We've lived in Ottawa for a greater number of years now, than we had in our place of birth, Toronto. Both cities have changed enormously from when we first lived in each of them, considering that forty years was spent in each. The last time we visited Toronto was when our granddaughter began her university career, three years ago.

She has returned again to Toronto to begin her fourth year of studies at University of Toronto. Her experience in the city and of the city is of course, vastly different than ours. But as a country girl, she finds the city, its people and its institutions much to her liking. She never enjoyed living in the country; she is inclined by nature to be a city girl.

The Canadian National Exhibition, where as children, we excitedly roamed about the various buildings carrying bags which soon filled to the brim with free samples of this and that, is now in session once again. The noise from the show is in and of its spectacular, she tells us. But there is an element of entertainment in that sky-high presentation that she appreciates.

The air show that usually takes place at this time of year can be viewed from anywhere in downtown Toronto, capturing the public's attention with its aerial spirit of derring-do. And making an incredible racket of sound, including sound-barrier booms across the city. It's an off-shoot as it were, of the incomparable CNE. Though when we became adults it was the later-fall Royal Agricultural Winter Show that we learned to appreciate.

We stayed, those three years back, at a hotel located in a shopping complex in Chinatown which meant we were fairly close to the U.of T student residence where our granddaughter lived for her first academic-study year in the city; within doable walking distance. Walking in the city is nowhere near like walking in a wooded area with trails winding about the forest. And nor is the air quality close to comparable. It isn't a trade we would willingly make, long-term.

But Toronto is a vibrant city, and the area we were in, in walking distance to Kensington Market that was once so familiar to us represents the very definition of vibrancy. A little tawdry as well. It has a worn look, similar to what we discerned in certain areas of Tokyo, when we lived there.

The population in the area is incredibly diverse; visible minorities from all over the world have made Toronto their home. They've migrated from the far corners of the globe to Canada and settled in the nation's largest metropolis.

When we were children, my husband and I, our mothers did their shopping at Kensington Market. Most of the purveyors of foods and durables and owners of cheese and fruits-and-vegetable, and poultry shops, and bakeries were Jews. Since then floods of other ethnic minorities took charge of Kensington in their turn, altering its veneer but not its purpose. When our two boys attended University of Toronto they too took to shopping at the market.

Now our granddaughter, so many years later, also occasionally shops there. When last we were there we took ourselves along to the most favourite of our Toronto haunts, High Park. And there we wandered in a bliss of memory among the trees and the manicured lawns, the floral offerings, oblivious in part to the presence of others enjoying its green and wholesome ambiance.