A Dark Age after History

 

Went downtown for a medical appointment on Thursday. I rarely go downtown. 

At Spadina and College, there is a Project Bookmark plaque on the sidewalk with a poem by Milton Acorn.

Knowing I live in a dark age before history,

I watch my wallet and

am less struck by gunfights in the avenues

than by the newsie with his dirty pink chapped face

calling a shabby poet back for his change…

And I see it has been defaced with green paint.

You know a civilization is dying when it defaces art, when it torches religious buildings and pulls down statues. This is a culture committing suicide.

Why do cultures commit suicide? For the same reason, no doubt, that people do. Because of a loss of meaning. Because people feel there is no point to anything. Except perhaps the moment’s gross physical pleasure: eat, drink, and be merry, for there is no tomorrow.

Downtown Toronto these days feels like the Cities of the Plain. 

Time to Get Out of Toronto?

 

Every time I take the subway, thee train seems to stop between stations for a "Security incident."

On Cultural Appropriation

 

Friend Cyrus laments that Toronto lacks cultural traditions and seasonal rituals, unlike cities he knows in Europe, or like NYC “where there's so much that ‘everyone knows’ about the city, down to the level of individual city blocks, and so many experiences everyone rushes to repeat every year in its proper season.”

I know what he means about the city having so little lore. This has always bothered me about Canada in general. It is one reason I ran off to Asia. It is a big reason why I write poetry—to try to consecrate the ground and our shared life on it. It is why Canada is so notoriously dull.

Of course, Europe and Asia have had more history, and more time to accumulate cultural touchstones. But we do not do well, as he notes, in comparison to the US of A either, which is full of references by comparison. Back in Syracuse, I was in the middle of the burnt-over district. Not to mention homes of Mark Twain, Rod Serling, and L. Frank Baum.

I think it comes from having been colonized, in the true sense. We as Canadians have been conditioned to believe that anything of significance happens elsewhere. Previously in Europe, more recently in the USA, increasingly in Asia. The US, by comparison, threw off that sense of inferiority emphatically over two hundred years ago. They dumped it into Boston harbor. 

Multiculturalism is both a symptom and a cause of the disease: it assumes culture is, by its nature, foreign.

 I know what Cyrus means too about old neighbourhoods losing their character as new groups move in. He writes “Toronto lost many of its one-time customs and old neighbourhood identities through the years of immigration, population churn and transformation that followed the Second World War.” That is multiculturalism. There is almost no hint left of old Jewish Spadina and Kensington Market. There is no trace left of old Irish Cabbagetown and Corktown. I used to live at the end of King Street, almost at the point where the Battle of York was fought. There was no trace of a memorial. I had to do heavy research to figure out the spot. It is occupied by a monument to the Katyn Massacre.

In the US, it seems instead that each new wave of immigrants enriches the culture with the best of what they bring. This is the melting pot. Hot dogs and hamburgers from Germany; rock and roll from Africa; movies about Italian-American gangsters; and so on and on. But multiculturalism ghettoizes us in Canada instead, so that we ignore and do not learn from one another. Each new wave just paves over the last. Making Canada less like a home and more like a hotel.

The spring cherry blossoms in High Park are one example of a cultural tradition that has jumped the fence of prejudice and become pan-Canadian. It deserves celebration.

Cultural appropriation is the foundation of all civilization, and all culture.

The Mean Streets

I grow weary of the atmosphere of hate that has descended on Toronto and Canada.

Now magazine’s current issue looks back on the decade.

On Rob Ford: “blundering incompetent.” “A pretty awful person.” “Whiny, occasionally racist.”

Ford, of course, was elected mayor of Toronto. A majority of Torontonians must have basically agreed with his approach on the issues. Yet no attempt is made to argue these claims: they are just asserted. No civil dialogue is contemplated.

It then baldly asserts Jian Ghomeshi’s guilt, even though the charges against him were dismissed in court. His acquittal made sexual assault victims, Now explains, “realize that they can’t count on the courts to make their abusers accountable.”

