If you pass the giant peacock, you've gone too far...

On Monday of this week, I was assigned some research work at U of T’s Robarts Library. The U of T campus was still pretty much foreign to me but with a little extra time on my hands, I managed to explore the heart of this immense school that’s located literally five minutes away from my home.

As I walked down College and past Queen’s Park, I saw students walking towards me on a winding diagonal path that seemed to lead to some U of T buildings. The line of hipsters with corduroy, glasses and beards in a three-way tie for thickness seemed to come from some kind of common area. So I decided to take the road untraveled and tried to navigate my way across campus.

The first thing I notice as I walked past the steps of the first buildings was how many students have their faces in books. This is a little different than my usual route at Ryerson where I see more faces into hot dogs.

The U of T campus literally feels like a completely self-preserved, distinct area. Everyone in the part of the school where I found myself seems to be student, staff or faculty. Ryerson’s location lends itself to a little more to the very best that some of the looming areas of Yonge, Dundas and Church have to offer.


Eventually, I made my way to St. George St., which was like wading into a huge current. I decided to test the student body’s sense of philanthropy as I asked a couple people on campus if they could point me in the direction of Robarts. The results? One eye roll, one friendly point, and two people ignoring me like I’d just asked for their banking information.


Robarts itself looks like some sort of cross between a beehive and some sort of US super jail. So it completely makes sense that the architectural design is supposed to resemble a peacock from the south. Some of the more turbo-charged library crusaders wearing U of T emblazoned clothing seemed to have no problem navigating the huge building so I figured it would be easy to find the resource room I needed. Four floors and two information desks later however, proved otherwise.


Eventually pointed in the right direction, I completed my work and left the library that afternoon, only to find that again, I’d taken a different exit and was lost again. As I looked on the horizon and found the CN Tower to use as my reference point southbound, I started to take my time walking back down an unfamiliar street. It’s not often that you get to be lost this close to home and I wanted to take advantage of it.