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How to meet people in Toronto when you've just moved there
Toronto will hold the door, apologise when you bump into it, and never ask your name. The city's manner is warm and its circles are closed; people here have had the same friends since high school, and they are not looking. Newcomers say this to each other constantly, which tells you how many newcomers there are: half the city was born somewhere else.
So the plan is not to be let in. It is to find the other half.
The city has two calendars
From May to October, Toronto lives outside, and the outside is generous. Trinity Bellwoods on a summer evening is a park full of people who came alone and brought a blanket. The ferry to the Toronto Islands is fifteen minutes and a different city, with beaches and bicycles and no cars. High Park in early May is the cherry blossoms and everyone in town. The Beaches boardwalk, the Harbourfront, the trails down the Don Valley, the Scarborough Bluffs: all of it is a plan a stranger can post and expect to fill.
From November to March, it is minus ten and the city goes underground, literally, into the PATH, and into board-game cafés on Bloor, the free rink at Nathan Phillips Square, the breweries, the hockey on every screen. The winter plans are smaller and better: "Skating at City Hall, 7pm, then something hot" is a sentence that has started more friendships in this city than any patio.
The leagues exist for a reason
Toronto's answer to closed circles is organised: recreational sports leagues where you sign up alone and get put on a team, run clubs that meet on Tuesday and Thursday evenings with a hundred people and a bar afterwards, pickup volleyball at the beaches in summer. They work because they remove the invitation problem. You do not need to be asked; you turn up at the time on the schedule. If you play anything at all, join a league in your first month.
Neighbourhoods with tables close together
Kensington Market for the cheap eating and the people who have time. Ossington and Queen West for the bars. College Street for Little Italy, Bloor and Christie for Koreatown, the Danforth for Greektown. Chinatown at Spadina and Dundas is the old one downtown; the larger one is north and east, in Markham, Scarborough and Richmond Hill, where the dim sum is better and Mandarin and Cantonese are the languages of the mall.
Hundreds of thousands of people of Chinese origin live in the Toronto area, and the ecosystem is complete: supermarkets, doctors, WeChat groups for everything. It makes the first month easy and the first year, if you let it, a long first month. Eat in Markham; make your Thursday plans downtown.
Practical
A Presto card does the TTC; the subway runs until about half past one. It is very safe. The usual rules hold: first meeting in public, tell someone where you are going, keep your own way home. The safety page has the rest.
Where MeetMap fits
MeetMap is a map of small plans happening soon near you. Each pin has a time, a place and a number of seats; take one and you are in the group chat. Toronto's plans depend on the month: "Bellwoods, 6pm, bring a blanket" in July, "Skating at City Hall, 7, then ramen" in January, "Island ferry Saturday 10am, bikes" in between.
If the map is quiet, post the first one. Half this city arrived from somewhere else and is waiting for the same sentence. Two weeks of that is the whole method.
