Feb. 6, 2005. 08:19 AM
TORONTO STAR
Why do they hate Toronto?
LINDA DIEBEL
"Do you come to Toronto very often?" a reporter asked him at a press conference at Lotto headquarters, on Bloor Street East.
"As little as possible," he replied tartly.
There were whoops of laughter from the press corps and assorted guests. It seemed natural enough. Folks like to poke fun at Toronto and seldom worry about hurting her feelings. She's a tough old broad, quite insensitive herself, so what does it matter? She's expected to suck in her stomach, stiffen her spine and endure.
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Our city is misunderstood. Canadians show no interest in claiming
Toronto as their own, the way, say, Americans proudly take ownership of the
Big Apple, or the French (as long as they are outside France) love Paris.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Americans love to hate New York, but everybody has a New York story to tell. That's the beauty of it," observes Robert Racco, a graduate student at McGill's School of Urban Planning in Montreal, and a proud, if battered, Torontonian. "They visit New York in droves, and they keep talking about New York. It becomes their city, too."
It may be our own fault (and we'll return to this later) that Canadians don't share the same pride of ownership in their biggest city. We're just another city.
We asked Canadians what they think and they told us.
It would be wrong to suggest everybody hates Toronto. Karen Rumstead, a product manager I met in a skywalk over a frigid Winnipeg street, loves our city. She came on business last spring and has returned four times. "Toronto is alive — really alive!" she says.
"Isn't Toronto the centre of the universe? Haven't you always been?" asks ticket agent Jack Wood, feigning indignation, at the Calgary airport. He seems a kind enough man, patiently sorting out our flights. He's joking, right?
Toronto is, to offer a taste of our 3,500-kilometre odyssey, (with enough contradictions to make anyone crazy) rude, snobbish, smug, boastful, pretentious, obnoxious, arrogant, hoity-toity, brash, crass, uptight, workaholic, lazy, self-absorbed, self-centred, self-obsessed, self-satisfied, spiritless, cold, out-of-shape, unfeeling, unsmiling and unfriendly.
We are wanna be New Yorkers. We are the middle manager of cities, irritating to those who must put up with us, invisible to those who can leapfrog right over.
"All the big deals are in New York ... Toronto's irrelevant," says Edmonton lawyer Denny Thomas. "You wouldn't say it's in the same league as New York or London, maybe now Beijing, where so much power and wealth is concentrated. Toronto is just not a world-class city."
Not a world-class city!
A Vancouver hair stylist goes on about the "homogeneity" of Toronto. Montreal pharmacist Malcom Jue pronounces, with an airy wave: "We're more cosmopolitan here. French, Spanish, we've got everybody. In Toronto, it's just English and Chinese."
We're dreary; we don't know how to laugh; we dream in black and white.
Everybody has an opinion. In many ways, how people see us relates intimately to their own sense of identity. Haligonians tell us to slow down and smell the roses. Stop being so obnoxious. Montrealers think they have more fun than we do. It's that, you know, joie de vivre thing. They also think our taste buds are in our feet. Winnipeggers laugh at a city whose mayor called in the army after a spot of snow. Saskatonians recoil at our lack of manners. Calgarians say we're stuck-up. Vancouverites check out their own six-pack abs and perky glutes and snicker at our love handles.
And it's not just the people. Even the city is out of shape.
"Toronto is a concrete city, flat and ugly," says Nancy Nadeau, pausing on her morning walk through Stanley Park with her dogs, Joey and Tao. "I wouldn't live anywhere else. Here, I can breathe!" she says, flinging out her arms. She's madly in love with the West Coast. Naturally, she's from Toronto.
At a Tim Hortons on a Sunday afternoon, a man literally recoils from the Toronto reporter who so brashly ingratiates herself into conversation at his table to ask, "And what, may I ask, do you folks think of Toronto?"
His disgusted look says it all. He sees my calculated amiability. The question itself is so, well — so Toronto. He watches in silence as others express their scathing views. Occasionally, he rolls his eyes and snorts.
"We know more about Toronto than anybody else in the world," says George Laco, a retired union executive, "and they know absolutely nothing about us. We are insulted by their ignorance. I try to just laugh and think about how dumb they sound."
