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agreed. what most people consider "american culture" was created by us too; we were there from the beginning, at many times to a degree out of proportion to our share of the combined population.

the "growing beyond canada" thing is an old component of the inter-canadian debate. it's a known trope.

montreal does feel canadian. in fact, nowhere feels more canadian than montreal. i often think of this when people, usually tourists full of guidebook wisdom, start going on about france and paris. the montreal alley with the iron stairs, the green-roofed church/chateau-y institutional building...

i guess you'll be furnishing quotes in addition to your vague imputations.

is this really the level on which you want to approach this? are you so factionally minded that you can only see people -- and their arguments -- as predetermined avatars of ongoing tribal wars? is the fact that i live in montreal the only possible reason i could have for saying what i said...

this of u of t / harvard thing is embarrassingly homerish. were u of t in boston, and harvard in toronto, you would be totally unambiguous about saying toronto had the advantage. can you not see that you are sticking up for the home team at least a bit here?

it's a very particular refusal to accept the synthesizing aspect of new york's genius. it wasn't uncommon in 1910, but it is now.

strident, uncommon assertions are not the same as facts. they're not even the same as arguments.

if new york wouldn't crack your top 50, then your list is designed to make you appear interesting and idiosyncratic -- and not to be, you know, accurate.

the bay and gables are nice, but this stuff is just dumpy.

how dreary. is nothing informal or spontaneous anymore? if canada goes much further down this road i will move to buenos aires. or stay in quebec ;)

i remember that toronto from the '80s. very tall, very sparse and with much more of a sort of gritty, "midwestern inner city" feel than it has today. soot-stained brick and canadian accents.

love this stuff

i think it is silly when people respond to a new story with a "so what? what about [insert other stat here]?" it's not a meaningful contribution to the discussion, and it betrays a lack of understanding as to how both news media and the human mind work. the news is, at root, a collection of...

just over two million.

absolutely nothing, save for the fact that for about 1600 years, all members of any western civilization would have understood that a church is a place in which one is generally supposed to comport oneself in a respectful manner. but you knew that, of course. you were just asking a faux-naive...

there is a certain strain of moralism that insists -- absolutely insists -- that the "consenting adults" trope can never be used to protect any sphere of vice, as the very fact that the participants have consented to vice means that they are damaged or ill in some fashion that precludes consent...

traveling the world, you quickly find out that the pressure to be "non-racist" is not the same everywhere.

re: the above, shrieking "nazi" is similar.

while racial bigotry is indeed as objectionable as it is widely perceived to be, it does the overall discussion no good to shriek "racism" whenever the conversation takes a critical turn. like it or not, we are participating in a cultural experiment of sorts, and this conversation will be had...