Again, no explanation of why the court was supposedly so wrong—his guilt is merely asserted. We are all to hate Jian Ghomeshi.

Maxime Bernier and the PPC are referred to as “wacko,” again without explanation. Bernier is, of course, a former Foreign Minister, and came within a whisker of being the leader of Canada’s official opposition. No explanation; we are to hate Bernier and all those who support him.

A demonstration held to protest Motion 103 is declared, without evidence, to really be an expression of “anti-Muslim” sentiments. The “Proud Boys” are described as “anti-Muslim”; never mind that their web page prominently welcomes “All Races. All Religions.” “Never Again Canada,” is accused of holding protests “under the guise of” opposing immigration. This seems odd, since there is nothing on their web page opposing immigration. There is, on the other hand, a long statement denouncing anti-Muslim sentiments, and calling for “the concern and participation of all Canadians, regardless of ethnicity, religion, and politics.”

Their stated purpose is to combat antisemitism. Their real intent, of which the author apparent has some secret knowledge, is apparently something deeply nefarious. Perhaps they plan to poison the wells.

You can see how this stirring up of contempt for some identifiable group could lead to violence—against, for example, Jews, or members of “Never Again Canada.”

The magazine detects another sinister conspiracy on campuses: “hate has spread to university campuses under the guise of free speech.” No evidence is presented that those calling for free speech really want “hate.”

Faith Goldy is declared “dangerous” and also accused of “propagating hate.” Again, no evidence is offered. She probably is, as the paper asserts, a “white nationalist.” But so what? They have no problem with “black nationalists” like “Black Lives Matter,” who get to write their own account of the decade as part of the article. To object only to whites being nationalists is, surely, to promote hatred towards whites.

In that “Black Lives Matter” insertion, Toronto police are accused of “police brutality” against blacks, and of a “long and sordid history of discrimination and harassment.” The local schools are accused of “anti-Black racism.” Toronto in general is accused of “the violence of anti-Black racism.” The Toronto Pride movement is accused of “anti-Blackness.” Mass culture is accused of “anti-Black racism.” “White folks” are declared to be “privileged.”

Now magazine then celebrates an anticipated future “not full of plays by dead white males.”

Toronto is declared a “hotbed” of “Islamophobia.” The temporary shutdown of Soufi’s restaurant is ascribed to “racism and xenophobia”--no reference to the fact that a member of the family was seen on video berating a little old lady as a racist and blocking her from attending a candidates' meeting. Seems to me that might have had something to do with it

Incels—involuntarily celibate men—are offered no sympathy. They are accused of a “sense of entitlement.”

That might be so, but then why not the same charge against the gay community, or the trans community, who also consider themselves entitled to have sex? Yet incels are openly despised.

It is a meaner, uglier Toronto than it used to be.

A Desire Named Streetcars

At the candidates’ debate I attended a few sleeps ago, the need for better public transit in Toronto came up. All candidates, being in Toronto, agreed that the federal government should put more money into public transit. A lot more. The city and the province concur; they argue only on which new subway line should be built. Other Canadian cities are in a building period.

I agree that public transit is a good idea. It is of particular benefit to the poor, it reduces traffic, and it reduces pollution. It also reduces carbon emissions, for what that is worth. As one candidate put it, “we need to get people out of their cars.”

At the same time, putting huge sums into subway lines right now strikes me as perhaps a bad idea. Technology is changing quickly. There is a real possibility that, with self-driving cars, the private automobile will become obsolete on its own: no need for anyone to keep a car idle in a garage for private use. When an owner does not need it, they can let it roam for fares. Less traffic, fewer emissions, and a quite possibly cheaper form of transport than a bus or subway. At no public cost—or government could spend their money subsidizing such rides for the poor.

Other technologies also seem to be on the horizon. There is Elon Musk’s tunnel-boring project, which may make subway tunnels a lot cheaper if we can just hold off for a bit. Along with road tunnels to reduce traffic problems. Dubai is experimenting with self-driving helicopter taxis, which may not do much for the carbon footprint, but could reduce both traffic and commute times. 

Self-driving air taxi.

