THE TERMINAL

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The “Terminal,” as it’s usually called, bounces and lurches across 40 of the country’s most expensive acres in Toronto’s west end, filling a gap between The Queensway and Canada’s busiest road, the multi-lane Queen Elizabeth Way.

Like those street names, and in fact like much of this neighbourhood in the Etobicoke-Lakeshore ward of west end Toronto, the Ontario Food Terminal hails from the 1950s.

It looks it, too, something like an end-of-life strip mall surrounded by chain-link fencing, where even the newly planted poplar trees are so small they seem to make the industrial bleakness of the place even bleaker. What can millions of Torontonians think about the state of agriculture, I wonder, when this is the only image they see?

Maybe it’s good that commuters are so busy tailgating the guy ahead, they can’t possibly crane their necks to check out the fading paint and scarred concrete.

But any thoughts of bleakness disappear the second I approach the main gate. Flanked by long lines of trailers from companies such as Canadian Fruit, Vegpak Produce, Gambles Ontario Produce, and Tomato King, the lot beyond the gate is teeming with vehicles, and when I roll down my window, the air is choked with the frenzied beeping of reverse indicators and a cloud of diesel fumes.

It’s 8:30 a.m. The day is half over, and the inbound flow is matched by vehicles leaving, including every sort of car, van,