If you want to understand the lame state of contemporary capitalism, you need not look any further than Toronto’s Union Station.

At a first glance, the place will look sickeningly clean, but upon closer inspection you’ll see that it’s quite dirty. Buried beneath a facade of elemental dirt and dust is the tasteless alienation familiar to all corporate property.

It’s quite crowded, but not by staff. Everything but staff. You’ll enter amongst a stream of people, each of whom is trying to out-maneuver one another en route to their destination in some perverse application of game theory. Unconsciously, you, too, might find yourself joining in this little game.

If you tire of games and want to find something to help you relax, everything on this level is geared towards pacifying the frustrated would-be passenger. Except you won’t find a place to sit down.

Instead of comfort, you’re greeted by opportunities to spend money. Stores that look out of place, like they belong in the Eaton Centre rather than a train terminal: clothing, makeup, and even kitchen appliances are what furnish this cold enterprise. The kinds of shops best suited for idle browsing but not passengers in transit—you’ll only find a rush of infatuation followed by buyer’s remorse.

But if you’re in a rush, there’s no shortage of places to eat. For any stranded passenger, there is a plentiful selection of delights from all the world’s cuisines. Some of them might even be mixed together in an attempt at trendiness. In a strange way, this is what feels most human. It reminds me of the market stalls of old, which never seemed to find much way in a city that digests the unique. However, even here, this is humanity at its most transactional.

At last, you’ll reach the escalator and ascend to the actual station and encounter the first indication of where you actually are. In lieu of smiling workers wearing smart uniforms, you hear the sound of a robotic voice over the speakers, coldly updating passengers with delays, and enchanting you with propaganda—slogans and thank yous exacted upon you through social convention. My favourite, spoken as though GO isn’t effectively a monopoly: “Thank you for choosing GO. Merci d’avoir choisi GO.” Like a governing body, it caters to both languages.

While robotic voices and interfaces do most of the heavy lifting, the only employed human beings made present are there to keep you in line. They mostly mind the vagabonds who’ve wandered in off the street, looking for a safe place to sleep. But there they are, constantly huddled at the perimetre, ensuring that property is respected and everyone does what is expected.

You see that your train has arrived, so you tap your card and walk up the stairs to the platform, emerging from this commercial wonderland you’d just passed through to something that actually looks like what it is: a station stripped of humanity, reduced to the automata of machinery.

Your fellow passengers, tired as if their batteries have run out, then step into the carriage, off to somewhere or other. Perhaps to find themselves.

---

Photo by Caleb Fisher on Unsplash