Is this a good time to be ploughing billions into traditional technologies that may be obsolete in a few years? Especially since a new subway line takes years to build.

I can see a thing or two we could do right now, instantly improving the situation at almost no cost.

Shut down an existing street with an existing streetcar line to vehicular traffic. I’d say we choose Queen, Roncesvalles, and Broadview. We instantly have what is now referred to as LRT, as with the Spadina line, or the new line being built on Eglinton. Such streetcars no longer face the delays from traffic and obstructed track that are the great curse of the current system. Cyclists instantly have a safe route to and through the heart of downtown. Segways, electric scooters, and e-bikes could share the space—all more efficient and less polluting than cars. We will have improved public transit, and at the same time forced more people out of their cars, supposedly one of our objectives. We will, at almost no cost, have the “feeder lines” to east and west so long called for to reduce congestion on the existing downtown subway lines. Shopping will be easier and more social on such streets, without the need to go to the corner and wait for the lights to cross. And with the ability of commuters to impulse buy as they see an interesting shop on their way—something lost in a subway ride. Street life, a wonderful part of the urban experience in so many European cities, will be intensified.

You might object that all this makes things tough on the poor drivers.

But it is impractical now to try to drive downtown; much faster to cycle or subway, not to mention the problems with parking. Is much really lost? And if cars depart a given street, we suddenly have new real estate available for development, currently locked up in parking spaces.

Why is nobody suggesting this?

I fear it is because, without big new public expenditures, there are simply fewer opportunities for graft.

Toronto Mediocrities

Historic ancient castle--Toronto

Growing up in Montreal, I always thought of Toronto as a cultural desert. This perception is common among Montrealers. In the 2009 Montreal film “The Trotsky,” the protagonist must move to Ontario, and is consoled by his mother, “I’m sure Ontario is more than just Alice Monro stories.”

Not at all to knock Alice Monro; but the perception was that she was all they’d got.

I still actually think this is true. Toronto has no culture in comparison to Montreal. Toronto is charming in its agricultural, Main Street way, but it has no sense at all when it comes to art or literature. Growing up, visits to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMBA) were a favourite pastime. I lived ten years in Toronto, and rarely went to the Art Gallery of Ontario. In recent years, I again visited both. The MMBA still exudes something the AGO does not. The MMFA collection, although smaller, seems well-chosen. The AGO collection feels more like a jumble. “Okay, we need something here by Emily Carr.” Not anything of special merit; the point is the signature.

Even the donations differ. The MMFA has the Weider collection of Napoleonic memorabilia. The AGO has a sampling of shrunken knock-off busts collected by Ken Thompson. Perhaps no important art in either, perhaps just businessmen trying to buy a cultural pedigree, but the Weider legacy at least has a theme and a vision. It is not just stuff.

Toronto itself is of the opinion that it has no culture. That’s why it is so big on, and so proud of, its multiculturalism. Culture is always something from somewhere else. It is some quaint foreign thing. Entertaining every now and then, like visiting the zoo. Hey, let’s do a Greek restaurant!

Montreal, by contrast, has its own food: poutine, Montreal smoked meat, Montreal bagels, St. Hubert chicken, spruce beer, Oka cheese, Vachon treats.

In Montreal, the arts are central to the city’s sense of self, central to the city’s life. When Leonard Cohen died, the city quickly threw up two massive commemorative murals; Leonard Cohen expressed something to Montreal of the real Montreal. Even though he was an Anglophone poet in a Francophone city. The art gallery launched an exhibition in his honour, even though he was not a visual artist. In Toronto, b contrast, art is always an add-on, something people vaguely feel they need to have to be a proper grown-up city, but take no personal interest in. Kind of like vitamin supplements.

A distinctly Toronto phenomenon that has no Montreal parallel is that of the famous mediocrity. Artists or entertainers quite commonly become big names in Toronto without actually having much talent. And in Toronto, nobody seems to notice. They just needed an artist in this slot, and nobody actually looks or listens. Such a thing would be unthinkable in Montreal.

A few examples of the classic Toronto mediocrity:

The Group of Seven—absolutely nothing there but hype.

