention back to a course catalogue from George Brown College. Once in a while, she looked back out at the street.


• While I was climbing up from the Yonge-Eglinton subway station this morning at a quarter to nine, I passed a petite Asian woman dressed in a smart black business suit. She seemed to have trouble walking up the stairs, even to have trouble breathing. I didn't help her, but when I looked back after I got to the top of the stairs two other people were attending her. She seemed to be crying.