I'm rather dubious about posting this because it's only going to perpetuate the myth that I'm the unluckiest boy on the planet but here goes..
At around 4pm I put my card into an RBC ATM on the corner of Bedford and Bloor, only to find it deducted the money from my account then decided I shouldn't have my card back.
After lots of frantic phonecalls from a pub and being told repeatedly that because I didn't have two forms of photo ID they wouldn't send any technicians out to retrieve my card, despite me saying that I had no money whatsoever to collect my passport from my address in Toronto and that I know the card number, sort-code and obviously my pin number off by heart, and that how on earth would I know that there was a card in a machine with my name on it if I hadn't put it in there in the first place, they still point-blank refused to offer me any kind of help whatsoever..
Apparently everyone in Canada routinely carries two forms of photo ID with them at all times.
Anyway, I complained, became scarily forceful/persuasive and asked to speak to someone 'higher up'.. eventually they agreed that as the machine was a service provided by them they should be the ones jumping through hoops rather than me and if I could show the technicians my passport they'd send the someone out to open the machine up for me.. and within ninety minutes they'd be there.
Which was roughly when I met two nice Scottish people from U of T who offered to lend me the $25 I needed for the taxi back home to grab my passport, so we exchanged numbers and five hours (not ninety minutes) later I'm the very proud and cold owner of the bank card which was my legal property in the first place and they should have bent over backwards to return to me.
I did make two nice new friends, and everything's ok now.
It would've been nice not to have to stand outside a bank machine wearing nothing but a t-shirt and jeans for five effing hours though.