Birds of Canada
May 12th, 2026
Or, My Weekend as a 27-year-old in Toronto…
I just took a long-awaited trip up north to Toronto. It was my first time visiting Canada, my first road trip out of Pittsburgh since moving here last year, and my first time getting to migrate with my duck bestie Rodo.
I’ve traveled internationally before, but not since 2016. I was holding out my expectations for what Canada would be like, but I also had plenty of curiosity. The average American’s stereotype of the place is a silly wonderland of overly-polite people who are obsessed with maple syrup — I tried not to imagine it in this horribly reductive, offensive way, but of course I secretly knew I would fit in perfectly if that were the truth. I also read a lot of literature by queer indigenous authors from Canada, who describe it as a formidable babylon of the North — so I was ready for it to be a lot like home.
We stayed in a hostel-like airbnb in the Trinity-Bellwoods neighborhood, right off of Queen street. It seemed like the place to be! Every night coming home, there were crowds of people dressed like instagram models and supervillains patiently waiting in queues to get into all sorts of clubs. Our room was fine but the bed was not comfortable. It was a two-star mattress on top of one of those amazon metal bed frames. There was a metal headboard behind us, but not attached to the bed frame or the wall. Just kinda sandwiched in there. Rodo and I both do a lot of tossing and turning while trying to sleep, and every time we moved too much, the headboard would rattle and clang back and forth like a church bell. At some point he started hitting it on purpose as a punchline.
Me standing with the Chief Keef money rug we brought to furnish our accomodations.
Our gorgeous and talented friend Pierre took us on a tour of their beloved home city all day Friday. We met up in a cafe to chat and try butter tarts, then went to the Kensington Markets neighborhood to check out the unique sights there.
Upon returning home, my friend Theo asked me what the best thing I ate in Toronto was. There was truly no bad food, and I could have gone out of my way to be more adventurous, but the meal I was most pleased to eat was this plate of latkes and matzoh ball soup from Free Times Cafe. No matter where you are, nothing beats having your favorite food with your favorite people.
A moment of silence for all of this.
Rodo and I carried our fursuits with us and got several photo ops around the city that day. The first was on top of this parking garage that just happens to have an amazing view of the Toronto skyline!
The next was our excursion out to Evergreen Brick Works. This place is a former brick factory that’s been converted into a park and wildlife sanctuary. It was a beautiful reprieve from the city, and we stayed a while just to hang out in the grass and rest. We did get to take some skyline photos here, too.
I crossed an international border just to be gay in a park...
Wish you were here!
I had two places I really wanted to visit in Toronto: The Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Toronto Reference Library. We would be going to the AGO on Saturday with my friends Ari and Jaina, so we stopped at the Library on the way back to our home base neighborhood after the Brick Works outing. I really just wanted to see the beautiful architecture inside, which I had learned about from Scott Pilgrim. It didn’t disappoint! While standing around, Rodo and I were thinking about how the interior of the Library looked really similar to the main hotel of Furry Weekend Atlanta, which was also happening that weekend. Down to the glass elevator, even! So, we took some bird pics in the library. These are definitely my favorite from the weekend.
The Library visit also had a functional purpose: We were trying to find a place to watch the first in-season game of the Toronto Tempo, the brand-new WNBA franchise team. Through some googling and calling around, we found a place that was hosting a viewing party. When we got there, they told us that it was actually at their other location. So we went across the street to another bar we already liked and had them put the game on there. Some problems solve themselves.
On Saturday, we met up at the cafe that Pierre works at, and they made us flat whites with our sonas in the milk foam! I was smitten.
Being espresso is fine, actually.
The AGO was shockingly HUGE. I focused on the thing I had been most excited to see there, which is their collection of works by contemporary indigenous artists. Usually when I got to a museum, I’m thrilled just to see one contemporary work by an indigenous artist. So I hope you can imagine how thrilled I was to go into galleries filled with nothing but the works I’ve spent years looking at in library books and web browsers. There was a point early on where I spotted this painting by Luke Parnell that I’ve known about for many years, and actually starting RUNNING at it.
We capped off that day with another Scott Pilgrim location: Sneaky Dee’s, a tex-mex bar/restaurant/punk venue. I did some sketchbook swapping with Pierre, and we had a pitcher with some chips and dip. I spent the rest of the evening walking around with Ari, just catching up on life and all that. I turned in when my feet got too sore to keep walking around.
The comparison to FWA in the Library was ironically apt, since this weekend did remind me of my first time going to FWA in 2023. That was my first time actually staying in a hotel for a con, going to a night market, having my own room party with drugs and fursuit cuddle puddles… and for the first time since I was a kid at summer camp, having that giggly sleepover feeling of not being able to go to sleep because of how much fun you’re having.
For the last couple years, going to cons was kinda my whole life, but moving and financial stress forced me to stay at home all of 2025. I convinced myself it was for the best, that I just got stressed out at those things and spent too much money, anyway. I tried not to be jealous or embarrassed when my friends talked about their con experiences, or asked why I wasn’t at a con I usually go to. Getting to the point where I felt confident enough in my stability to go on any trip took a lot, and I’m glad to be back there.
On Friday night/Saturday morning, probably 1 AM or so, Rodo and I are in the loud airbnb bed, playing the “FurAffinity Name Game”, which I will explain at a later time. Giggling over our own stupid jokes and the weird things we keep finding. At one point sharing our favorite quotes from the KCNA website, trying not to make the headboard clang around. I say to him, the way I feel right now is like how you go to a con for the first time, and you’re so nervous and excited and amazed, because you can’t believe other people in this world somehow turned out just like you.
Next day, get Tim Horton’s, go to Niagara Falls. The whole time leading up to this trip, Rodo and I were referring to it as our ‘migration’, since we’re both migratory birds and also humans who just gotta get out of town sometimes. When we’re at the falls, we watch the little white gulls fly back and forth over the water, which is split down the middle as an international border.
We say the same thing we always do: Those birds don’t know what day it is! They don’t know what America is! They don’t know what Canada is!