And that’s how he goes. Not with an endless ovation. Not in a sea of teary adulation. Not even with a fitting proclamation.
A handful of tweets signalled the end of an era for Toronto sports. For Toronto life. On social media such announcements are labelled “bombs.” But on the Monday evening of a long weekend in a city tentatively feeling its way out into the new light and lull of a pandemic that shut it down and shut him out, it didn’t feel like a detonation. The fuse had been burning for a while now. And yet the slow discovery of the crater left behind, of the space that was once filled but now isn’t, sure will take time to get used to.