Eaton Centre, Toronto’s enormous downtown underground commercial complex
It seems that when we travel, we always experience an increase in synchronicities. But our Toronto trip in mid-February produced a flurry of them. That was probably because the unusual nature of the trip and that synchronicity was on our mind. So the meaningful coincidences just kept coming our way.
We’ve already written about several of these experiences, but there were more. Not all of them were sensational, but they were a constant reminder of the ‘Weird or What?’ connection we were embracing by pursuing this trip.
En route, via Canada Airlines I was reading Stephen King’s 11/22/63, and came to a passage where King described a woman wearing a long tartan coat. I paused and thought briefly that I’d never seen a tartan coat. A few hours later, sitting in the bar adjacent to our hotel, where we ate a light dinner, I had a view of people coming and going into our hotel, Pantages. Our drinks had just arrived when I spotted a woman wearing a long tartan coat enter the hotel. I pointed it out Trish, who said she’d never seen such a coat, either. But then, we live in Florida.
The next afternoon we took a Beck’s taxi to the loft studio where Trish would make her debut before the camera. After the interview, we gave a copy The 7 Secrets of Synchronicity to Stephen Grant, the director and interviewer.
He immediately launched into his own recent multi-layered synchronicity involving a Canadian singer named Andy Kim, who was famous long-ago for a song called Sugar Sugar when he was in a group called the Archies. Stephen had just told an off-color story involving the singer when he spotted Kim walking their way in the airport. The story was synchronistically linked to the name of that song, and there was more, but I lost track after getting distracted by the memory of that bubble-gum tune from so long ago.
Finally, after we left the studio with Stephen’s synchros fresh in mind, our Beck’s taxi pulled up. As we climbed in, I noticed the license plate on the car in front of us. It read BEXT. When pronounced, it sounds just like the taxi company’s name. Cheryl Welch, whose story brought us here, might call that an example of government mind control if it happened to her. But to us it was just another synchro on the journey.
Finally, one more taxi, and one more synchro. En route to the airport, our taxi driver asked us why we were visiting Toronto and we talked the entire trip about synchronicity. How strange it was to be picked up by a driver who was not only familiar with synchronicity, but fascinated with it. She not only drove the taxi, but held her own on the subject and told us about the meaningful coincidences that led her to getting a freelance art gig with Disney World. Of course we had to tell her that was where our daughter worked.
Meanwhile, en route Trish got an e-mail for a mystery writer friend who said she will be in Orlando for the next few days and why don’t we visit. Any day except Tuesday when she would be visiting the Epcot Center – right where Megan works.
Weird or what! It’s so funny how synchronicity works and it was an event that took place in Toronto in 1997 that has led me here today. Everthing about this post makes makes me chuckle. A couple of synchros in this post jump out at me , Toronto ( I love the city been there many times), February ( my birth month) , Steven King’s 11/22/63 11 is daughters b-day, 63 is my birth yr, Beck’s taxi, my name is Becky and sometimes people call me Beck’s. Also the biggest syncho of my life happened in Toronto. It’s similar to Vicky’s experience in the pub, except I was in a bar in Toronto after a U2 concert. I was with my husband and sister-in-law and said to them that we were going to meet Bono. They scoffed at me and not two minutes later he walked into the bar! It was a life changing moment, a knock on the head. I had chills because two weeks prior to the trip not only had I dreamt the event was going to happen but I also had a flash of it happening while I was driving and awake! I even told my friends I was meeting for dinnerthat night about my flash . Chills ran up and down my spine when it actually happened. I knew in that moment that my life would never be the same! It woke me up to the synchronicity of life . I sure see the world differently now and pay attention to the universe that is always here to guide us.
Good one, Becky! Bono, no less.
What great synchros! The story about the Sugar Sugar singer has just reminded me of one of the biggest synchros every, for me. To outline, my friend works for a tourism company. I am a voice over artist. The tourism company was running an ad campaign on TV, featuring the voice of a very well know Scottish TV presenter. Once or twice, my friend and I joked that I’d like that particular voice gig. Anyway, my friend came to visit last summer and we walked to the pub in a neighbouring village. We began talking again about that ideal voice job with her company. She mentioned that the famous TV presenter still had the monopoly on it. She then told me that she had never actually seen him presenting, so she wouldn’t know him if he passed her by. I was surprised, so I began doing an impression of his distinctive style. We both had a laugh about it. Literally, two minutes later, that well know TV presenter walked into the very pub we were in. After I lifted my jaw off the ground, I was able to point him out to my friend, in person. Scotland isn’t the biggest country in the world but it’s still very big and it seemed implausible that he would be in my little corner of the country, at the exact time I was doing a send up of him. It was one of the funniest, most unlikely experiences of my life. It really is a small world!
Wow, Vicky, that’s a good one! We’ll bring it forward as a post.
This reminds me of a very similar experience I had when I took my two boys to see Nancy Cartwright (voice of Bart Simpson) at the Brisbane Concert Hall at Southbank.
We were waiting outside in the foyer for the doors to open and we were standing with our backs to the glass wall facing the doors.
There were about twenty bar tables scattered throughout the foyer where your could rest your beer/wine glass and snacks.
The tables had a round top attached to a pole and underneath was a smaller round table about half way down where you could put your bag (I guess).
My youngest son who was about 11 at the time asked me what the smaller table was for.I had no real idea,but I thought I would be funny and told him that it was for dwarfs to rest their beer glasses on,as they were too short to reach the real table top.This seemed to satisfy his curiosity and we just continued to wait for the doors to open.
About five minutes later (and I swear my sons lives on this) a dwarf come along to that exact table and placed a beer glass,not on the little table underneath,but on top of the real tabletop.
I looked at my boys with pleading eyes not to say a word.
I know people reading this comment will think that the little fellow must have been around me when I said this,but I can assure you there was no one around when I made the remark,I even asked my sons later just to make sure.
The odds of this happening are trillions to one,as I hadn’t seen a dwarf in real life for about ten years and I haven’t seen one since.
Out of all the “coincidences” in my life this one is my favourite.
*Sorry if this comment seems a little politically incorrect…it’s not meant to be,but I don’t really know another name to substitute for dwarf,accept for little people…and that just seemed more inappropriate for this story.
whatever it’s called – whatever the reason/source – travel, for me, has always brought with it a certain sense of “something else” – like the “being in the flow” – open/free to whatever – particularly, if i am driving – in any event, you all certainly were in that “flow” on this synchro-packed trip! great stories!
You have had some amazing synchros while traveling, Gypsy!
Great synchros. I agree that travel stimulates synchros, but probably other things do as well. It seems like there is a heightened awareness once we ditch the routine and do something different or get deeply involved with some project or other. It’s something similar to what Colin Wilson calls Faculty X. Perhaps this is partly stimulation – living life as fully as we are able.
Colin is onto something with that faculty X!