The Royal Canadian Air Farce—with a special shout out to Luba Goy. If they even heard a good joke, they probably would not get it. Dave Broadfoot was the exception; but he did not last with them, did he? Not to mention that he was originally from Vancouver, not Toronto.

Peter Gzowski. For a time, he was everywhere and did everything in Canadian journalism. He even passed as some kind of intellectual. By why?

Ben Wicks. Could never draw, and was never funny. Compare Montreal’s Aislin: da Vinci versus childish doodle.

The Irish Rovers. Always going for whatever’s cheapest and easiest. The first of Toronto’s cute ethnics.

Murray McLaughlin. Out to rescue the neglected working class. Apparently nobody else ever noticed them…

Casa Loma. No history, no special architecture, no connection with the arts or even some culturally meaningful business enterprise. Just ostentation. And an imitation of foreign models.

The CN Tower. Wow; it’s high. So what? Nouveau riche.

“The Henry Moore.” Hey, look how sophisticated we are!

To be clear and to be fair, there are also some legitimate talents who have come through Toronto. Glenn Gould; Marshall McLuhan; Northrop Frye. But even there, there is sometimes something off. Robertson Davies, for example, wrote one great novel, Fifth Business; but he also was also guilty of a lot of posing and hype, with his wizard-like beard and his Jungian mystic prattle. He was trained in drama, and he was an actor to the end. Margaret Atwood really is a fine poet and a better literary critic; but she also lived on hype with her feminist politics, as if the writing was secondary.

Perhaps not their fault. In Toronto, talent and art does not count. You need an ulterior motive to justify it.

This is, in the end, I think, the difference between Catholicism and Calvinist Protestantism. Montreal is more or less the Paris of North America. But not so; Montreal would not settle for being an imitation. In the old days, Toronto was known as the Belfast of North America. It still is, in its soul. “Toronto the Good.”

To Catholicism, beauty is one of the three key aspects of divinity, along with truth and the good. To Calvinism, beauty is from the devil, and not legitimate unless it serves some practical, earthly purpose like selling dry goods.

As a Catholic, I never could reconcile with that attitude.

Toronto Stiffs

George Brown

It is inevitable that Montreal has a much stronger sense of place than does Toronto. There is more history there; it is something special to be a French-speaking city in North America; the geography is more interesting.

Canada suffers from this, now that Toronto and not Montreal is our chief city.

But there are things Montreal does that Toronto could do. For one thing, Montreal seems full of public statues of local importance: a statue of Jean Drapeau, of Rene Levesque, of Brother Andre, of Maurice Richard, and so forth. I think it adds a lot, and you don't see the like in Toronto. If there are public statues there, they seem to refer to people and events without any special ties to Toronto. More of less on the very site of the Battle of York during the War of 1812, for example, you have—a monument to the massacre in Katyn, Poland. And nothing about the War of 1812.

I think Toronto should make a point of putting up life-sized bronze statues of local heroes—people whose lives and characters are forever associated with Toronto, who made Toronto what it is. Not away up on pedestals—at street level, as if they were still walking around with the rest of us. Because they would want to be, if they loved Toronto, and they really are in a sense, if they left their mark. Not just famous people who once lived in Toronto, but people who left a personal imprint there. No Mary Pickfords.

A proposed list:

Ed Mirvish
William Lyon Mackenzie
Wayne and Schuster
Northrop Frye
Marshall McLuhan
Banting and Best
Ronnie Hawkins
Glenn Gould
Timothy Eaton
Roy Thomson
Johnny Bower
Gordon Sinclair
King Clancy
Robert Baldwin
Bishop Michael Power
James FitzGibbon
Jack Layton
Richard J. Needham
Gregory Clark
Duncan Macpherson 

I do not include Egerton Ryerson, George Brown, or Ned Hanlon, because they already seem sufficiently represented. All already have statues, and more.

Others are not included because they are still living: Dave Keon, Mary Margaret O'Hara, David Crombie, Sharon, Lois, and Bram.

