Father’s Day 2025

Toronto Island

Bill King Photography: Jesse King

I’ll be honest with you: I’m madly in love with people. Not the curated avatars or slogans shouted across timelines, but the unfiltered, unnoticed hum of daily life—the crowds that move without spectacle. Strangers sharing air, gestures, and small kindnesses. It’s my soft spot. Crowds. They let me observe humanity without having to explain myself. They just are, and I get to witness it.

Sometimes, I ride the subway to feel the rhythm of it. Not anywhere, not in a rush. I watch faces. I write stories in my head about the guy in the corner seat or the woman staring into her phone like it owes her something. Two nights ago, I saw them—delivery boys with their e-bikes, batteries drained after a full day’s ride—80 K in their legs. You could see the fatigue stapled to their shoulders. I know that look. The “just get me home” look. The “feed me, bed me, don’t ask” look.

I spoke to them. Because that’s what I do. I ask questions. I want to know who people are. These boys were students from India. No different than the rest of us when we were young and scraping together futures with duct tape and drive. Working the night shift of ambition and sending fragments of a new life home to fathers and mothers who sleep with hope curled in their fists.

Which brings me to this: Father’s Day.

We are immigrants. Just the Kings here. No cousins are a block over. No aunt dropping by with tinfoil-covered trays. When we mark a day—Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, birthdays—we mark it like old-time sailors etched names into hulls. Permanent. Honest. No bartering. No forgetting.

Again, Jesse and I took to the Island. Wheels down. We are a family of cyclists—rubber to asphalt, wind on skin, laughter spliced with the click of gears shifting like whispered secrets. The ferry took us across. We talked. The kind of talk you only get with time and motion. No rush. Just a shared glide past romance seekers and cooler-hauling families, little kids chasing big dogs, and everybody heading somewhere with a fold-up chair and a plan.

Toronto is a city of nations. It's a dish of everything. Everybody’s got their spice, their rhythm. We are so beautifully different. And yet, the same. The cry of a child. A father barking directions over a sizzling grill. The handoff of a watermelon wedge from daughter to grandma. And you realize, damn, this is it. This is the world without the headlines. No hashtags. Just people trying to love each other properly.

That’s what this day was. Thirty kilometres of motion and meaning. My son and I. My Fuji X-T30 is around my neck like a second memory. My 16mm lens sweeping wide, capturing every golden streak, every burnt edge of a barbecue, every kid’s bounce, every wrinkle of joy carved into a parent’s smile.

With the world on fire, I chose this flame—slow-burning, steady, shared.

You made my day, Jesse.

And to all fathers and sons, daughters and mothers, riders and wanderers—keep pedalling. There’s beauty on the other side of the bridge

.