I am sitting in a panel discussion in a tiered hall at the University of Toronto whose theme is Pico Iyer’s ecstatic tribute to multicultural Toronto in The Global Soul. At one end of the long table, with its microphones, its demoralizingly polite allotment of bottled water, is Pico himself, who interrupted a sojourn to a monastery in Santa Barbara, California, just to come to Toronto, sprite-like and preternaturally young in his pressed grey suit despite his legendary jet-lag. In between is a buttoned-up, Hong Kong born political scientist, vaguely embarrassed for having sported a green tie; a university research chair in film and media who has an off-hand casualness born of familiarity with the avant garde; an afro-Canadian performance artist; and a moderator from Bombay who had reported on the aftermath of the Cambodian genocide for a newspaper in Singapore. The global soul, wounded and encompassing, encapsulated. (more…)