Much like my earliest memories, my Raptors fandom started abstractly. Growing up in Scarborough, with an older brother who was into skateboarding and baseball, my formative years were marked mostly by being on the periphery—of not being in “Toronto-Toronto”, coming at things second, and certain sports dominating our household.
But my parents were vigilant, giving me a wide a range of experiences as they could and balancing a kind of “no big deal” informality while making sure I could see myself in as many spaces, male-dominated or not, as possible. Now I get that it was a rare, goldilocks mix but at the time ping-ponging from the ROM to an Argos game—my dad shrugging through the rules because sports were never huge for him—was so natural, and what gave me the propensity to dive into new things, everything and all at once.