Toronto was sunny and hot on a Saturday when I decided to take some visitors from the Netherlands on one of my special “Toronto Walking Tours”. One of their requests was to visit Toronto’s St. Lawrence Market, so after walking around the our neighbouthood, we took a bus ride downtown and arrived to a VERY busy market with six thirsty tourists. Getting something to quench their thirst was not a problem, but finding someplace to sit and enjoy it was simply impossible.
However as an experienced ‘tour guide’ I knew that a short walk down a side street would find us a place with both drinks and seating. And sure enough we found a little cafe with empty seats. As a bonus, there was a jazz band setting up in the venue. Perfect!
It was an odd spot, and we discovered that is was a summer “Pop-up” that made use of an unused parking lot, and always featured jazz music all summer. However, although we could see that there were lots of unoccupied chairs , finding enough for all of us out of the hot August sun took some doing. Finally, seeing an elderly gentleman sitting at a large table by himself we asked him if we could join him.
“Of course, I only need one chair for my granddaughter who will be joining me.”
The band started playing and his granddaughter arrived, and the band was every bit as good as he said, so we stayed longer than we had expected to enjoy the music.
Then as the band leader singled out our table host we discovered that indeed he had been attending the event for 35 years and had started bringing his granddaughter to enjoy it since she was five years old. It was so nice to share the table with him and sing along with the special song the band played just for him. Just another example of the kindness of strangers; thanks for sharing your special table with us.
