What makes the territory so exciting is that Ontario is storyland, a setting broad enough to provide the living dreams for several lifetimes of writing.

There are over a million square kilometers. There is almost 40% of the Canadian population. There’s lesser known but still inspiring cities — Timmins, Kingston, Windsor, Thunder Bay, Ottawa (the national capital). And then there’s the supernova, the beating heart of it all: MegaToronto, including everything from Hamilton to Scarberia (Scarborough). Stories are awaiting out there to be told. It’s a rough job but somebody’s gotta do it.

I want to live where stories are naturally made and combusted. Ontario is like America: broad and expansive, vast enough for all manner of stories. There’s plenty of rural and natural settings there, too: small towns like Atikokan and Moosonee, and vast forests like Algonquin Park. You can place just about any dream city in here, including military bases and command posts. There’s just no limit.

Within MegaToronto itself, areas like Markham and Brampton and North York form distinct sub-regions within the gigantic whole. The area is approaching 10 million inhabitants, and within a century may surpass New York City itself. That’s awe-inspiring. I would prefer if a greater percentage of that population increase was European in origin, but the left-wing behemoth rules all. Even if the increase is entirely nonwhite, there’s still a substantial Caucasian base in Ontario to place romance and interpersonal stories around.

[As a side note, I am not a right winger. I am an atheist and I do not believe in hammering the Ten Commandments over school entrances. Nor am I a censor who wants to junk books from school libraries — and everywhere else, if possible. On the contrary, I want extreme books in public places of all kinds. If I believe in anything, it’s an iron fist in a velvet glove holding an artist’s paintbrush. That about sums me up.]

MegaToronto has its core in Downtown Toronto, particularly the Financial District and the Eaton Center. (Note: the actual spelling is “Centre” but I prefer to Americanize all my spellings as that is the dominant, modern strain of English.) The Financial District is composed of the headquarters of the 5 major banks. We’re talking buildings 70 stories high. William Gibson, the Canadian-American author of such science fiction classics as Neuromancer, was off-put by Toronto’s domineering, tyrannical architecture but I love it. I love the iron fist in a velvet glove in building format.

Since Toronto recently eclipsed Chicago in size and soon to be number of skyrises (its buildings making it #2 in North America after only New York) (and the city’s metro population is 4th largest in North America, after only New York, Los Angeles and Mexico City), the city has only continued to accelerate its building projects. THE ONE was recently completed at Yonge and Bloor, where 2 major subway lines intersect. Development continues down by the lakeshore, and I wouldn’t be surprised if public transit improved down in that area. That’s one of the things I love about T.O.: its excellent and widespread public transit.

There are sailboats and power boats jetting across the waves of Lake Ontario, which MegaToronto hugs. There is another smaller lake, still beautiful, called Lake Simcoe by which booming Barrie is constructed. There’s just so much fucking going on in Ontario! (That should be the TV commercial broadcast to foreign markets to draw tourists: There’s just so much fucking going on in Ontario!)

There’s even a Disney World in Ontario: the classic Canada’s Wonderland.

Literature has a history in places like Peterborough with Robertson Davies. There are two vacation woodlands choked full of summer homes: the Kawarthas and Muskoka. There’s a high tech nexus in Kitchener-Waterloo (where I went to school — university, that is). Everything from squirrels and fish in the lake to microchips and quantum computers in the sky are accessible to the storyteller.

See, this is what I mean! It’s exciting, it’s vibrant, it’s varied and growing in all its aspects. Canada’s Wonderland has a new roller coaster, the AlpenFury. Fuck me, it’s hot! Don’t touch! SIZZLING.