Toronto is great and all, but after leaving this city, there are certain things I noticed Torontonians don’t realize until living elsewhere.
Housing trap
Renting an apartment downtown so that you can give 60% of your income to a landlord for a featureless condo with a malfunctioning elevator is a losing game. Locals trick themselves into thinking that they have to give up their financial freedom in exchange for some semblance of a life, but the numbers just don’t work like that these days.
Transit delusion
It’s embarrassing as a citizen to pay some of the highest transit fares in North America on a subway system that shuts down every time it snows one flake. Toronto residents have become numb to weekend-long shutdowns, late streetcars and overcrowded buses because it’s just how life is.
The fact of the matter is that Toronto’s system has been failing to meet the city’s real population growth for years, and you find yourself stuck in never-ending traffic.
Missing identity
Instead of celebrating or preserving its handful of remaining brick relic buildings and local landmarks, the city seems to have developed cultural amnesia and tore them down.
Toronto willfully rubs its history off its landscape, resulting in swathes of concrete that appear as if they were built all within the past two decades. Without those reminders of the past to ground it, Toronto begins to lose its identity and starts resembling a large grade-7 construction paper project that’s never quite finished.
Cold culture
Toronto claims to be very multicultural and accepting. But on a daily, neighbourly level, social life can be extremely cold and isolating.
People walk around with headphones in their ears and avoid any eye contact. And it’s nearly impossible to make new friends outside of your university or work. In fact, there seems to be an unspoken rule that everyone is polite but distant.
Line loyalty
Torontonians love to line up for everything: a trendy pop-up clothing store, a new bakery selling cookies, an outdoor winter market, etc. There’s such an underlying fear of missing out that nobody questions why they are waiting hours for something they haven’t yet confirmed is worth losing their day over.
Better elsewhere
You can live a comfortable life outside of the Greater Toronto Area. Life moves at a slower pace, people are friendlier, and your bank account can stay fuller. Some people are absolutely terrified of leaving because they believe the rest of Canada is a cultural desert.
However, that’s not the truth. Once you move, you’ll find that you can have a successful career, a picturesque home, and actual peace of mind without the looming anxiety of city living.
Mediocre bragging
Comparing Toronto to New York or London every time someone questions our city’s merits is tiresome when Toronto simply doesn’t have the cultural infrastructure of either NYC or London. Everyone loves to brag about how Toronto is a world-class city. However, our nightlife literally closes early, our restaurants are chains doubling as restaurants, and our city council acts like fun is a public annoyance.
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