Others are not included because, although they contributed to Toronto, they have stronger associations to some other place: William Kurelek.

How about Rob Ford? Borderline. Controversial, and in the end, only one term as mayor.

Looking back, I see there are no women on the list. Tough. No affirmative action here. That's despicable. You want a bronze, you have to earn it by what you do, not how you were born or who you are.

Don't Buy that Toronto Condo

Toronto real estate prices have apparently been taking a hit this summer. The housing bubble in Canada’s big cities may be over.

I expect it is. The rapidly spiralling house prices to my mind have not made sense in terms of the real demographics. I suspect they were fuelled by speculation.

In the first place, the population has been aging: fewer new home buyers, and more older people looking to downsize for retirement. It ought, on this basis, to be a buyer’s market.

Retirees do not need to live in the city for work. It ought to follow that city real estate should lose value in comparison to town real estate, not vice versa.

Moreover, technological advances have rapidly been erasing the advantages of city life. Thanks to Amazon and online shopping, the advantages in terms of consumer choice of living in a big city have pretty much gone. As for entertainment or socializing options, these have been equalized to a great extent by the Internet. Now you can hang out with anyone from anywhere, always see the latest movies, or the art house flicks, if you prefer, and so on.

Since the advantages of city life have been declining, the extra money people are ready to pay in order to be there ought to be declining too.

And, of course, there is the growing practicality of telecommuting.

With self-driving cars, the transportation options should also become much cheaper. Soon, any small town can economically run its own public transportation network simply by using self-driving vehicles. Making said small towns a that much more attractive option for the retired and elderly.

Sooner or later, these factors should kick in. The wonder is that they have not been felt yet.

United Colours of Ryerson

The offense

Signs have appeared over the last few days all over Toronto, and are just as quickly being torn down. They say very little: “White Students Union!” and a web link. This, apparently, is “offensive” (U of T). “We don't condone this sort of thing,” (Ryerson).

Isn’t there something wrong with this picture? A visitor from another planet might easily suppose that “white students” are an oppressed group, not permitted to organize in their own defense.

And they would be right.

After all, student groups based on other ethnicities, real or imagined, are a common feature on campuses. Ryerson has an Albanian students’ association, a Muslim students’ association, an African students’ association, an Afghan students’ association, an Armenian students’ association, an Assyrian students’ association—and so far we are not even out of the “A”’s. U of T and York, being larger, have all these and more. Most Canadian colleges have not just courses, but entire majors, in fields such as “Aboriginal Studies,” “Black Studies,” “Women’s Studies,” and so forth. In most of these, white males might well feel rather uncomfortable. So why can it be so wrong, even unspeakable, to seek to form a “White Students Union?” Equality seems to demand it.

“Ah,” the opponents will say, “but white people are different. They are privileged. Therefore, they must be discriminated against to level the field.”

No doubt some people have an advantage over others because of their background. However, the logic of this argument, at best, is that two wrongs make a right. They do not. Moreover, while discrimination in favour of people with white skin in Canada is a theory, and debatable, the formal and institutional discrimination against them is, as in this instance, an indisputable fact.

And is anyone at all aware that the most severe cases of discrimination in history tend to be against groups which, like “white students,” are held to be privileged? It stands to reason, after all: first, since everyone knows in their conscience that discrimination is wrong, you need to have a rationalization such as this: you have to have a reason to claim they deserve it. Second, envy is a powerful emotion, more powerful than contempt. It is a stronger motivator to do harm to another. Third, there is a lot more money and stuff to be confiscated in discriminating against the rich and successful than against the poor and destitute.

The model case is the Jews. In most times and places, they have been discriminated against. And in most times and places, they have been better educated and wealthier than their neighbours. This was certainly true in Germany and Central and Eastern Europe just before the Nazi Holocaust. The claim was that the Jews were unfairly in control of everything. Just like “white males” today.

Privileged bourgeois skulls, Cambodia.

