A horse

Today I saw a police horse for the first time since the G20. (If you're just tuning in, the reason why this is significant is described in anecdote #1 here.) I was glad to see that I still reacted to it like a beautiful animal rather than like a police weapon, but I still didn't feel safe. My first reaction was "Oh, wow, a horse!" But an instant later I was instinctively looking around for kettling escape routes, getting my phone out of my purse in case I need to document anything, and hastening towards the subway hoping not to attract the attention of the police officer.

Before the G20, I probably would have approached the horse, engaged the officer in conversation, found out the horse's name and asked if I could pet him, taken a picture, maybe had a look at that interesting horse trailer set-up he had going on. It would have been a positive experience, community relations, a citizen taking interest in the work our police do. But instead I hurried along with my head down trying to be invisible, just like my relatives did when they were oppressed behind the Iron Curtain, before they managed to flee to Canada.

In the aftermath of the G20, there was a hashtag on Twitter called #MyToronto. People used this hashtag to post things that are awesome about Toronto - our real city, not the police state it had been transformed into. I posted pictures of Pride and Yonge St. hockey celebrations, descriptions of cars with two World Cup flags and children peering out the front window of the subway car, anecdotes of multilingualism and diversity and street life.

But the very first #MyToronto moment of my life was that day, ten years ago, when my newly-arrived teenage self got to pet a police horse in the middle of a busy downtown. That was my very first glimpse of how the city promises me something bigger and better than I'd ever imagined. That was the very first step in the process that would turn The Big City into My City.

And now it's gone.