Gleaner News

Hey kids, I was interviewed for The Gleaner! The author, Amy Ward, found a blog post about a Missed Connection ad I had posted on my blog last year and she was doing an article on that very topic.

She asked me if I would be willing to be the subject of her article and of course, I agreed.

A big thank you goes to Amy for the great interview and fabulous article. Here's the clipping:
Tunnel of love, lost

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Bathurst Station most popular site for missed connections

By: Amy Ward

Before the days of finding hook-ups by GPS-locating cell phone apps, geo-locating lovebirds had only missed connection postings to find one another. For shy types, a note to that person with a cute smile lets you act on an afterthought. In some locations, like cell-phone-signal-quashing subway tunnels, the missed connections are still the introvert's greatest tool when hunting booty.

Back in November, Craigslist released a study called 'Love on the Line' exploring which TTC stations are sites for the most Missed Connections postings. Over an eight-week period last summer and fall, they calculated the number of postings divided by ridership at each station to find the lustiest location on the TTC. The winner ... Bathurst! For the 28,000 passengers passing through the station each day, Bathurst's tubes could be rebranded Toronto's tunnel of love.

"Paprika," who, like many involved in the online dating community, wishes to maintain some anonymity, has been both the poster of a missed connection and the subject of one.

"I found them amusing in a sad sort of way," she said. "Kind of like a train wreck, you can't help but look even though it's just an awful mess."

A friend of hers came across a missed connection posting and recognized Paprika as the subject, based on an encounter she'd had while waiting for a film festival at the Bloor Cinema (506 Bloor St. W.). She responded to the posting, but the sparks weren't there.

"It was very flattering that someone felt strongly enough about me to post an ad on Craigslist," she said.

A few months later, she posted her own missed connection on Craigslist, after chatting with a man outside Bathurst station. She never received a response.

"I suppose it is the annex of the Annex," Paprika said. "I think that particular stretch of Bloor, between Bathurst and Spadina, has so much going on, it naturally fosters an environment where all sorts of different people cross paths."

Though neither of her missed connections worked out, shortly after posting her own, Paprika combed a friend's Facebook connections and ended up meeting her fiance. "I believe timing and attitude are everything," she said. "Looking back on the events that happened in my life prior to meeting him, and everything that happened in his life, I know that we both had to go through what we went through in order to really appreciate each other when we finally did connect."

Of course, it's hard to conjure a soulmate connection out of nothing. Maybe that's the allure of the missed connection postings. It's the delayed bravado after a moment that could have been but never was. Any romantic can see the allure of the missed connection. So for all you starving romantics, remember that a connection may happen whether you miss it or not.