My first ninety minutes in Toronto involved watching the England v Mexico game from a small TV screen with five other Brits at Toronto Airport’s arrival hall. As soon as Jude knocked that first goal in, I knew everything would be okay.

I am doing my LiA at the Toronto Arts Council/Foundation as a research. The organisation does amazing work with its Arts in the Parks programme: free outdoor arts activities in local parks across the city throughout the summer intended to equalise the accessibility of arts.

Over the next five weeks, I’ll be investigating how these events shape people’s sense of belonging and their collective identities. This week, I’ve mostly been chatting with various friendly people in the organisation to get opinions and alignment before I start collecting data, as well as drafting questions and doing background reading. I was a little scared about the scope of my initial proposal given my limited time here, so this week has been focused on trimming it down to a narrow focus.

The office is a small cozy haven downtown next to the massive skyscrapers of Toronto. There’s all sorts of cool art pieces around that they commissioned from local artists. Very funky stuff.

The city itself is very lovely. Everything is so big compared to the UK: the streets, the buildings, the houses. And there’s always the hum of AC everywhere, which is strange coming from England.

Outside of work I’m keeping busy. The day after I got here, I started singing with a church to keep up the musical itch in me. They’ve also kindly let me practice in their organ while I’m here. The local nickname for the church? Smoky Tom’s. Midway through my first service, loud bells started ringing in 360 degrees surround sound. I thought, wow, this church is really committed to their sermons with these sound effects! Nope. Just the smoke alarm.

My girlfriend is also here for a little while as she has family over here. It’s been lovely to meet them and explore the neighbourhoods beyond the centre.

We both visited Montreal together over the weekend. I’ve decided it’s the best city in the world. Lots of arts, lots of museums, lots of food. Great transport and urban planning. My dream.

Lots of good has happened this week but it would be unfair of me to skip the lowlights. The sky turned orange the other day because of the wildfires and it’s been scary to see the climate crisis in effect.

Seeing England lose in a pub full of Argentinians was also a hard time. Oh well.

Still, I look forward for the next few weeks here!