But there are lots of other cases, if you go through the list of the worst persecutions known to history. There are the class persecutions of the Communist realms: on the theoretical claim that the middle classes have historically persecuted the workers, millions of members of the “bourgeoisie” and “intelligentsia” were rounded up, stripped of all their possessions, and often shot, in the elimination of the kulaks, the Cultural Revolution, the killing fields of Cambodia, and so forth.

Privileged Tutsi skulls, Rwanda.

Often, as with the Jews or the “white students,” this envy of material success or educational attainment intersects with race. This does not make it morally better or worse; it just makes it easier to identify and isolate the victims. In Rwanda, the middle class was primarily Tutsis, and the poorer classes primarily Hutus. Was oppression involved? Perhaps; perhaps not. But the Hutus massacred the Tutsis. Just as the Russians massacred the Circassians, the Zanzibarian blacks massacred the Zanzibarian Arabs, the Sinhalese repressed the Tamils, the Equatorial Guineans massacred the Bubi, the Nigerians repressed the Ibo, the Cantonese and just about everyone else in Southeast Asia repressed the Hakka, and the Haitians, Tupacs, Yucatanese, and Boxers massacred the Europeans—the “whites.”

Yes, this usually happens when the group targeted for discrimination or destruction is a minority of the population. This is for obvious practical reasons. But “straight white males” are indeed a minority of the Canadian population, and that is what the target group has been whittled down to so far. It’s getting pretty close to being bite-sized.

We are left with two choices here: either we must allow “White student unions” on the same basis as everyone else, or we must ban all ethnic-based organizations. Of the two choices, the former is obviously preferable. First, it is far less intrusive, and, second, there is this little detail called the right to freedom of association, It is a basic human right, which means that no government may legitimately interfere with it. Unfortunately, it has been all but trampled in the mud for the past fifty years or so.

It means everyone has the God-given right to hang with whomever they want to hang with, given mutual consent.

Without it, democracy itself is not possible over the long term.

The Real Toronto

Glorious 12th, Toronto, 1860s.

Growing up in Montreal and in one of the Irish pockets of Eastern Ontario, I always knew there was something off about Toronto. And there still is. On the one hand, it had no culture; it was hopelessly nouveau riche. As Gertrude Stein said of Oakland, “There is no there, there.” On the other, it had a puritanical and an anti-Catholic streak: “Toronto the Good,” “the Belfast of North America.” A city that still boasted a “Temperance Street.”

Both raps remain perfectly correct. “Multiculturalism,” now all the rage there, requires a tacit admission that there is no local mainstream culture. The original Presbyterian intolerance has been replaced by a new brand of self-righteousness, the intolerance of political correctness. Which is still anti-Catholic.

But as a vacation destination, Toronto can still be a fun place to be. A few trips ago, our family arrived in Hogtown straight from Paris, and after a few days, I at least held the opinion that the provincial capital was a better vacation than the world capital of culture. While there is, objectively, more to see in Paris, you must spend half your time in lines waiting to see it, and then only get to see it over other people's shoulders. Not to mention dealing with the Parisian tradition of contempt for outsiders and petty theft. Toronto has a down-home openness to it that makes it almost like a small town.

St. Lawrence Market

And that, perhaps, is the secret of Toronto. It is just a big, awkward, gangly small town. As a small town at heart, it goes terribly wrong when it tries to be grandiose. The CN Tower? Anyone can pile one stone on top of another. That's a child's idea of impressive. Casa Loma? The very definition of nouveau riche. Pellat, unremarkable for anything else, bankrupted himself building it. With the best accommodations reserved for the horses. Main Street? You want a Main Street? Toronto has the longest Main Street in the world. Jiminey, can even Paris top that?

On the other hand, if you approach Cochonville with the proper attitude of Canadian unpretentiousness, it works. Consider St. Lawrence Market. A simple farmer's market. But the oldest continuous farmer's market anywhere in North America, and, according to National Geographic, the “best” farmer's market in the world. It is. This is what Toronto does best, because it is, in the end, one giant market town, and there is nothing in the world wrong with being a giant market town. Toronto at its best stays in touch with ordinary life. As a result, more than in most big cities, ordinary life in Toronto tends to be worth living. Toronto is about the average guy. Fiddleheads in spring, blueberries in summer, salami in wintertime, all at an affordable price.

