First thing’s first. The PATH is big. There’s 28 km of shops, restaurants, and walking room down there. There are plenty of people too, people who walk the PATH, and few of them dare to stray far from the route they’ve devised to and from work. And, while many of us are guilty of this, there’s just no way to get around it anymore – we’re all missing out.
Sure, the PATH is a great way to get from one place to another, but the same could be said if the energetic markets and corridors beneath our streets were just the dingy labyrinth of bleak concrete so many envision. But it isn’t. It’s much more than that, something unique to Toronto, a type of community that can’t be found anywhere else in the world. So why should it just be a way to get where you’re going? Why can’t it be a destination in and of itself?
Well for some people, whether they know it or not, it is. Just the other day I went for a walk up to the north-east end of the PATH. With this area making up Atrium on Bay and the Toronto Life Square, I found myself on the corner of Yonge and Dundas, arguably Toronto’s busiest intersection. What’s more, not only is this area connected to the rest of the city by the Dundas subway station, it also houses the Toronto Bus Terminal, whose passengers make their way to Toronto from all over southern Ontario. So, it just goes to show that whether they know it or not, the PATH is almost always a stop during most peoples’ trips to Toronto.
So, why do so many continue to remain so silent about the PATH, to keep it, so to speak, underground? For many of Toronto Life Square’s countless visitors, whether they go to watch a movie at the AMC, stop for a meal at Jack Aster’s, or go to work in Google’s local offices, the PATH is still an idea that seems distant and unfamiliar. As for the people working at Atrium on Bay, or perusing its art galleries, or getting a check-up at the doctor’s office, many of them don’t know they’re only a few steps away from the city’s most exciting attractions, or it’s most vibrant communities. But they too walk the PATH, every day, they see all the life and fun and opportunity, and it keeps them coming back. And that is why the PATH is a destination itself. Why it can be the perfect place to spend your quiet mornings, or thoughtful afternoons, or lively evenings. Because it’s already all the places you’ve learned to love. You just didn’t know the way those corridors and passageways wove our city together, and us together, to make the greatest parts of Toronto as accessible and alive as they should be.
