There are a few words, like “pie”, that evoke the pure pleasure of being a kid. If it weren’t for the pictures we have seen of bears in 5 x 5 x 5 cages somewhere in the world, “zoo” would be one of them. The Metro Toronto Zoo does its part to give those three letters a good polish and shine, however, as we saw on our trip there yesterday…ummm…except for the apparent but unsigned fear of any medium of exchange other than cash, a short-lived irritation made worse by the concurrent efficiency lecture given by the booth teens.
Sitting in one of Toronto’s surprising urban ravine forests, this zoo gives you a feeling that for the most part it is not a menagerie but a biological refuge and place of study. While the obligatory lions are not actually endangered as it turns out and, really, have Canadian become so isolated from reality that you need a beaver in its own mimicry of Algonquin Park 4 km north of the 401 in Scarborough, when you hear that certain species, like an Asian bison, simply do not exist in the wild anywhere anymore, the job a good zoo can do makes sense. Walking through a room of Malaysian plants sustaining a colony of native butterflies indifferent to your presence is pretty neat. Standing in a circular crowd of a couple hundred quiet gawkers watching three oragutans lope over a set of ropes and bars bigger than a basketball court is neat, then not neat, then neat again: you know they are very endangered, the Indonesian rainforest is being destroyed and you can see they can choose to come and go from the open area where you watch them…but those hands and expressions. Some doors on the inside of the cage have locks and keys to keep them challenged. Other doors and locks, of course, have that other purpose.
The trip is a little over two hours one-way. The nearest 150 km of the 401 to Kingston go through some of the nicest rolling pastoral countryside in Ontario – in some valleys you could be approaching Burlington, Vt, from the east. The eastern 3/4’s of Northumberland County still lacks the burbs which now reach to Bowmanville, 100 km east of the zoo, which itself sits in the east of the City. But when it hits, it sure is like the ugly stick got there first. Hit the gas on the way out heading home and look forward to Cobourg where you can loosen the grip on the steering wheel.