an ampersand in the Empire of Signs

Very soon, we will have passed the eight-month mark for our move to Toronto--what amounted to a leap-of-faith in both our relationship and the possibilities available to me in Toronto for my career. Eight months in, I have no doubts about my first leap-of-faith, but I am starting to question the veracity of the second.

Toronto goes by several nicknames, one of which is Toronto the Good. The city is definitely a nice one. It has a vibrant downtown that is relatively clean and relatively safe. And the people seem to be nice. Don't get me wrong. But the good people of Toronto are also among the most closed I have ever encountered, especially in an urban metropolis. As someone who has lived on three continents, in four countries and nearly a dozen cities, I feel that I have some perspective on the matter. That's why "Toronto the Closed" seems a more apt moniker for this city.

There is quite a bit of irony in all this. Toronto is one of the most multicultural cities in the world. Probably half the population is comprised of immigrants from other countries, speaking nearly a hundred different languges. You would think that such diversity would spawn openness and acceptance and, most importantly, empathy for what it means to be a stranger in a strange land.

Toronto is the largest city in Canada and it fancies itself the economic center of the country. Bay Street is a little cousin to Wall Street. All the banks have their headquarters here, as do the majority of large Canadian and multinational firms operating in Canada. Toronto is also the media hub for Canada, with most of the major networks, cable channels, movie studios and print media based here.

So, in the eyes of many Torontonians, at least so it seems to me, their fair city is the booming metropolis at the center of the world of Canadiana. In a way, it's a bizarre type of provincialism. Sure, New Yorkers also think they are the center of the world, but then again, they are, aren't they? New York is truly a global city, matched perhaps only by London. Toronto, on the other hand, is large only by Canadian standards. Three to four million people in an expansive nation of 33 million is large. But by American standards, it's somewhere between Minneapolis-St. Paul and Atlanta, with "Minnesota nice" surpassing "Toronto goodness" in terms of openness.

I hate to knock on the good folk of Toronto. I've certainly met plenty of nice people. Nevertheless, I can't quite comprehend the closed nature of the social world here. My friend Sharon Tennison, president of CCI in San Francisco, likes to talk about pods to refer to the small, closed social groups that people isolate themselves within. But for her, pods talk about interactions between Russians, a notoriously closed people. Russians can be rather suspicious of people they don't know well, but they have historically justified reasons for not trusting strangers. And once you have earned their trust, Russians are among the warmest people in the world, willing to give you the shirt off their back.

The Torontonians I've encountered also seem to be like pod-people. Many of the people I've been introduced to in the past eight months are quite nice individuals. But beyond initial meetings over lunch or coffee, things don't go much further. It's as if they've achieved a comfortable equilibrium in their lives--they've balanced the social equation--and they don't want to introduce another variable to upset the balance.

The odd thing is that the pod-people pop up in the oddest places. I've recently become more active in professional networking organizations--the express purpose of which should be to meet new people and expand your social network, right? But even at these events, I find it slow-going. At first I thought it was me. My introverted nature makes it difficult for me to do the small-talk thing at networking events. But when needed, I can definitely put on the charm and work a room. Unfortunately, at most of these so-called networking events, the room seems unworkable. It's like a high school dance, where people stand around in the cliques of people they already know, wary of newcomers. When you try to introduce yourself and engage people in conversation, they don't hold up their end of the banter. Small talk is a game, after all, and it takes two to play.

Why do my serves across the small-talk court always seem to default? What is it about Torontonians that makes them so closed-off to new relationships? If at first I thought it was just me--maybe my bad hair or geeky demeanor--it turns out that I'm not the only outsider to have experienced the Toronto cold shoulder. One of my new friends, also an American, who is far more gregarious and charming than I, told me that he has had similar frustrations here. And he's lived here for nearly five years!

I'm not sure what the sociology or social psychology at play here is. It could be several factors. Canadians themselves are quite a bit less mobile than Americans. Over the course of a lifetime, they are less likely to move around, to live, and to work in different locales as Americans. They may travel the world, but being a tourist is not the same as living in a new, strange place.

In my experience as a highly transient person (I haven't lived in one place for more than three years in the past eleven years!), people who have moved around have a very different perspective on things. First, they have a broader view of the world, because they have seen firsthand that the world is bigger than the little corner you live in. Second, they have been outsiders. Whenever you move to a new place, you have to struggle with a sense of not belonging because you have lost the tribal connections of the place you grew up in.You have no pod, as it were. That means you don't have the immediate support of your family or school friends. Initially, you struggle with the isolation, but you also seek out new connections and you make new friends.

My take on it is that this mobility makes your more empathetic to others who might be in the same situation. And just as you had to reach out when you were a newcomer, you respond to the reaching out of others. This makes for a more vibrant process of networking. And sure as hell makes for better small talk. Communities with a higher proportion of mobile individuals have better and faster opportunities for social networking. Just look at universities, where nearly everybody is an outsider. And I'm not just talking about students. Growing up, my father, a university professor, would always invite new faculty or international students to our house for dinner to help them feel more a part of the community. This is a value that I guess previously took for granted.

(Side note: Of course, here's another peculiarity of Toronto. Supposedly, Canada's leading institution of higher education, the University of Toronto is remarkably provincial. Forty four percent of living graduates still live in Toronto. A full 82 percent live in Ontario, mostly in the area surrounding Toronto. And nearly 80 percent of the undergraduate population is from Toronto. So, instead of creating a dynamic, geographically diverse social network, the institution of the U of T is essentially a very large pod, a good-old-boys club of well-established and conservative social links. I would imagine that other institutions, such as Ryerson, are similar in their geographic (though not socio-economic) homogeneity.)

Let's take a look at another great, multicultural city: San Francisco. I recently read that three-quarters of San Franciscans are originally from outside California. It's a city of newcomers. Indeed, San Francisco is a gold-rush city, and to this day has that peculiar California energy of new opportunities, of new potential, of ever-broadening frontiers. People in San Francisco are great networkers. Perhaps that's why so many people fall in love with the city.

Not surprisingly, the strongest relationships I've built since moving to Toronto have been with people who themselves are not from Toronto. Among Canadians, these are people who only recently moved to the city and also are struggling with making a new life in Toronto the Closed. And the warmest reception has come from non-Canadians. Strangely enough, we received two invitations for Canadian Thanksgiving Dinner. Both invitations came from American transplants now living in Toronto. Maybe they understand better what it's like to be new to a city. And I am very thankful to them both for warmly opening up their pods to us.

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