In the past few weeks, especially after the publication of QAF Narrative No. 35, “Ireland Park: We Said Yes to Life,” which received an overwhelmingly positive response from our readers, we have been receiving the same question again and again: What does QAF mean?

Some readers have asked whether it is an abbreviation. Others have wondered if it carries a symbolic meaning. We thought this would be the perfect opportunity to dedicate one issue to the story behind our name.

The first meaning of QAF is quite simple. It stands for Queens Quay Area Fans.

Queens Quay is the neighbourhood where we live, write, walk, and observe. It is one of the places that first taught us to see Toronto not simply as a city of streets and buildings, but as a collection of stories waiting to be noticed. Every morning, people from every corner of the world pass one another here. The lake changes its colour with the seasons. Museums, parks, cafés, artists, newcomers, long-time residents, and visitors all become part of the same living landscape.

QAF Narrative was born from our admiration for this extraordinary diversity.

Our goal has never been to write a conventional guide to Toronto. Instead, we try to use the techniques of storytelling to reveal the beauty, history, and cultural richness of this city. We believe that every neighbourhood, museum, street, and ordinary passerby carries a story worth telling, if only we learn to look a little more carefully.

QAF Narrative remains free thanks to the sponsors who support independent storytelling and help bring Toronto's stories to more readers.

But QAF has another meaning as well. In classical Persian literature, Mount Qaf is a mythical mountain associated with wisdom, truth, and the search for meaning. When choosing the name QAF, we were deeply inspired by the classical masterpiece The Conference of the Birds by the Persian poet Attar of Nishapur. This work has long been available to English readers in translation.

In Attar's story, thousands of birds gather to search for their true king. Led by the wise hoopoe, they undertake a difficult journey across seven symbolic valleys, each representing a stage of inner transformation. Many birds abandon the journey because of fear, comfort, pride, or despair. Only thirty birds finally reach Mount Qaf.

There, they expect to find the great king they have been seeking.

Instead, they discover something unexpected.

They see only themselves.

In Persian literature, the Simorgh is a mythical bird that symbolizes wisdom, unity, and transcendence. At the same time, the words si morgh literally mean "thirty birds." Attar's brilliant wordplay brings these two meanings together: when the thirty birds finally reach Mount Qaf in search of the Simorgh, they discover that they themselves are the Simorgh they had been seeking. The destination was never separate from the travellers. The journey had transformed them into the very truth they had set out to find.

That idea has stayed with me for many years.

Every QAF Narrative begins with a place, a person, or a moment in Toronto. Yet while writing, I often find myself entering a conversation with another part of my own life. A museum becomes a meditation on memory. A park becomes a reflection on migration. A forgotten building becomes an invitation to ask who we are and how we remember.

In that sense, every narrative is both an exploration of Toronto and a journey inward.

QAF Narrative remains free thanks to the sponsors who support independent storytelling and help bring Toronto's stories to more readers.

I also hope QAF becomes that kind of journey for its readers.

Your comments, questions, corrections, memories, and personal stories have already shaped many of our narratives. As our community continues to grow, I hope more and more readers will begin to think of QAF as something that belongs to them as well.

I have always believed that half of a text's meaning lives with its reader. Every reader recreates a story differently, bringing their own memories, experiences, and imagination into the act of reading.

Perhaps that is the real meaning of QAF.

Not simply a newsletter about Toronto.

But an invitation to travel together.

 YF, July 24, 2026