During my one-year sojourn there, it treated me kindly: I attended one of its fine universities; found a well-paying part-time job; enjoyed its ethnic cuisine, its world-class museums and other cultural institutions; and took advantage of its efficient public transit system.
Its streets were clean, its residents polite, and its public amenities were in perfect order. Nonetheless, I wouldn't care if I ever laid eyes on the place again. Toronto, you see, is like the one-night stand of Canadian cities. Many who visit for work or pleasure leave it with a feeling not of intense like or dislike, but merely a sort of benign indifference.
It is ethnically diverse, safe, well-governed, and eminently liveable. Famed travel writer Jan Morris aptly damned it with faint praise a decade ago, writing that living in Toronto was like "capturing second place in the lotteria of life".
Put another way, in a country culturally disinclined to use or inspire superlatives, except in reference to its geography, Toronto is the least superlative of all. Why this is the case is a puzzling matter. Toronto's power should at least earn it respect, if not affection.
Despite the phenomenal growth of Western cities like Calgary, or the highly Pacific Rim-influenced Vancouver, Toronto still has the edge as the social, economic, and political centre of Canada. Numbering 5 million people in the Greater Toronto Area, or the GTA, as its municipal officials so snappily call it, it is far and away Canada's largest city.
