My 2010 Toronto Trip and Why I Love a Quest

Goodbye 2010s | My 2010 Toronto Trip and Why I Love a Quest

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This post is part of my 10-week retrospective looking back at a specific trip from each year of the 2010s. Read more about the series here. Below are links to every post in this series.
My 2010 Toronto Trip and Why I Love a Quest
My 2011 Vancouver Trip and Why Repeat Visits Are Nice
My 2012 Denver Trip Was Weird And I’m Gonna Try To Explain It But Fail
My 2013 Thunder Bay Trip and How a Statue Made Me Cry
My 2014 NYC Birthday Trip and Why I Like Traveling with Friends
My 2015 Madrid Trip and Going Somewhere You Never Expected
My 2016 Tokyo Trip and Why Challenging Travel is Worth It
My 2017 Connemara Trip and Why A Quick Break Is Good
My 2018 Belfast Trip and My Love of Day Trips
My 2019 San Francisco Trip, and Why It’s Okay to be a Tourist

A quest

I love spontaneous adventures, but there is something to be said about a trip with a quest, a mission, a purpose.

Likely I would have visited Toronto at some point in my life (and indeed I returned there again in 2013, and had a short layover on my flight home from Dublin in 2018), but my first visit to Toronto was in January 2010. This was my first trip of that decade. The first time I’d been to the largest city in Canada. The first time I’d travelled somewhere in January.

More importantly this was my first trip with a quest.

I went to Toronto with a friend and we went for one reason only. The musical Rent was having a national final Broadway tour with some of the original cast members (Anthony Rapp as Mark, Adam Pascal as Roger and Gwen Stewart in the Ensemble). Being huge fans of Rent my friend and I decided to go to Toronto to see this show (which we’d seen other touring productions of). This was the only Canadian stop on the tour.

We were not there for the C.N. Tower. Or to try to spot Drake. Or anything else. Of course, we did other things than see Rent. We were there for 6 days. We did go up to the C.N. Tower. We stayed downtown at a hotel for a pretty low rate of $50/night because I was working for the parent company and got an employee discount (I no longer working for that company, but I do miss the cheap hotel deals I could get). We went to the Art Gallery of Ontario, Casa Loma, the Ontario Science Center. We went into the TV museum at the Canadian Broadcast Corporations tower and saw Mr. Dressup’s Tickle Trunk (classic iconography in Canadian kids TV). We navigated the TTC. We wandered through Dundas Square.

I didn’t take the best quality photos on this trip. On the left is a few of the city from the CN. On the right is the CN Tower at night.

Those weren’t the reasons we went to Toronto in the cold month of January 2010. It was all Rent. We had purchased tickets, got seats at the front of the balcony. Watched our favourite musical with some of the original cast. Bawled. Had goosebumps throughout the show.

I’ve wanted to talk about Rent on my musical theatre podcast, what it’s meant to me, how I fell in love with it after watching the cast perform of “Seasons of Love” on The Rosie O’Donnell Show as an angsty teen. Talk about the triumphs of the show, the devastating loss of its creator Jonathan Larson (who collapsed during the show’s first off-Broadway preview, and soon after passed away from an undiagnosed genetic condition called Marfan Syndrome). How I obsessed over Rent after seeing this musical and listened to nothing else but its Original Broadway Cast Recording for 6 months straight. Nothing else, just Rent.

I can’t start talking about Rent without crying, even though I understand its criticisms and why people don’t love this musical. It’s the product of a person who is no longer with us. And I have other musicals that I may see as being technically better and more cohesive (honestly my favourite musical list is probably a ten-way tie), but Rent just holds a special place in my heart and will always be there. I’ve gotten to see some of the original cast in other shows,  but getting to see even a fraction of the original Broadway cast of Rent was amazing. We stood in line at the stage door after the show and got autographs. I’m not an autograph person, not obsessed with meeting celebrities, but this was something we had to do. I probably sounded like a blubbering fool, but it was worth it.

Backtracking a bit before that show my friend and I started talking to the lady sitting behind us in the theatre. She asked us if we were going to try for the lottery. We never thought of that. Musicals (most commonly big productions on Broadway in New York, the West End in London, and some big national tours) have what is called the lottery, and it all started with Rent. The story of Rent is a retelling of the Puccini opera La Bohème, but set in the late 1980’s New York with the HIV/Aids crisis replacing the plague of consumption (tuberculosis) that was deadly in the La Bohème‘s19th century Paris. Rent has strong themes of friendship, love, loss, art, and living like “No Day But Today.”

