Urban Multiculturalism

I saw the future of Canada and the world yesterday. I was on a streetcar at Broadview and Gerrard when we stopped at a red light and I could hear from the street the sounds of 60+ children waiting anxiously for transit to shuttle them about on their field trip.

The doors opened and a young woman hopped on board to ask the driver if it would be alright to fill the streetcar with her army of chattery children (damn nice of her to check). He agreed and she called for the noisemakers to board from both doors.

The group noisily passed me while pushing to the back, each kid talking about football, yu-gi-oh and other stuff I didn't understand, and that's when it hit me: This was not the school I attended as a kid. The faces all around me were no more than 30-40% white, the majority a mixture of Asian, African, Indian and other indistinguishable colours. They were one group, one mob of noise and they were playing together like there were no differences among them.

Chris Rhodes has a habit of saying that he's "the face of the future" since he's half white, half Asian, and while I agreed in principle, I don't think I ever really got it until that moment.

If we manage not to kill ourselves, our kids are going to be beautiful.