Station Eleven and Toronto

There is this book that I can’t get out of my head, I read it over month ago and I can’t stop thinking about it. You could say that it is because it is about a pandemic but that is really only part of it. This book is set in the city that I live in, Toronto, and it paints such a vivid picture of the city and talks about it in a way that I haven’t really read/heard before and I connected with it on another level. The book is Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandal and it has become one of my favourite books.

The first, and most obvious, thing that people will relate to in Station Eleven is that it takes place during a pandemic. It is similar to our current pandemic in that it is air born and is respiratory but otherwise it is nothing like Covid. In the book once you get the illness within 24 hours you die. It is also coupled with the end of society as we know it. There is no more power which means no more phone or internet. This leads to some interesting conversations and a museum that showcases the electrical things that no longer work.

For me, because the pandemic in the book is similar but very different from what we are currently experiencing I wasn’t as disturbed by it as you might think. It was horrible and at times way to familiar but then it was so different that I was able to distance myself from it. What I connected with the most was the part of the story that is set in Toronto which is the city that I live in now.

Speaking from a pandemic perspective the beginning of the book did hit hard. There is a scene where one of the characters has just found out about what is happening and is on a streetcar…this is a scene that I think about daily. As someone who has lived in Toronto for many years I was able to picture exactly where the character was and as someone who has lived through the beginning of a pandemic I was able to image exactly what the character was feeling. There is a line that has stuck with me: “He was aware of all of them breathing around him.” I think that even now there are still times when I am in group of people and I feel very aware of all the breathing. This line hit so hard that I had to take a break from the book, it wasn’t long before I was pulled back into this story though. I am so glad that I did not give up on this book. It speaks about a city that I love in a way that I have not heard many people express before.

One of the main characters is a man called Arthur Leander. He is an actor and you learn a lot about him including that he grew up in a small town in British Columbia and then moved to Toronto as soon as possible. He was married 3 times but his first wife, Miranda, was also from the same small town as him. When they first meet up after she moved to the city Arthur asked her how she liked Toronto. Miranda told him that she loved it and how “It’s possible that no one who didn’t grow up in a small place can understand how beautiful this is, how the anonymity of a city can feel like freedom.”

Later on in the book Arthur talks about how Toronto meant freedom to him. In his small town everyone knew him and then once he became famous in New York and LA everyone knew him but in Toronto it was different. “You’re from London,” Arthur had said. “A guy like you can take cities for granted. For someone like me, coming from a small place…look, I think about my childhood, the life I lived on Delano Island, that place was so small. Everyone knew me, not because I was special or anything, just because everyone knew everyone, and the claustrophobia of that, I can’t tell you. I just want some privacy. For as long as I could remember I just wanted to get out, and then I got to Toronto and no one knew me. Toronto felt like freedom.”“And then you went to LA and got famous,” Clark had said, “and now everyone knew you again.”“Right”…  “guess you could say Toronto was the only place I’ve felt free.”

I don’t think that I have ever heard anyone speak about a big city in this way before. When you come from a small town all the people from that small town will tell you how awful a big city is and how you should get out as fast as you can. Then there are stories and songs that tell you how difficult it is to make it in a big city. Cities aren’t always painted in the best light but there is something different when you live in one for an extended period of time. It becomes a part of you.

I grew up in a small town and I remember the moment that decided that I wanted to live in Toronto. I was 16 and I came to Toronto with my Brother and Dad to see The Who. We where driving in the city and I was looking up at the buildings and I knew that this was the place that I wanted to be.There was a hustle and a vibe and I knew that I wanted to be part of it. Maybe there was a part of me that felt like Arthur Leander and I knew that Toronto would mean freedom. I’m not one hundred percent sure what it was but I knew that I want to be part of it.

Over the years Toronto has been freedom to me. I have a job and live on my own. I can get around without a car and there is so much to experience here. I love being able to walk down the street and know that I will not run into anyone that I know. That I can go somewhere and do something and no one will judge me for it because they don’t know me. It is an amazing feeling.

Recently, I have been feeling like I have been having a bit of a Toronto renaissance. There is bit in Station Eleven where Miranda talks about flying into Toronto. “She’d always liked the descent into this city, the crowded towers by the lakeshore, the way an infinite ocean of suburbia rushed inward and came to a point at the apex of the CN Tower. She thought the CN Tower was ugly up close, but unexpectedly lovely when viewed from airplane windows. And always, the sense of Toronto existing in layers…” I have to agree with Miranda, when you are standing close to CN tower it is just a bunch of concrete but when it is in the distance it is pretty amazing and if you look at it from only one perspective you will miss out on it true beauty.

The other night I went to a concert and as I walked home I took a path that gave me a marvellous view of the night skyline. It was quiet and beautiful. As I walked the CN tower was off in the distance and kept me company the whole way home. I felt so much love for this city that night. Over the past two years there hasn’t been many nights where I have been out and I have felt connected to the city, but that night it was like the city was a friend taking care of me and it was like being reintroduced after some time apart. I missed this city and all that it has to offer.

Because Station Eleven is about a pandemic there is a lot to say on that topic but one of my favourite musings is from a character who was only 11 when the pandemic happened, “Doesn't it seem like the people who struggle the most with it are the people who remember the old world clearly?… What I mean to say is, the more you remember, the more you’ve lost.” I love this sentiment because it speaks to the fact that the more you fixate on how things use to be instead of adjusting and adapting the more you will feel like you have lost. So many people want to get back to “normal” but “normal” doesn’t exist anymore. Everything is different now. Yes, we will be able to do many of the same things that we used to do but we need to adjust to the fact that world in different. If you hyper focus on the need to go back to way that it once was you will never be happy.

I am so happy that I am able to get back out in the city that I love and have meaningful experiences even if now they are slightly different then they were 10 years ago. Honestly, I don’t think that I would want everything to be exactly the same. To grow and evolve is to truly live. You don’t want everything to be the same forever.