The mountie moose on the left is what you’ll see if you go up the CN Tower. The Cannon Theate (now the Ed Mirvish Theatre) is where my friend and I saw Rent.

Producers of Rent realized that people who wanted to or even should see the show were probably not always able to afford the $100+ tickets for this show. During its time Rent had the same kind of buzz that Hamilton has now. It was a hot ticket to see. A rock opera like no other. So a lottery was started. Before the show, you could line up, put your name in a draw, and win the chance to buy greatly reduced tickets (usually about for $20 for front row seats).

Nowadays shows have all sorts of lotteries, and some you can enter by just downloading an app and filling out a form. In Toronto, they did the lottery tickets old school. My friend and I queued with other fans, freezing cold, singing songs from the show, talking about the characters, our favourite moments, why we loved Rent.

We didn’t win. Such is life. The experience was so positive though. There was some back of the balcony tickets left, at a pretty good rate, so of course, we bought two because why would we turn down a chance to see Rent again? That’s a rhetorical question; we wouldn’t.

On the last day of our trip, we thought we’d try for the lottery again. Our flight wasn’t until later in the afternoon and we’d have enough time to get to the airport if we won. Again we stood in line, in the cold, excitement building, talking to people. An usher from the theatre came out and excitedly announced they were going to draw the lottery winners. They called name after name and we saw people jump up and down and hug and cry and then they said a blur of syllables.

My friend’s name. They said my friend’s name. They didn’t pronounce her last name correctly, which is why it took us a second to realize what was happening.

We Fucking Won The Lottery!

You might say whatever, but this was like the best thing that could ever happen, at least for huge fans like us. It’s like going to a Comic-Con and getting to ask Robert Downey Jr. a question at a Marvel Panel when you’re obsessed with Marvel and loved every Iron Man movie ever made and every appearance of Iron Man in the Marvel Universe. Or you know pick an analogy for your life. Meeting your favourite musician/sportsperson, etc.

When a lottery winner is chosen they are usually given up to two tickets. They have to be purchased in cash right away. As it was just my friend and me on this trip we both got to see Rent again by winning the lottery.

And when I say front row seats I mean front row. They literally had two rows of folding chairs in front of the regular seats (which probably went for $175 or more). My friend and I got front and center tickets.

This isn’t to say I regret the previous viewings we’d seen of Rent. They were all great, but that lottery win was something else entirely. I could see details in the set and costumes that I couldn’t before. In musicals the acting and singing are often large and exaggerated, to make sure the people in the back of the theatre can tell what’s happening in the show. Up close I could see the nuances in the choreography and facial expressions I couldn’t before.

Of course, theatre is live and an ever-changing art form. Had we won the lottery before we would have seen the same, yet also a totally different show. I’m sure it would have been amazing, but nothing was like that experience. Winning the lottery (or I guess more technically being friends with a lottery winner) and getting to see Rent is one of my favourite experiences in theatre and in travel. When I think back on my life, and moments of pure joy this one is in the top 5 for sure.

On the plane ride home I had a notepad and tried to scribble down everything I could remember from the show. Trying to preserve it in my mind. I couldn’t think of everything then, and I can’t find that notepad now, but I remember that feeling. That wonderful joyous feeling when my friend’s name was called. The excitement sitting in those front row seats watching a show we’ve loved for years in the best way possible.

January 23, 2010, was the day we won that lottery. I love Rent, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to see it again live because I know nothing could ever top that feeling. That’s unfair perhaps, and I’ll likely see Rent again at some point in the future (there was a national tour that came to Edmonton a few months ago). Until then I’ll always fondly remember my time in Toronto when we went on a quest to see Rent once, and ended up seeing it three times.

While I had never expected to visit Toronto in the winter my friend and I had a great time while we were there. We got to experience visiting a new city in the low season when it wasn’t too busy. I also learned that I shouldn’t limit my travel experiences to just certain times of the year. Visiting in January was a lot of fun, and a winter vacation in Toronto is one I recommend.


Things To Know
My friend and I stayed at the Intercontinental Hotel Toronto Centre for this trip. This hotel is downtown and only a short walk to the CN Tower and Union Station. If you’re looking for a hotel in another area of the city you there are plenty of hotel options you can book here.


Have you gone on a travel quest before

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