Nuit Blanche

[syn]

I only managed to check out Zone C in Liberty Village. I can't say I was that impressed with the art installations.

That said, I had a good time with everyone, as I do every year.

 

[adma]

All countries have rubes who hate the dominant city, but Canada is the only place I know of where educated, upper-middle class people who live urban lives in metropolitan areas profess their hatred for this city. I've met really smart, fairly well-traveled people in places like Edmonton and Vancouver who almost foam at the mouth trying to express their vitriol for Toronto. Sometimes we are a very petty country.

Then again, they might be equivalent to the snotty Euro-trash (or Tyler Brule, for that matter) who sneer at Toronto from the other end, so to speak.

It may also be a matter of "fairly well-traveled"...to where. Like, if it's mainly potboiler upscaleish resort destinations a la Whistler or indigenous noble-savage destinations like the Maritimes, the wooden-telephone-pole Jane Jacobs-cum-Feist supposed draw of Toronto is a little...why bother?

 

[OttoSchloss]

We forget that Canadians tend to have a huge inferiority complex and a lack of confidence. And a real hatred of the urban environment.

Putting down a city like Toronto, that professes no interest in them, makes them feel better. Really if you need to graffiti the internet with your Toronto hatred, then the reality is, you're probably not all that confident about where you live.

I generally have no opinion of any other Canadian cities even after having lived in them. To me Montreal is like a large French, Kingston ON. And Vancouver registers little more interest to me than Akron. It's not that I don't like either (or any) of them but they really just don't register for me, good or bad.

 

[lordmandeep]

I doubt people from Montreal are not proud of their city...

Went to Quebec City, and really they could care less what goes on in English Canada. They just like all the tourists that come from the rest of Canada.

 

[Mustapha]

Russell Smith's column was spot on, and of course he hit the nail on the head when predicting that the Toronto Haters would start to spew their caustic bile immediately after reading the thing. One can read those rants from a smugly safe distance, but it really is unfortunate that a sizable chunk of the population of this country really feels that way, and likely always will no matter what you put in front of them. I mean, some people even vote Conservative, so whatcha gonna do?

I had fun with some good friends on Nuit Blanche, and the photos are here for those who are interested. A couple of the things we saw have not been described by others earlier in this thread, so some of my pics may be reveal undiscovered installations for you. While the images, titles, and captions tell much of our story, there were other installations we got to that I did not photograph, (or didn't do it well), like the Massey Hall-based Space Becomes The Instrument that, no, I would not have liked to have lined up for a couple of hours for, but which was worth the 20 minute wait at 6:30 AM. Nothing is worth a two hour wait though, when so many other installations are hidden around the next corner that had hardly a wait at all.

42

Late to this thread. I enjoyed everyone's comments - these pictures and dt toronto geek's pictures - too.

 

[Urban Shocker]

We forget that Canadians tend to have a huge inferiority complex and a lack of confidence.

So do many Torontonians, about our own city - the grass is always greener somewhere else, we have no distinctive creative modes of expression, we are a minor cultural centre etc.

 

[OttoSchloss]

So do many Torontonians, about our own city - the grass is always greener somewhere else, we have no distinctive creative modes of expression, we are a minor cultural centre etc.

Yeah well I was including Torontonians as Canadians. Torontonians also can be the most critical of their city (probably because most come from someplace else anyway and there's no place like home etc.)

But there's also this attitude that you can't love Toronto or feel good about the city as a Torontonian. It's in T.O. as well as the rest of the nation.

But I do find the people that are the most critical are also the people that do the least with their lives and free time. As if voluntarily staying home at night and surfing the net automatically means there's nothing to do. There's more to do in Toronto than any city in the country so it always perplexes me.

It's actually a tougher town than people give it credit for and I suppose if you're meek, it'll easily swallow you up.

 

[Whoaccio]

In fairness to the RoC, Toronto can often fit some rather annoying stereotypes. The best example is the new Leafs song, going on about how the Leafs are "Canada's dream." Everyone who's ever traveled outside Toronto knows that is just about the most ridiculous statement possible. There is this certain habit we have of taking fairly mediocre achievements, repackaging them, and broadcasting them to the rest of the country as if it is revolutionary. Especially vis a vis the West, some Torontonians can also be extraordinarily snotty about it. Most Edmontonian's don't have any particular affinity for malls, but more than anything they hate having someone from Toronto go over to tell them how they are missing out on street level cafes while it is -35 out. Or, listening to the current crop of Toronto LRT fanatics, that Transit City is the first LRT system in Canada, ignoring the highly succesful Calgary and Edmonton examples because they don't run through places that look like the Annex.

