I saw Toronto for the first time when I was 6. For the decade that followed, the city was not much more than a portal to reunion with family visiting from back home—Pearson Airport—or the site of monthly pilgrimage for bread, tea and dried herbs not found in small-town Ontario grocery stores. In high school, Toronto was downtown—as my friends and I took the train into the city to pick up new vinyl at Rotate This or trolling Kensington, munching on mango cakes from Patty King and digging through racks of musty tweed, gaudy polyester and army fatigues. During my university days I frequently hopped on the Greyhound from Guelph to catch Hip Hop shows at the Kool Haus or attend thought-provoking talks and conferences on the city’s many campuses.

For a long time, Toronto was little more to me than a collection of shops and events. Living here has shifted my perception, but not nearly as much as reading literature that writes the city like a living, breathing entity—one that is alight with histories, lives and structures.

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You may perhaps be brought to acknowledge that it is very well worthwhile to be tormented for two or three years of one’s life, for the sake of being able to read all the rest of it. – Jane Austen

1. I come home from kindergarten in a quivery state of awe. “Michael Pearce can read!” I announce. “He read a whole book for Show and Tell!” My eyes fill with tears of bitterest envy: all I can do is look at pictures while I wait to be read to. Like a baby.

My grandfather says he will teach me to read. After dinner, he sits with me at the kitchen counter and begins sounding out words. “C-A-T, cat,” he says, writing it out. “R-A-T, rat.” Now it is my turn: B-A-T, he writes. “What does that say?”

I have no idea. Cat, rat…. “Catches,” I guess. No. Chases? No. Hits on head with giant rubber mallet? Thirty minutes later, I am thoroughly sick of learning to read. Also, I have not learned to read. Also, my grandfather is not a patient teacher. I am in tears.

But he persists, night after night at the kitchen counter, and eventually, I can read. The best day of the week is library day. The best days of the school year are when Mrs. Smith, the district librarian, comes to our class to tell us about the new books in our library. Sometimes she has to bore us to death with the Dewey Decimal System first, but she never leaves without reading. She is the best reader I have ever heard, changing her voice and accent and pitch as she shifts from character to character.

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