journal features

bay-adelaide at last!

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Toronto, 2010.11.29

On Friday I was stunned to see that the first part of the Bay-Adelaide centre has been built. The eternal project, dating to 1987, was real.

From the time I arrived in the city in 1995, the "centre" was really just a concrete stump meant to house the tower's elevators. It stayed that way for the entire ten year period during which I lived in the city (off and on). It was a landmark, of sorts, sitting on prime real estate and puzzling passers by as they darted between bank towers. And it set the tone for that stretch of Yonge St, the abandoned site sitting among a DMV building as well as novelty shops and other tourist dross.

There are many, many, new buildings in Toronto, but this was the one that really surprised me.

rand()m quote

Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure is of less account.

—John Gardner