There are also some economic reasons. I know from family up north, most of the main reasons for Toronto entering their lives are entirely negative. From their perspective, someone from Toronto will fly up, judge the local industry and then report to some kind of Bay Street Overmind about financial viability. The punchline is usually that some fatcat Bay Street type gets rich by closing down the local industry. Or they get pissed off having to send every mortgage payment to Toronto, or paying their insurance premiums to Mississauga, or being forced to pay above market prices for electricity because a condo-dweller in Toronto wants to save the environment. For more industrial Southern Ontario types, I imagine there's also some kind of resentment against Lexus driving Torontonians who don't "make" anything "real." There's all sorts of populist cultural bias against perceived usurious characteristics of Toronto.

 

[Benc7]

But there's also this attitude that you can't love Toronto or feel good about the city as a Torontonian. It's in T.O. as well as the rest of the nation.

But I do find the people that are the most critical are also the people that do the least with their lives and free time. As if voluntarily staying home at night and surfing the net automatically means there's nothing to do. There's more to do in Toronto than any city in the country so it always perplexes me.

Hence, my signature: "Fish will be the last to discover water." So many of the people who live here don't LIVE here.

 

[Hipster Duck]

In fairness to the RoC, Toronto can often fit some rather annoying stereotypes. The best example is the new Leafs song, going on about how the Leafs are "Canada's dream." Everyone who's ever traveled outside Toronto knows that is just about the most ridiculous statement possible. There is this certain habit we have of taking fairly mediocre achievements, repackaging them, and broadcasting them to the rest of the country as if it is revolutionary. Especially vis a vis the West, some Torontonians can also be extraordinarily snotty about it. Most Edmontonian's don't have any particular affinity for malls, but more than anything they hate having someone from Toronto go over to tell them how they are missing out on street level cafes while it is -35 out. Or, listening to the current crop of Toronto LRT fanatics, that Transit City is the first LRT system in Canada, ignoring the highly succesful Calgary and Edmonton examples because they don't run through places that look like the Annex.

There are also some economic reasons. I know from family up north, most of the main reasons for Toronto entering their lives are entirely negative. From their perspective, someone from Toronto will fly up, judge the local industry and then report to some kind of Bay Street Overmind about financial viability. The punchline is usually that some fatcat Bay Street type gets rich by closing down the local industry. Or they get pissed off having to send every mortgage payment to Toronto, or paying their insurance premiums to Mississauga, or being forced to pay above market prices for electricity because a condo-dweller in Toronto wants to save the environment. For more industrial Southern Ontario types, I imagine there's also some kind of resentment against Lexus driving Torontonians who don't "make" anything "real." There's all sorts of populist cultural bias against perceived usurious characteristics of Toronto.

Who are these Torontonians who deny the existence of LRTs in Calgary and Edmonton? Which Toronto planner traveled to Edmonton to tell the locals about the virtues of outdoor cafes? Would it be more legit if someone from Portland, Vancouver or Copenhagen did it? Do environmentally-conscious condo dwellers set the pricing rules of electricity in Northern Ontario? Would it be more appropriate if someone from the local branch educated them about the futility of running a money-losing enterprise? How many Torontonians drive Lexi and how many of those Lexus drivers make money out of "nothing"? Is it less economically productive to earn money by managing capital than by working at a (government-owned) auto plant?

You either cite clichés that don't exist or RoC people lowering themselves to judgmental bigotry. In none of your examples do Torontonians actually reinforce their own outside stereotype.

 

[Hipster Duck]

Then again, they might be equivalent to the snotty Euro-trash (or Tyler Brule, for that matter) who sneer at Toronto from the other end, so to speak.

It may also be a matter of "fairly well-traveled"...to where. Like, if it's mainly potboiler upscaleish resort destinations a la Whistler or indigenous noble-savage destinations like the Maritimes, the wooden-telephone-pole Jane Jacobs-cum-Feist supposed draw of Toronto is a little...why bother?

Tyler Brule is an excellent example of that metropolitan hickishness that seems to infect educated RoCers when they try to assess Toronto.

Here is a guy who has ostensibly devoted the better part of his adult life being an arbiter of what is cool. He probably knows where in Paris to get the best Guyanese food or can write about the cryptic gang graffiti in Sao Paulo. He should know the cultural gestalt of cities better than just about anyone else if he wants to be taken seriously, and what happens when he lands in Toronto? He drops platitudes about how the waterfront is blocked by a wall of condos, the new condos are deadening the landscape and sucking life out of the streets, and how from the air all you see is tract housing sprawling for miles.

This is funny because if he had to write about LA, he'd probably admonish us to look beyond the sprawl and see thriving Hispanic communities living in the vast bungalow belt; he'd probably go on about the Miami Vice cool of Biscayne Blvd - even though the condos in that city really do deaden the streetscape and probably cut the city off from its waterfront even more than Toronto.

If he's going to judge Toronto with that kind of critical depth, why doesn't he just come clean and say that the Hippo Bus tour was a rip-off and that Mamma Mia was waaay better in Cincinnati.