Wind Turbine, Toronto style.

Toronto has, by my count, three separate operational farms within the city limits, all publicly funded and open to the public. Can any other city of comparable size claim the same? There is the farm at Black Creek Pioneer Village near York University. There is Riverdale Farm downtown on the banks of the Don. And there is Far Enough Farm on Centre Island—for Toronto could not imagine a family amusement park without a petting farm. In addition, the small “zoo” in High Park, on the west side, is really a showcase for exotic farm animals: yaks, highland cattle, llamas, emus. This is the real Torontonian multiculturalism: farm animals from around the world. You have a little extra space, in Toronto, and the first thing you think of is putting in a pumpkin patch. What else did God make good land for?

And there is nothing so pleasant to do on a summer afternoon than to walk through Riverdale Farm and greet the animals.

There is yet another farm at the CNE, when it is in operation. The CNE, the Canadian National Exhibition, is, of course, the traditional end of every summer for anyone who grew up in Toronto. Nothing is more Toronto than the CNE, and the Princes' Gate at its entrance. At its heart, the CNE was and will always be a good old fashioned agricultural fair. It is just the biggest version of the little summer agricultural fairs once held each year all across the province: the Lansdowne Fair writ large. The surrounding farmers came with their best produce to compete for prizes, and at the same time to be informed of and perhaps to purchase all the latest technological innovations for better living. It is not so dominant as it once was, but it persists. It used to bill itself as the world's biggest annual exhibition. It is now only the seventh largest in North America. But it is surely still the largest hosted in big city. Most US State fairs are in smaller cities, not in self-respecting major urban centres.

Princes' Gate

If you have not gotten your fill of the heady smell of manure by the end of the CNE, the Royal Winter Fair, the harvest fair, is back at the same grounds in November. Complete, of course, with a petting farm.

These are still, for my money, Toronto's best attractions: The CNE, the Royal Winter Fair, Black Creek Pioneer Village, Riverdale Farm, Centre Island, and St. Lawrence Market. High Park could be, with a larger menagerie on display. Everything else is either embarrassing or generic to any large city in North America.

Unfortunately, it is typical of the nouveau riche that they disdain their own heritage, and seek instead to imitate others. Toronto has that curse. Locally, it is called “multiculturalism.” Both St. Lawrence Market and the CNE have come close to closing in the recent past. Thankfully, Toronto's summer festival of multiculturalism, “Caravan,” probably the original Canadian multiculturalism festival, once a very big ticket item, has died. It was just a modern “human zoo,” a way to humiliate recent immigrants. Not something Toronto can do with taste or dignity.

Site of the Battle of Toronto, War of 1812, today.

I used to live very near the spot on which the Battle of Toronto was fought during the War of 1812. It was completely unmarked. Except, that is, for a large memorial to the Polish victims of the slaughter of Katyn.

Toronto would do well to stop trying to be somewhere else, and concentrate on what is so very Toronto about Toronto. We need less signage for Little Italy and Little Portugal and Chinatown, and more cabbages in Cabbagetown. The roof of the new City Hall is going green, and this is good. But it should be growing market vegetables, not flowers. 

St. Anne's Anglican Church, Toronto

Another thing the local hospitality business has completely missed are the marvellous religious structures of “Toronto the Good.” Reviews of the Sunday sermons used to be the main Monday reading for Toronto residents. Screw the irreligious prejudices of political correctness: Toronto is squandering a big part of its unique heritage here. We need more promotion of the Toronto Blessing, of the remarkable Junction Shul, St. Anne's Anglican with its Group of Seven murals, Corpus Christi Catholic with its Kurelek mural, St. Michael's Choir School, and so on. I vote for a complete restoration, as well, of the Toronto Masonic Temple to what it would have looked like at its peak in 1925. That would indeed be a unique tourist destination.

Can This Be True?

Have we really gotten this far?

24 Hours of Toronto

http://wvs.topleftpixel.com/flash/cntower_timelapse.swf