I know--and I acknowledged--that the Golden Mile was torn down; "rebuild" is just another way of putting it (and hey; the replacement retained the name). And I'm also not denying that "ethnicity" in Scarborough goes back a way; I'm just stating that regardless of who's patronized it over the years, Eglinton Square maintained a homespun throwback "whiteness" (or, should we put it, "Cold War monoculture-ness" Or is that too "pretentious" for you?) for longer than your average Scarborough retail hub. And what's the matter with being misty-eyed about that? Just because we *reflect* on it doesn't mean we want to *freeze-dry* it. (And even if Scarborough was already "ethnifying" in the 70s, the mass cultural barometer was still, shall we say, "white-centric"--there's a reason why it all begat Wayne's World, after all.)
Frankly, the way you're going about it, you might as well be attacking the "pretentiousness" of those who decry the teardown-rebuilds and hack EIFS stucco jobs on many a 50s Scarborough bungalow or CMHC matchbox, and who might actually be sympathetically interested in the postwar-boomburb genesis of, say, the Clairlea neighbourhood behind Eg Square. Because it certainly sounds like even though you grew up in the area, you didn't develop the "tools" to come by that approach--and if you're using the pro-Ford silent-majority alibi, well, hey, a philistine is a philistine, what can I do...