 

[Whoaccio]

Who are these Torontonians who deny the existence of LRTs in Calgary and Edmonton? Which Toronto planner traveled to Edmonton to tell the locals about the virtues of outdoor cafes? Would it be more legit if someone from Portland, Vancouver or Copenhagen did it? Do environmentally-conscious condo dwellers set the pricing rules of electricity in Northern Ontario? Would it be more appropriate if someone from the local branch educated them about the futility of running a money-losing enterprise? How many Torontonians drive Lexi and how many of those Lexus drivers make money out of "nothing"? Is it less economically productive to earn money by managing capital than by working at a (government-owned) auto plant?

I'm not trying to defend economic blue-collarism, just telling you that it is quite pervasive. There are people who look at Bay street and dislike it, not because it is Toronto, but because it doesn't jive with their world view of people "making things." If all the banks were in Flin Flon, they would hate Flin Flon. There are these systemic causes of anti-Toronto sentiment that exist. I don't think we should get rid of the Banks and try to revive the manufacturing economy, but Torontonians should have some idea of what people think as opposed to assuming they are just rubes. In this case, rather than disparaging the many failings of non-GTA economies, it would probably be more helpful to point out the many hardworking service sector employees that really characterize the GTA and point out that Toronto is more than a social club for investment bankers and art dealers.

To other examples, yes enviro-conscious condo-dwellers do set electricity pricing rules and Northerners absolutely hate it. The entire feed in tariff subsidy scheme for solar/wind, the phase out of coal and designation of most of N. Ontario as wilderness preserve are almost universally seen up North as vote buying in Toronto at the expense of Northern jobs. That's not a balanced point of view, but it is a common one. Just blithely pretending as though these aren't real concerns up North only makes it worse. Torontonian's hate it when perceived "outsiders" make decisions for them as well, so it isn't that hard to understand. God knows how many time's I've heard someone complain about how the TPA is managed by the Feds, or how amalgamation was somehow invalid because Mike Harris wasn't elected in Toronto, or how out-of-city elitists are forcing diesel trains down children's throats in Weston. It's the same principle.

None of this is to say I agree/disagree with the underlying ideas. The best solution to these cultural gaps though isn't to call the other side names, then act like a victim when you get called names. This country has a permanent victim complex where everybody is persecuted by everybody else. No one is ever going to be able to establish themselves as the main victim, especially not the biggest, richest and most powerful city. Listening to some people here, though, Toronto is Kashechewan. We're best to either listen to why people say they dislike Toronto (which, more often than not, revolves around pretty minor things like the Leafs or the CBC's awful programing), fix what we can and move on. Failing that, we should just do what every other city in our position does: grow some skin and ignore it.

I mean, who the hell is Tyler Brule anyways? Why does it matter what some euro-trash wannabe thinks? Why does that name come up every goddamn times this Toronto-victim thread comes about? Most cultures with a victim complex come up with some kind of malevolent representation of the oppressor (Nazis, Imperial Japanese, the KKK). We came up with this guy. The Russel Smith column didn't even attract any significant amount of "haters," two or three by my count.

 

[Hipster Duck]

Whoaccio, I don't think you get the gist of my posts. I'm not accusing you of believing or defending non-Torontonians for their attitudes. If I accused you of anything, it's introducing non-existent people or scenarios: Torontonians who don't think LRT exists in Alberta or planners who travel to Edmonton to extoll the virtues of sidewalk cafes. These people either don't exist or are such an insignificant minority of ignoramuses that they aren't taken at face value.

My other point is very simple: one can be critical about Toronto's flaws - you know I am one of the staunchest critics of Toronto on this forum - but the critique has to be substantive. This goes for 'rubes' and people who are supposedly metropolitan and sophisticated, like Tyler Brule. When RoCers say Toronto is a crime-pit; when Tyler Brule says he thinks that the streets are 'deadened' by condos; when urbane Montrealers think that Toronto is all business and no fun - these people are opining on Toronto in ways that are either disingenuous, platitudinous or are just regurgitating hackneyed clichés.

Just once, I want to read something thought provoking - whether it portrays Toronto in a positive or negative light - from anyone, anywhere. I don't know about you, but never in my entire life have I read anything profound about Toronto in an essay or heard anything enlightening about this city from an outsider that made me change the way I think about this city.

 

[lordmandeep]

people have to be real stupid to say that providing a service like managing money is not a proper way of making a living, but making cars that no one wants is. Also that the only reason you still have a job is because the govt bailed out their business.

Bunch of idiots, people are so narrow minded like that.

Really, this sense of entitlement in rural areas is ridiculous. "I should be able to have a great job in an economically depressed area and the govt should help me get it"

 

[adma]

Just once, I want to read something thought provoking - whether it portrays Toronto in a positive or negative light - from anyone, anywhere. I don't know about you, but never in my entire life have I read anything profound about Toronto in an essay or heard anything enlightening about this city from an outsider that made me change the way I think about this city.

Does that include "outsiders" who settle in Toronto? (Jane Jacobs et al)