We are smug and live in placid indifference to life outside the GTA. We are like New York Boy in Sex and the City, who's never been off the island of Manhattan. We don't even know where they are. Too often, they hear a secretary's voice crackling down the long-distance lines from Toronto: "Can you drive in now? The doctor's got a cancellation. He can see you this afternoon." Do we think they live in Mississauga?
Canadians show no interest in claiming Toronto as their own, the way Americans proudly take ownership of the Big Apple I did interviews in towns whose endless outskirts look no different to me from Raleigh or Rochester. And yet, people would point a finger in the direction of Toronto and proclaim: "Too American. Ugh."
During the course of the trip, we heard all the Toronto jokes. It's a comedic sub-culture that may come as a shock to some Torontonians.
From Ted Worthington, a retired master mariner in Peggy's Cove:
Q: How do people in Toronto spend the weekend?
A: They wait for Monday.
"I don't want to be too hard on Toronto," adds Worthington, who is 72, "but it's just not sexy enough for me."
From Montreal pharmacist Malcolm Jue:
Q: What's the best thing about Toronto?"
A: The 401 to Montreal.
Biologist Bob Rutherford arrived in this area from Toronto 30 years ago to raise a barn for a friend before winter, and never left. "This is God's county," he says.
"Toronto might be a nice place to visit," adds Lawrence Abraham, originally from Ontario, "but there's no way I'd ever live there. Here, you can have a little personality showing. Not like those city slickers in Toronto."
So many insults. Enough to make a city pack her bags and head for the woods. But the saving grace is, for the most part, our fellow Canadians do love to talk about us — even the ones who say they don't.
"That's a stupid question. I don't have any opinion of Toronto,'' snaps Grace Manuel, in her Peggy's Cove kitchen, where she lives in cat-lady land. Feline table mats, tea towels, clocks, calendars, quilts and cutesy aphorisms fill her house. She has a kitty licence plate on her blue Subaru. All that's missing are the warm, furry bodies. She's between cats at the moment.
She does have an opinion, after all. She feels about Toronto the way her husband, Donald, feels about cats. (He spends a lot of time in the shed, whittling.)
"I just don't like it," she says, twiddling her thumbs. "My brother liked it, but he passed away ... I was there once and I didn't like the 401. I was scared to death ... How do you people manage to survive? " She catches her breath. "I don't like it here either. You're too close to your neighbours. They try to know everything about you."
Our city shuts down at sunset; we walk in fear, on dirty, crime-infested streets. "Wow, we got to see hookers and the homeless. It was kinda scary," says Krista Brignall, 18, a clerk at Luby's Food Store in Kenora, about a school trip four years ago. A night-time ride along Yonge St. led her to conclude: "It's the only Canadian city with American crime."
Aren't there homeless people in Kenora?
"Yeah," she replies. "But mostly it's the native population."
Mention Toronto in a Montreal restaurant on a Saturday morning, and there's a buzz. Jean-Guy Guyot toddles into Restaurant Lafleur for the heart-stopping breakfast special: two eggs, two slices of bacon, one sausage, cretons (tripe sausage fried in lard), baked beans, fried potatoes, toast and coffee. He's never been there —"too expensive, too many people," — but he's seen the CN Tower on television. He wears a red silk rose in his lapel in memory of his long-dead adoptive mother, Beatrice. "A saint, she was, a saint."
With so much to say about Toronto, patrons linger over cups of coffee, guffawing at the notion Montrealers could ever be told to butt out their cigarettes. Toronto bars close at 2 a.m. and you have to go to a government liquor store to buy a case of beer. Imaginez-vous, Madame.
Only one person doesn't join in. Throughout the morning, a man sits alone, arguing loudly to himself the superiority of Air France over Air Canada. A regular.
Sometimes, myths about Toronto find us wanting spiritually. Around the corner, on Carré St. Louis, Drew Ferguson, who publishes a McGill academic journal, sits on the steps of his 19th-century home on the square. He exults in his city's state-of-grace. "There's more humanity here than in Toronto, there's more concern for your neighbour," he attests. "If Montreal didn't exist," and he shrugs, "we probably wouldn't live on this continent."
