Lawrence Lam @ WYD2002

Monday July 22: The World arrives in Toronto

I don't know if you're going to be taking part in World Youth Day 2002 or not but I'm so happy it's here!

All over the subways, I'm seeing Catholics and other participants in their red and beige bags all over the city. The visibility of nuns is certainly significantly increased. I read that the "Catholics for a Free Choice" condom campaign is not being met with too much success. I'm glad to hear that. Pilgrims are receiving them, and throwing them on the ground right away, then realizing the environmentally friendly thing to do, pick them back up and throw them in the trash.

We left Brennan Hall right before the heavy rain so when we got to St. Michael's College School we parked as close as possible to the gym entrance but we were still drenched. By the time we got there, a few people were already checked in. A flight from Edmonton was diverted to Washington D.C. for some reason. Shortly after a group from New Mexico arrived. One of the priests there was Fr. Garrity! He taught me in Grade 10 but left after that year. He was one of the cooler priests at our high school. This day has been all about coincidences. Earlier when I was at  Brennan Hall, I met a lady with whom I shared a songbook when the World Youth Day Cross came into town. There was also an article in today's Star about coincidences, about how some guy in Rome casually gave his business card to a nun when they all got ice cream together and she ended up calling him for help in housing her delegation. He got a lot of community support to host the pilgrims.

Monday was just a day scheduled for people to arrive in Toronto. What a welcome to them with this weather! We had a barbecue scheduled to start at 7 on the football field. Well, seeing as how it was raining we could not do that...and it turns out that for some reason the caterers thought it started at 5. So that's when it started. Oh well, I was starving anyways. By 6:30 the rain slowed down so Terry went to the football field to see if anyone would come for the barbecue. No one did. At around 6:45 Karen Reich showed up in the cafeteria. I invited her to get some food but she really just wanted to meet up with the rest of the group. I couldn't find anyone else so she just went home. 

So I too decided to go home to take a shower. This was, after all, a pretty slow day with nothing else planned. I decided this after discovering that there would be only three shower stalls for the hundreds of pilgrims from Houston, Columbia, New Mexico, etc. 

I got on the subway in a middle car but noticed that there were many pilgrims in the front as the subway passed me on the platform. I decided to gradually make my way up to the front of the train so I could meet some new pilgrims. So here another coincidence occurred.  The front car was full of pilgrims from Windsor. While two-thirds of them got off the train at Sheppard Station, the remaining pilgrims were headed for St. Matthias, a school very close to where I lived. So I was more than happy to show them the way. At the top of the escalators at Finch station there were a whole lot of pilgrims so upon seeing each other we all made a lot of noise. I could just feel the energy and the anticipation for an awesome week! I walked the group to Van Horne and Don Mills when we got off the Finch bus. They weren't too keen on walking at first. They had walked several miles already from the airport in the rain! But I said they needed to really get going on their "pilgrimage" and be true to the spirit of pilgrimage. So they grudgingly agreed but they were really happy when they realized that there wasn't as much walking involved as earlier that afternoon, and besides, it wasn't raining. 

I traded my first pin! I gave them an Ontario Trillium and they gave me a Harrow, Ontario pin. 

When I returned to St. Mike's the Houston group arrived in their bus. People were still coming in at 10 pm. I hope we'll be well rested for tomorrow. I hope there's no more rain.

Return to WYD Home

It is not my intent to offend anyone here. What I wrote was straight from the heart: uncensored, uncut.