Nothing is the same. Everything is different.
And yes, that includes that extraordinary parade on Monday, a celebratory exclamation mark on a championship basketball season. That it was marred by a spasm of gun violence was terrible and unfortunate, and sure frightened a lot of people. Still, that hundreds of thousands gathered peacefully was a story that could not be entirely ruined, a story that sent a message to our city and about our city that was different than anything we’d heard before.
What’s clear is that this Raptors championship has added something of permanent value to the GTA, something so significant it’s going to take a while to fully understand what it is, and what it means.