On the same afternoon, on the steps of St. Joseph's Oratory, Montrealer Alejandra Morales complains about Toronto traffic. "Ay Dios, what a disaster."
Excuse me? Toronto traffic? She's from Mexico City, home of the world's worst traffic. It makes Toronto roads look like country lanes.
"To me," says Ludovic Laberge, "Toronto is like a big American city."
Drew Ferguson made a similar point. "There seems to be much more of a focus on money that I sense here," he'd said. "That's a very American thing."
By far, this is the most common perception about us: We are Canada's most American city. I did interviews in towns whose endless outskirts of fast-food chains and flashing neon look no different to me from Raleigh or Rochester or Des Moines. And yet, people would point a finger in the vague direction of Toronto and proclaim: "Too American. Ugh."
It takes me to the end of my journey, back in Toronto, to understand the full meaning of this comment and it will be a young Albertan who explains it to me. It's about more than looking or acting like an American city.
Evan Thomas, Denny's son, a U of T. law student, with a degree from LSE and a growing fondness for Toronto, describes it as a double-barreled putdown. It lumps the "rude, pushy, and insular Torontonian, possessed of the belief that Toronto is superior to the rest of Canada" — not like us — with the other favorite Canadian stereotype of the rude and pushy American, assuming natural supremacy and oblivious to the country on his northern border — again, not like us. Or, as Evan puts it: "It's two caricatures rolled into one and insulting to both.''
A pity, he says, to see Canadians picking on Toronto. "Petty squabbles are killing us as a country. We have such ignorance of each other. We hold each other in such contempt."
It's early morning in Stanley Park near the end of our trip, and nanny April Kamensek, 25, wheels her small charge in a stroller. We chat by the magnificent totems — sky chief holding moon, thunderbird, lightning snake, grizzly bear holding a human. The grass is wet and sweet-smelling from the rain; we stare at the ocean.
"I've never been to Toronto. Our ties are closer to Seattle or L.A.," she tells me. "I know some people in Toronto, but I don't know if I'd ever visit."
It's that sort of thinking which troubles urban planner Robert Racco at McGill. "As a Torontonian having spent some time outside the city, I have come to realize that its attributes often go unnoticed by outsiders," he wrote recently, in a letter to the Star. "The Toronto tourism industry has focused a great deal on how Americans perceive the city, but it tends to ignore how other Canadians view Toronto. Unfortunately, it tends to have a very negative image across the country."
I ask Ellen Flowers, spokesperson for Tourism Toronto, if her agency advertises domestically outside Ontario. "Not really," she replies. "Where we advertise is where the markets are." And, in 2004, those markets were in Ontario, the U.S. border states and Europe.
We don't invite Canadians to visit. It's emblematic of a larger problem of not relating to the rest of the country, just as they don't relate to us. It also hints at a darker underside to Evan Thomas's point. Our constant focus outside our country (as per usual) ignores the unique role we could play within Canada. Do we hold ourselves in contempt? Or are we merely oblivious?
After all, even New York City has to advertise in the USA.
"What about creating new markets? What about advertising at home?" asks Racco, during a phone interview from Montreal.
Nah, sounds too simple. He's evidently too young and imaginative to understand serious marking surveys, sober flow charts and the time-honoured way of doing business in Toronto.
The two of us push around concepts for a Canadian ad blitz. We'd love to give everybody $15 million. But a simpler campaign might work.
"Toronto. Give us a try. We're not what you think."
We're not, are we?
Photo credit: Toronto Star(Feb 6, 2005)
United they stand ... against Toronto
Easterners and Westerners find common ground in their loathing of Hawgtown. Snippets of what they said.
*EAST
Toronto is ...
"None too friendly"
"Not sexy enough"
"Dumb'
"Kinda scary"
"Ay Dios, what a disaster!"
"Not funny" (like Montreal)
"Homogenous"
"English and Chinese"
*WEST
Toronto is ...
"Flat and ugly"
"I hate it"
"Terrible"
"Too big"
"Irrelevant"
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