Coyote

Timezone: UTC-8.

Breakfast conversation with an Italian Canadian. We talked about the post-war reality in Italy and Poland, about the life of immigrants to Canada in the 1960s, about film and music. I shared with him Anna German's renditions of Canzone napoletana, he shared with me Claudio Villa. I will never see him again and I don't even remember his first name. That's how it's meant to be.

As I got off the train, made it to the hotel and quickly embarked on my first long-distance stroll after being held captive in that marvelous train, I headed towards what turned out to be the famous Stanley Park. I realised where I am only when I saw the monument to a Mr Stanley, who offered the park to “people of all colours, creeds and customs”. In the park, just as I was walking down the circumference right at the ocean, I ran into a few fellow passenges from the train who had also stumbled upon one another accidentally not much earlier. Some time later we all met a coyote.