A Union Station Conversation

BY ZEP

6:16 p.m.

I stood in the giant hallway acting as a tunnel between Union Station and the Air Canada Centre. The last GO train had departed 5 minutes ago, and I was now stuck waiting another 45 minutes for the next one. I paced across the concrete impatiently, trying to find something to occupy my time. Just as I was about to begin cursing GO transit for their inconsistent train times, a conversation caught my attention.

"I can't believe these people," I heard a woman say. "This is ridiculous!"

I turned to see two women who were conversing in fairly loud tones. 'Perfect,' Ithought to myself, "maybe there are others who are just as frustrated at GO as I am.' I slunk closer, near enough to hear their conversation audibly.

"Put 'em all on a boat," said the second woman. "Just ship 'em all outta here.

"Well, that's a bit extreme, I thought. I understand your frustration, lady, but there's no reason to ship the poor guys out of the country! It soon became apparent, however, that they weren't talking about GO at all, but of that Tamil protest that occurred in Toronto.

"Ridiculous! I'm trying to get from point A to point B, and here they are crowding the goddamn sidewalks with their signs and their flags and all of that nonsense," said the first woman." I get that they want to protest, but take it to your own country!"

"No, I agree," said the second woman. "It's not our problem, I don't want to deal with that on my way to --"

"It's nuts!" interrupted the first woman. "They come out here, crowd all the streets and subways up, and they don't even speak english, so you can't tell them to move!"

"Yeah! There's no communication at all"

"Exactly, and here I am trying to get through the turnstile, and a woman comes behind me with her stroller, she doesn't use any of the sense she was given and she gets in with me, and she speaks some language no one here understands, so i get stuck in there with her!"

"And they brought all their kids with 'em too! How stupid is that? The kids were born here and they're holding signs saying 'Stop killing my country'. What the hell is that? That's not their country! They were born here!"

The second lady breathes a sigh after saying this, and gives the GO information sign a glance. Their train has apparently arrived, and they begin shouldering their purses and buttoning their coats. The first lady, however, is not done speaking her mind.

"Well, it wasn't like this when I was growing up. Now everyone comes here and dumps all of their problems on me. I hate to say this, but Canada has made me a racist."