CNN Travel-Toronto

[Bogtrotter]

Just noticed that our fare city is being featured online on CNN today-www.cnn.com/2006/TRAVEL/D...index.html

The usual general description- see Casa loma, CN Tower ..yada. Apparently certain streets are rich with the wafting aroma of garlic. What a pantload of nonsense, but better than no coverage at all i guess.

 

[cdl42]

I gave up at the second sentence...

"In fact, Toronto has attracted so many cultures to its shores that the United Nations deemed it the world's most multicultural city."

Why won't this falsehood die?!?

 

[roch5220]

I still stick by the possibility that at one time the UN did such declaration. I remember seeing a link from the city of toronto website to the UN with the claim. The only thing stopping me from saying it was a fact is because the link was to a page that had been removed/deleted.

 

[cdl42]

The Anatomy of an Urban Legend: Toronto's Multicultural Reputation by Michael Doucet

The city has claimed it in offical documents on more than one occasion, but that doesn't make it true. Short selection from the essay:

Old legends, especially urban ones, apparently die hard. What was good enough for Fortune, was good enough for City Hall. Neither organization had bothered to check the facts. I wrote to Mayor Barbara Hall after the "Consider Toronto" advertisement appeared and outlined my research into the mysterious UN declaration for her.(71) In her reply, she confirmed my earlier conclusions:

as a result of your note, I instructed those concerned to look into the matter and they, too, were unable to track down the origin of the declaration. You were right. City of Toronto staff have now been alerted to the issue, and I have asked City of Toronto staff to 'expunge' the phrase from all future communications.(72)


The big question is how on earth you could quantify such as claim as "most multicultural"?

 

[El Chico905]

It's a Wikiality, if enough people say it, it's truthiness becomes valid.

 

[Canuck 36]

Much like the elephant population that has recently tripled?

 

[thenay]

Believe it or not, of all the cities i've been to in the US and Canada, Toronto is one of the biggest multicultural cities i've noticed.

I don't know over the world, but for sure in North America.

 

[spmarshall]

If you were to rank them by percent foreign born, then Miami would come before Toronto (which is second), due to the Cubans and other immigrants from Latin America. Though Toronto has a wider variety immigrant groups.

Percent visible minority - sorry, but Toronto loses out in North America to many US cities, like Detroit, MI, Benton Harbor, MI, Gary, IN, East St. Louis, IL and so on.

New York has a great variety of immigrant groups and ethnic cultures, like Toronto does.

You can't come up with a magic number, though Toronto is outstanding for its multiculturalism, and there are good arguments that Toronto may indeed be the "most multicultural" city due to qualitative reasons along with the stats, but the UN never said so. I'm sure this has been brought up many a time, and I'm sure Mike Doucet's good work has been cited several times here too.

 

[adma]

The usual general description- see Casa loma, CN Tower ..yada.

Surely not CNN Tower?!? ;-)

 

[wyliepoon]

Two comments on the article,

Toronto (pronounced Toro-know by locals)

Really? I think many locals pronounce it that way, but I think there are also a lot of Torontonians who pronounce both t's.

Not far away, Chinatown is an ideal spot for early evening dim sum (small plates of Cantonese fare brought to your table via carts full of various selections). Lai Wah Heen (416-977-9899, www.metropolitan.com/lwh/external link) offers an extensive menu that suits all budgets and appetites. The steamed purse of fresh crabmeat, shrimp and bamboo shoots makes for a good appetizer. Afterward, roam the streets, where you'll find the largest ethnic Chinese population of any North American city. Though Toronto has six Chinese communities, this main hub is fun to explore on foot.

Uh, first of all, dim sum is not usually eaten in the "early evening"- it's served from morning to about 3pm (but a few places in Toronto do serve dim sum all day, and apparently one restaurant in Scarborough even serves it 24/7). Secondly, the Metropolitan where Lai Wah Heen is located is in the historic Chinatown behind City Hall, which is quite a distance (for tourists, at least) from the "main hub" Spadina/Dundas Chinatown that most of us are familiar with.

 

[spmarshall]

I pronounce it Ter-raw-no. I don't hear locals with English as their first language say the second T, even many immigrants end up dropping it.

An interesting tidbit - I was in Sheffield England, and a friendly lady at the City Hall there was interested in where I was from. I replied with the proper full pronounciation - Tor-ron-toe - she was surprised that I said it that way. As it turns out, she has family here and visits often (she loves this city), and wondered if I was really a local before I explained that I used it since I was out of the country, and I thought most Brits might be confused by the local pronounciation.

 

[ganjavih]

No one in England understood what I was saying until I began pronouncing both T's. I re-adopted the lazy local version soon after I got back.

 

[BuildTO]

As with many urban legends, I think there is an element of truth to the "most multicultural" claim, even if there is no proof. I wonder if perhaps someone at the UN used the claim in a verbal address, which might explain why there is no written record of it.

I have a friend who teaches migration issues, and he has done a study which shows that when comparing the Canadian policy of multiculturalism with the American melting pot, there is actually little difference in the retention of customs brought into North America by immigrants.

Nevertheless, I do notice a distinction in the way Torontonians regard visible minorities. Americans seem to focus on race; the first question I get from many Americans is my line of descent (although as you can guess, the actual question is almost always the blunt "Where are you from?). Torontonians are much more likely to view race as simply one of many individual characteristics; I rarely get asked that question when meeting locals, and if so, it is never the first question out of a stranger's mouth.

This goes a long way to explaining our true diversity. We have long been known as a "city of neighbourhoods", and what I have always been most proud of is the way we can explore that characteristic of our city without segregation. Sure, a lot of American cities have a high percentage of visible minorities, but take a city like Chicago and look at the segregation.

 

[BuildTO]

We've been through the pronunciation arguments more than once on this forum.

There are two alternate local pronunciations, known as "free variants" because you can choose which to use within your dialect and need not even stick with one all the time. One is to completely drop the 't'; the other is to articulate the 't' as a "flap", which means the tongue does not make as deliberate a contact with the roof of the mouth behind the teeth (the result being a sound more like 'd').

And yes, when talking to foreigners, a lot of us use "citation form" which is to articulate all sounds carefully, including the second 't'.

Note that neither local articulation is "lazy". They are simply dialect variations.

 

[ganjavih]

Nevertheless, I do notice a distinction in the way Torontonians regard visible minorities. Americans seem to focus on race; the first question I get from many Americans is my line of descent (although as you can guess, the actual question is almost always the blunt "Where are you from?).

I'm not sure it's a Canadian/American thing, rather, it may be a unique Toronto thing not to pay attention to where people are from. In Montreal, for example, where multiculturalism isn't as part of the identity as in Toronto, people are asked, "where are you from?" all the time. I also wonder how often the "where are you from?" question is uttered in cities such as NYC that are more comfortable in their multiculturalism.