May 12, 2013
What’s the most innocent activity to get you caught up in a controlled detonation by the bomb squad?
Checking out cherry blossoms would have to be up there.
I was a latecomer to the cherry blossom party, i.e. I didn’t
know they were big outside of Asia . Judging by
the dreamy instagram pics on BlogTO,
I was the only one in Toronto High Park
The cherry blossoms were pretty nice. The people dressed as
samurais were a little strange. I took the mandatory wanky manual focus photos.
No, I don’t have a smartphone and therefore no fashionable app to over-saturate my photos to what photographers spent years trying improve on.
And anyway, all
you smug instragrammers don’t know the thrill of lugging a SLR around all day,
getting it from the case that’s inside the backpack, untangling the strap,
remembering to take off the lens cap, missing a photo op because you can’t be
bothered getting it out. But I digress.
There were a couple of news vans in the park. Were they just
time-filling with a cherry-blossom-fever story, or did they have something to
do with that police car blocking the road?
Public curiosity is contagious.
We
went to investigate. The solo police officer was making a vague attempt to stop
people
from walking down the road. He didn’t seem too insistent. Perhaps he knew how futile his attempt was in a 400 acre park. In fact, we went the other way and somehow ended up walking back along the cordoned-off road. “What’s going on? Did something happen down there?” a woman asked us excitedly. We didn't know. She was almost as disappointed as the cameraman who paced back to his news van, blocked from his story by the police car.
from walking down the road. He didn’t seem too insistent. Perhaps he knew how futile his attempt was in a 400 acre park. In fact, we went the other way and somehow ended up walking back along the cordoned-off road. “What’s going on? Did something happen down there?” a woman asked us excitedly. We didn't know. She was almost as disappointed as the cameraman who paced back to his news van, blocked from his story by the police car.
It was in the bleachers at a junior baseball game we stumbled
across that we heard the first explosion; a distant canon-like boom. I stared
wide-eyed at my partner. We discussed the possibility of a gunshot. “No, they
make more of a ‘crack’ sound,” I concluded somewhat expertly, drawing on
unfounded knowledge. I don’t know how long it was before the second explosion,
but we were still in the bleachers, watching another kid strike out.
At the subway station, we read on the scrolling news screen that two
suspicious objects had been found in High
Park
Where are the sensationalised live crosses? Where are the blow-by-blow breakdowns of how the scene unfolded?
I seem to recall watching live as the pandas from China
It makes you wonder what constitutes a news story. Maybe the
police asked for a media blackout while the investigation continues. Or is a
story only newsworthy if you have vision?
E.A.
