I landed in Toronto a couple of days ago and have finally begun to settle in a little bit. I don’t enjoy my space as much as I had hoped, but it’s not bad.

I’ve already had two classes with Sifu Wu and although I wasn’t expecting it, due to the material we covered, I do find that it is helpful material. I’ll continue to trust Sifu on those matters for now. Sifu knows best!

And now the curious case of the Scadding Court Tai Chi drop in. I went in on Thursday, and the instructor, a younger Canadian man, was leading the class — full of older Chinese people. Observing the class this did not make sense to me, as I recognized at least one of the older Chinese was a tai chi teacher in the park from 10-15 years ago. Why was he joining this class, did not make much sense to me. The lead instructor’s form was not good or bad, well, it just seemed average for the class. In some ways the students in the class were better than him. But not in any meaningful way. But what really surprised me was his attitude. I’ve been thinking about it for days.

Encounter 1
I went into the Gym on Friday morning to see him doing standing meditation near the benches. I approached him and asked about the Tai Chi drop in. He was immediately evasive. I kept asking him about the drop in because I was confused at the information he was giving me as it was obviously inaccurate based on what I had from the community center director and also from personal experience going to Scadding Court for many years prior. He then excused himself to go to the washroom. When he got back he simply pretended I wasn’t there. I got the hint and went off to practice by myself on the other side of the gym.

Encounter 2
After his class I attempted to ask him again if he taught Tai Chi and if they did push hands but he just ignored me and left.

Encounter 3
The next day (Saturday) I showed up and just did my thing, standing meditation, in the corner. He approached me and asked if I wanted to join his group. I said I wasn’t sure, because I was doing other styles of Tai Chi (in all honesty I didn’t want to pick up on yet another style/group, I wanted to practice what Sifu showed me). But he didn’t let me explain anything, he just cut me off and said he only wanted to know if I was going to join his group. I said no and he went back.

Encounter 4
About 3 minutes after the previous, he came back an asked me to leave since I wasn’t going to join his group. I was shocked but it still didn’t “sink in” to me. So I explained to him I was aware this was a Tai Chi drop in, that the director had explained to me about the different groups and tensions between them etc. He just interrupted me and told me that since I wasn’t going to join his group I had to leave. At that point I kind of lost it (kind of) and told him that I had done Yang style for 20 years and that I wasn’t going to join his group because he was rude to me. He didn’t seem to care or to understand and just said I had to leave. So I told him in no uncertain terms I was very well aware of what was going on, i.e. that it was a drop in, there were multiple groups sharing the Gym, and so forth. I told him I was nice to him in the beginning and I couldn’t understand why he was being so rude. But he just said he was going to call security and that was it.

So we went up to talk to the front desk lady. At that point he demanded to speak to her alone so I said sure, and waited. Obviously he was not giving a fair and balanced account of what happened. But during this time my friend Henry who had been coming to the Tai Chi drop in for 20+ years happened by and we struck up a conversation at the front desk. I don’t know if this helped when the desk lady saw it but the long and short of it is that the lead instructor went back down to the Gym and I was given an official membership card for the center and told to come back on Monday (it was the end of class by then).

Encounter 5
During this time I went back down to collect my things. This may have made it look like he ‘won’ and that I was told to leave. In any case I went back down to the Gym and tried to apologize to him. I just wanted to diffuse the situation but maybe because he thought he ‘won’ he just continued to ignore my apology and walk away. Needless to say, me apologizing for his bad behavior is backwards, but it is a friendly gesture to allow him to save face. I did it for him and I was really and honestly surprised that he did not accept this opportunity. But no, he did not accept, he just totally ignored me and walked away while I was talking to him. How this man came to lead the seniors at Scadding court is far beyond my ken.

I wonder if he will be surprised to see me there on Monday! I really don’t know what will happen on Monday morning but I sure as heck am going to blog about it. See you then 🙂