For all those who enter a coffee bar, order something to eat and drink, and find every cotton pickin’ table occupied by someone with a laptop. How do these places make any money?
Category Archives: The Opinionator
Rants, raves, leftwing, rightwing
‘TORONTO – a great city run by villagers’ – MacLean’s Magazine, March/1971
Excerpts from a 1971 MacLeans article, by Douglas Marshall:
—- “It seems only yesterday that TORONTO was just another leafy provincial capital – hardly more than a village, really – full of a lot of dull Protestants preoccupied with money. Only the people who loved the city, and they were few, realized that what TORONTO lacked in public greatness it made up for in private joys.”
—- “In TORONTO each year about 50 major new buildings go up in the downtown core; some 23,500 apartment units and 8,300 homes are completed . . . and $20 million is spent improving the efficiency of what is already Canada’s finest and longest (4,284 miles) sewer system.”
—- “Expansion has left it facing crises in transportation, in urban renewal, in the fundamental decision-making machinery of municipal government.”
—- “You might say that TORONTO qualifies as a great citiy . . . partly because the street-corner newspaper boxes are beginning to be protected by coin-operated locking devices.”
—- “TORONTO may be big. It may even be great. But it is fast losing its private joys.”
—- “City Hall is at the heart of the problem. TORONTO continues to be run mainly by men who still think of it as a village – only grown larger.”
They got the gold mine . . . and we got the shaft!
QUOTE BELOW - Edward Keenan, “Fear and Self-Loathing in Toronto”, Eye Weekly, April 21-27 PHOTO - http://www.thosefunnypictures.com
C E O thinks positively about TORONTO . . .
New York transplant, Hunter Tura, CEO and president of Bruce Mau Design, has some positive things to say about our metropolis and its future. Read the whole story in Eye Weekly/March 10-16/2011.
“Coming from Manhattan – there are things you guys probably think are complete failures that work so much better than anywhere else in the world. Like the TTC (Toronto Transit Commission). It’s very efficient, and works so much better than almost any other transportation system in the world.”
“On traffic congestion, the Straddling Bus is a new bus system that runs on two raised rails, and it literally straddles two lanes of traffic. So you can imagine the Gardiner – it’s like the GO train zipping right over top.”
“A building that most people here hate is a building that I really love, which is 222 Jarvis Street. It’s an inverted pyramid, and so counterintuitive in terms of lighting, elevators, structure . . . but to me, that’s what makes it so beautiful.”
“The Brick Works, which is close to where I live, is a great community asset. It reclaimed what had been an industrial wasteland and essentially turned it into a didactic park space. It’s a platform where community engagement can thrive.”
“Many other cities are trying desperately to get back to the light-rail model, because it’s relatively inexpensive and you can cover a lot of ground. . . But you’re about to tear that up? You’ve got to be careful.”
“In 15 years, we’re going to be a world-class design centre. Toronto now is what New York in the 1950’s was like – we’re just that much younger a place.”
We’re on the LIST . . . and in excellent company!
Monday, September 1, and MSN hits us with a list of the 10 rudest cities in the world – “cities not for the meek or fainthearted.” Guess who’s #4 – T-O-R-O-N-T-O!
We share the honour with Milan, London, Paris, New York City, Seoul, Hong Kong, Rio de Janeiro, Moscow and Mumbai. Eat your heart out V-a-n-c-o-u-v-e-r.
Vivian Song writes . . .
“It’s the city every other Canadian city loves to hate. It’s dirty, rude and crime-ridden, decry her most hardened critics. But in the latest StatsCan survey, Toronto actually came out third to last in police-reported crime statistics. Topping the list were prairie towns Regina, Saskatoon and Winnipeg. As for being dirty and rude, we like to call it grit and character. True, Torontonians walk with steady purpose and may mow you down should you dare to amble leisurely down Yonge Street during pedestrian rush hour. But they do, after all, work in the economic engine of the country and have a lot of work to do. And if you live in a mono-coloured city of cookie-cutter houses in the rolling hills of suburbia, then yes, you may be thrown by the traffic, the diversity and the colourful characters you may meet. But remember, you’re not in Kansas anymore.”
Toronto – loving it and hating it
“All the bad things the rest of the country says about TORONTO are so wonderfully, refreshingly true: It’s trashy, dirty, dangerous, rude and full of itself. In other words, it’s a big city.” R. M. Vaughan, Globe & Mail
“TORONTO is the third-most hated city in the world. In this regard it is world class. Discuss.”
Skyscraper City website
“There is something different about hating TORONTO. People are more passionate about it,” filmmaker Albert Nerenberg, in the film “Let’s All Hate TORONTO”
“Some people love TORONTO and hate Vancouver. Others love Vancouver and hate TORONTO. Yet others enjoy Winnipeg. Big deal.”
Red Flag Deals Forum
“I love it because in TORONTO something is always happening. TORONTO has life. Not like Medicine Hat. I wish to live in a place where I can’t see 50 metres without seeing a skyscraper. I love the landscape and beauty of cities.
Traffic? Smog? I don’t care. Traffic says one thing, people. The more people, the better. I can’t live in a place where there is less then 20 people per square kilometre.
The fact that TORONTO as a city is open 24/7 isn’t that bad either.”
Mr. Canada, CKA Forums
“We are taught at birth to hate those from TORONA, it’s a cultural thing. Parents teach their small children that people from TORONA are like the boogy man, very very scary. It goes back 100 years, perhaps a feud or something akin.”
Hwacker, CKA Forums
