Make a wish

Inside the Toronto Eaton Centre there are no watering holes, but there is a hole of water. Well, it’s a wishing fountain to be more precise. But like a watering hole, the fountain serves as a meeting group for all people.

Just over a dozen people --mostly exhausted parents and their children-- sit around the rim of the fountain as 44 streams of water arc into the mouth of a bowl, like an oversized high school water fountain. Others are on their lunch break, munching away at their sandwiches or pecking away at take-out pad thai.

While most onlookers arm themselves with sandwiches or chopsticks Olivia Hill arms herself with a penny, hoping to strike rich. “I wished for a million dollars,” said the nine-year-old after tossing a penny right into the mouth of the seaweed green fountain.

But for Jon Reinhardt and Amie Crone, the wishing fountain takes a more personal meaning. For Crone, her wish is for more time to spend in Canada. “I’m from England and all I wish for is to come back to Canada someday, I love it here,” said Crone.

The two met each other on St. Patrick’s Day at a bar and have traveled together ever since.

“I was kind of buzzed when I first met her; she had this goofy green shamrock sticker on her face that kept falling off. I told her, ‘your sticker’s falling off’ and that’s how we got talking. That was in Quebec; since then we’ve traveled to Ottawa and now we’re here in Toronto,” said Reinhardt, “I just want to see her again,” he adds, throwing a nickel into the middle of the fountain.