Meal Plan

A single lunch can change the trajectory of a life, as mine was changed over a bowl of rice noodles at Thai Garden in downtown Lincoln, Nebraska. Having completed my bachelor’s in literature and history, I was working an office job on campus before pursuing a graduate degree and had come there to discuss options with a former professor and friend of mine, George Wolf. As we ticked off the pros and cons of various programs — at Princeton, Brown, Chicago, Wisconsin, Minnesota — he suddenly asked, “Why not Toronto?” Why not, indeed.

Raised in rural Nebraska, with access to just four or five television channels and certainly no internet for most of my childhood, I had few associations with Canada. From an early age, I was vaguely aware of Habitat 67, thanks to a short documentary that aired several times on PBS. I knew about the Chilkoot Pass, because of Walt Disney’s 1991 adaptation of White Fang. And in grade 6, I read about the CN Tower, still claiming to be...