world youth day

Went for a run yesterday afternoon, and discovered that my regular route was also the route for the World Youth to get out to Exhibition Place to attend the World Youth Day ceremonies.

Just before I took off on my run, I visited Metro Square, a small park I can see from my home office window. I was curious about the stage that had been set up, and caught the end of a dance performance by some Asian girls in costume. They posed for photos after:





I watched a bit of Inuit throat-singing before setting off on my run:





Part of my running route goes around the Skydome and past the CN tower. Here's a photo of part of the massive line-up for the CN tower yesterday afternoon:





I think I must have passed at least two dozen countries on my run, each carrying their country flag. I don't think I've ever heard so many different languages over such a short time. :-) Some flags I recognized, but I admit that I had to look up most of them online using Mooney's Flag Detective or Easy Flag Identifier. The group at the top of this page is from Mexico. A lot of the young people were wearing red backpacks that had a Canada logo on them.

Here's a small group from Slovenia:





The World Youths above were opting for streetcar, but most seemed to prefer walking. The Exhibition Place streetcars that passed us were packed full of young people; I felt sorry for anyone out for a casual ride. Though you'd have to have had your head buried in the sand not to have heard the warnings trumpeted on the local media these days, warning commuters to stay away from downtown Toronto unless you want to get caught in the World Youth Day traffic chaos.

I believe that the group below is from the Shetland Islands (UK):





Because the sidewalks were so packed with people, I tended to run along the road along the curb instead, at least until I got to the Martin Goodman Trail. One lane had been closed off all along Queen's Quay Road; I had wondered about the road closure warning earlier in the month, but now I understood why.

There were a ton of police around, patrolling the route, helping to direct traffic and pedestrians at every stoplight, just generally making their presence known:





I keep forgetting to mention in past Blatherings; the green and blue stripes on the path like the one above all indicate that it's part of the Martin Goodman Trail, which is my running route.

When I got to Coronation Park, I was surprised to discover that it had been turned into part of the Worth Youth Day event. A long line of Porta-Potties had been set up along the outside perimeter:





A large video screen was set up in the middle of the park, so that everyone could watch World Youth Day events and the Pope arrive:





But most bizarre, part of the park seemed to have been turned into a mass confessional area. Purple cubicles had been set up everywhere, each with a number, sign indicating the language of that particular confessional, and a priest waiting to hear your confession:





Groups of young people were wandering around buying food at a large refreshments tent, sitting in the shade under trees, talking. From time to time I'd hear one group call out to another who was passing by on the way to the Exhibition Stadium.

e.g.

"Hey, where are you from?"

"Quebec."

"Hey, what part of Quebec? We're from Montreal!"

I briefly followed one of the groups into Exhibition Stadium, where there were massive crowds:





Headed back home after that. Since I was running against the tide of World Youth now, I stuck to the road. From time to time, some would call out greetings. I stopped to help take a group picture once with one of their cameras. :-)

One of the groups I passed was from Brazil. The guy holding the flag smiled at me, so I called out "hi!" and took the photo below:





Immediately, his companions started laughing and teasing him, and as I started running again, they called out "hi! hi!" to me. I waved back, but kept running.

Definitely one of my more interesting runs. :-)

We're going to Niagara-on-the-Lake today to see Candide at Shawfest with Ginny, back tomorrow.