In 2019, the Toronto Raptors won the NBA finals. I will freely admit to not being much of a basketball fan, but most of my family is into it, so I got sucked into watching most of the playoffs.
Not long after they won, they announced the date for the victory parade in Toronto. This happened to coincide with a date I’d already planned to take off, so I figured I may as well head to the parade. It was free, and I could be part of Raptors history, so why not?
That day was a nightmare. The parade was supposed to start around 10, so I figured I’d catch a late train into the city. Big mistake. I showed up at the GO station at 8, and there was no parking. There was less than no parking. Cars were parked where cars shouldn’t be parked, and dozens of other cars were circling the lot, trying to figure out what they can get away with.
After seriously considering parking in a company’s parking lot, I found a spot on a residential street a half hour walk from the station. I have (famously) gotten into trouble for parking on the street for too long, so I spent the whole day wondering if my car would be ticketed or towed. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t.
At this point, I was about an hour behind schedule. The last train to Toronto pulls up, and it was nearly full. Luckily, I managed to push my way in, but the train stranded about half the people on the platform. The train made every stop on the way, but no new passengers could get in. At one point, the announcer shouted over the PA: “YOU WANNA GET TO THE PARADE? WELL, WE WANNA GET TO THE PARADE TOO, SO BACK AWAY FROM THE DOORS!” He apologized a few minutes later.
I finally made it to the parade route, found a spot that’s close to the front, and waited. And waited. I was prepared to wait. I brought a baseball cap (which turned out to be too small and gave me a headache), some sunscreen, and a handful of granola bars. This would’ve been fine if I only had to wait 30 minutes or so, but I waited there for hours. Much of that time was spent getting updates from people at the start of the route, who informed the rest of us that the parade still hadn’t started two hours after it was supposed to.
I was starving and dying in the heat, but I couldn’t leave this spot. Three hours later, the parade finally passed by. I took a bunch of pictures, and I headed to the nearest food court for some grub. Oh, and then the train home was an hour late too. Also, there was a shooting; I was already on my way home when it happened, so I don’t have anything to say about that.
So, all in all, a terrible day. But was it worth it just to be a part of Raptors history? Oh, hell no.