It is a spring Saturday night in Toronto. Municipal tulips glow under the lights of University Avenue. Bouncers are putting on their size 50 jackets, ready for their shifts in the Entertainment District. Fashionistas huddle in cashmere shawls at Yorkville’s Hazelton Hotel sidewalk café. Everyone on the Queen streetcar is using a smartphone.
And in the Air Canada Centre, Leafs Nation is gathered, 18,800 strong, full of noisy hope for maybe, maybe, this year, a Stanley Cup. Toronto is the home of the ’67 Champions. How can the gods not understand that it is our turn?
If the cup ever does come back, it will arrive in a different Toronto. The Air Canada Centre, the Hazelton Hotel, the Entertainment District and even the tulips were not there the last time Torontonians claimed Lord Stanley’s prize. And on this hypothetical Saturday night, in this new Toronto, plenty of people have found ways to forget the Leafs.
Two thousand of them are on the edge of...
Trina McQueen, a broadcaster and journalist, sits on the boards of the Canadian Opera Company, McClelland and Stewart and the Banff Centre for the Arts. She has served on numerous other cultural boards, including Canadian Stage, the CBC and the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards.
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