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2014 Municipal Election: Toronto Mayoral Race

King of Kensington said:
Lots of Ontario cities have had Italian Canadian mayors: DiIanni in Hamilton, Chiarelli in Ottawa and currently Scarpitti in Markham.

They're definitely involved in politics out of proportion to their share of the population. Unfortunately Toronto's Italian Canadian candidates have been pretty lousy: Nunziata, Rossi and Pantalone.
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I don't know where yo get your figures but I thought I had seen in the past there were 250,000 italians in the GTA and this figure was from years and years ago.
 
Johnny Au said:
Soknacki obviously cannot be Japanese.

No syllable ends in a consonant (except for "n") in Japanese.

There is also no "k" in a native Italian name.
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It's not that obvious when you hear it rather than see it.

As I said, in Japanese, /n/ itself is a consonant. In addition to that, some vowel sounds are reduced depending on the stress pattern of the word, such that it almost sounds like there are consonant clusters.

So, theoretically you might have a name Sokunaki (that might indeed be how Soknacki would be rendered for Japanese speakers) and the reduction of the syllable /ku/ would result in something that sounded effectively like so-k'-n-a-ki.

As for native Italian names, a good number of northern Italians have names of German origin that would include the odd K, but you wouldn't get anything that sounded like Soknacki from an Italian name without a transcription/pronunciation error being involved.
 
ehlow said:
LOL. it is laughably bad. I wish those tweets were as viral as "drunken stuper" or "enough to eat at home".

I think Soknacki lacks personal charisma. He doesn't get the attention that Tory or Chow do, he just doesn't seem as compelling. It may not matter to some, but I think that does affect some people in subtle ways.
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Did Barbara Hall have any charisma?
 
gabe said:
If they don't like women marrying white guys, why don't they move back to China? Reminds me when George Smitherman was running for mayor, some Muslims at my work wouldn't' vote for him because he was gay.

I was recently at a Olivia Chow book signing. There was people from all races, Asians, blacks, Sikh, Hindu. I think you'll find the working class minorities will relate a lot more to someone like Chow over someone like Tory.
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But I think Chow feeds on that - the she is like them thing. Even people born in this country have humble beginnings and through hard work aspire to whatever they want to be. Its been a long time since she has been a "working class minority"
 
Riverdale Rink Rat said:
1. She was the Official Opposition's critic on Transport issues. She would have had, arguably, the most influence of any non-Cabinet Minister on transportation issues.
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Where are the results of her being a Transportation critic, with all this influence you ascribe her.

Riverdale Rink Rat said:
2. How could you possibly care to know what 'favours' she might get as Mayor from the other two political parties, but totally neglect to even mention what she might get from her own party if she helped deliver Toronto? Your bias against the Official Opposition is showing.
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An NDP opposition to a Conservative government with a majority. An opposition that is currently polling third.
What favours can the NDP grant in the next year before they are no longer the opposition?
 
edmundoconnor said:
And Stintz had even less to do with it. The blanket dismissal of a candidate purely because she was not on Toronto council is plain silly, and merely one of many, many ham-fisted remarks her campaign has made. I hope Stintz and her campaign get an earful from voters because of such antics.
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Well is that not what happened to Smiterman? I remember during one televised debate, Pantalone said that no outsider (from council) had ever become mayor of Toronto. He asked this and looked at Rob Ford who agreed. They were trying to show that Smitherman was the outsider and sure enough a councillor became mayor
 
picard102 said:
Where are the results of her being a Transportation critic, with all this influence you ascribe her.



An NDP opposition to a Conservative government with a majority. An opposition that is currently polling third.
What favours can the NDP grant in the next year before they are no longer the opposition?
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None.
 
ehlow said:
I had no idea she was not well regarded in the Chinese community. Why is that?
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I don't know the exact reasons either (I guess I could ask my mother, but we've already had quite a few arguments in the past several months regarding Ford and politics so I would prefer not to). If I were to hazard a guess, I would say it's probably because the majority of suburban Chinese-Torontonians are (Cantonese-speaking) immigrants from HK from the 80s-90s (unlike what jus' bullsh.. oops I meant jusbokeh claims), who came from the world's most laissez-faire economy with its super small government and neoliberal, individualistic, everyone-for-themselves society, and who came here not because they were trying to escape from that kind of society but because they were deathly afraid of the '97 reunification with China and wanted to move here to preserve their lifestyle. Understandably, Chow's politics would not sit very well with them.

ehlow said:
I asked someone at lunch who knows lots of Chinese (Cantonese) people how the Chinese-Canadian community feels about Olivia Chow.

She said they probably haven't even heard of her, but as far as she knows don't have anything against her.

She also implied that some Chinese-Canadians might vote for her simply because she's Chinese.. lol. I would never use that as a reason to vote for someone, but apparently there are people who would.
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I really doubt that lots of Chinese-Torontonians haven't heard of Chow, because she does go on to Chinese media quite frequently, so I would say many people actually have some idea / preconceived notions of her. But at the same time I think there is some truth to the idea that people could potentially vote for her just because she is Chinese. One of the current town councillors in Richmond Hill is a longtime radio/TV host for the Chinese-language network who is fairly well-known but had never really done much outside of being a radio/TV host, and yet he basically cruised to victory in 2010 when he ran for office for the first time.

ehlow said:
I find it interesting that Markham has never had a Chinese mayor, and the city council has 1 out of 8 councillors of Chinese descent, judging from last names.

Markham ethnically is 38% Chinese.
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Part of the reason I think is that many Chinese-Canadians from these new-immigrants heavy communities simply aren't that interested in politics (either running or participating). For that matter, Richmond, BC, whose pop is 50% Chinese, has also never produced a Chinese mayor and currently only has 2 Chinese councillors out of 8.
 
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the lemur said:
It's not that obvious when you hear it rather than see it.

As I said, in Japanese, /n/ itself is a consonant. In addition to that, some vowel sounds are reduced depending on the stress pattern of the word, such that it almost sounds like there are consonant clusters.

So, theoretically you might have a name Sokunaki (that might indeed be how Soknacki would be rendered for Japanese speakers) and the reduction of the syllable /ku/ would result in something that sounded effectively like so-k'-n-a-ki.

As for native Italian names, a good number of northern Italians have names of German origin that would include the odd K, but you wouldn't get anything that sounded like Soknacki from an Italian name without a transcription/pronunciation error being involved.
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Thanks for the clarifications.

I always wondered if Canada had a Chinese-Canadian mayor. If not, then Chow may be the first.

San Francisco's current mayor is Chinese.
 
Perhaps we're making too much of the Mandarin/Cantonese divide. As a young man I worked in Derek Lee's office in Scarborough Rouge River and we assumed that lots of Chinese-Canadians saw a familiar name on the ballot of chose it, even though Lee was as white as most MPs.

As for this supposed divide, we'll see if it matters in Toronto.
 
Could someone please list all of the funding commitments that Karen Stintz got out of Ottawa for Toronto transit? To be slamming Chow's record so much means she simply *must* have a terrific record of doing that. Oh, right.
 
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Palma said:
I don't know where yo get your figures but I thought I had seen in the past there were 250,000 italians in the GTA and this figure was from years and years ago.
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There are more than 500,000 Italian Canadians in the GTA and close to 1 million in Ontario. Certainly the percentage of elected officials exceeds their share of the population.
 
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