Toronto article in Fall 2009 Intelligent Life Magazine

[Anth]

A sympathetic, if bizarrely distorted look at our city:

Being There: Toronto

The comments at the end are pretty sobering. Many of their criticisms are shallow and have more to do with personal ignorance and ethnocentrism, but they do contain some depressing kernels of truth.

 

[Hipster Duck]

While this wasn't an A+ article, it's probably the best article about Toronto I've read by a foreign correspondent.

You can't really disagree with anything he says and I love Toronto for the same reasons: you trade a certain amount of grandeur and excitement for a whole lot of accessibility and affordability.

If you go to the Vintages section of the LCBO you might be confronted by a choice to buy a wine with a score of 90 that costs $20 or a wine with a score of 98 that costs $200. If you go for the former, Toronto's the city for you.

 

[Tewder]

Some of the comments are just mean-spirited but there is some harsh truth there. We can't keep excusing wooden hydro poles and pot-marked asphalt *everywhere* as charming. It's not. For me the state of NPS is a good barometer of where we are in terms of the sorry state of the city. We cannot deny decades of neglect and we cannot expect others visiting here to just be able to overlook everything and take the time to get to know us so that they will discover how great we are. These things are more readily apparent elsewhere and most people are just too lazy to bother.

I hope the panam games will provide the motivation and the funding to turn some of these things around. The city I knew 20 or 30 years ago was ambitious and proud (litter would never have lasted 24 hours) and there was an energy here because people knew they were living in one of the new great cities. This seems to have gradually disappeared into the mire of inferiority, political lassitude and public apathy, and truth be told I don't know if I can totally blame younger generations from feeling this way. Toronto is a great place with so much wasted opportunity but it needs to get over its pettiness and it needs to believe in itself and show it... and then Londoners who don't like it can f*#k off back to their overcompensating and self-obsessed little place where apparently it's always freaking sunny and nice... ya right!

 

[Pfloyd]

I actually thought the article was pretty bad and inaccurate at times, even from the very start: "It’s small, bitterly cold in winter, and far from beautiful..." small? We are the fourth largest city in US/Canada! Bitterly cold? I know we are far from mild in the winter season, but has this idiot been to Montreal, Helsinki, Quebec City, Moscow, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Oslo, Calgary? In fact our winters are comparable to Chicago's.
I agree that Toronto is no winner in the beauty department, but it is definitely getting better, and we do have our share of interesting buildings especially in the last few years, as everybody in this forum is well aware.
The whole paragraph about filipino nannies was just lame and unnecessary.
I could go on but I rather recommend two of the best most complete articles written about Toronto both published in National Geographic Magazine, the first one in the August 1975 issue, and my personal favorite in the June 1996 issue. Maybe one day I'll scan them and share them with everybody in the forum.
In general, I was surprised, considering The Economist proven prestige, that they would publish a report of such low quality.

 

[Riverdale Rink Rat]

I'll try again later, but...

I actually thought the article was pretty bad and inaccurate at times, even from the very start: "It’s small, bitterly cold in winter, and far from beautiful..."

... I couldn't make it through the first four or five paragraphs. Dude is a Londoner, and he's cold in Toronto. I'm from Calgary, and I'm warm in Toronto. Neither is relevant to Toronto.

I'll try again later, but I must agree that I'm disappointed in the Economist on this one.

 

[hbl33]

This is one of the things why I don't read Economist anymore.

What do they know about arts and culture? The writer's judgement toward women? One of the laughable article I've read so far from The Economist.

http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/emily-gould/what-are-women-fighting-about

It is much more biased than Macleans and makes The Onion (satirical news comedy) look like Reuters.

Stick to business and get off the other topics.

 

[OttoSchloss]

I actually thought the article was pretty bad and inaccurate at times, even from the very start: "It’s small, bitterly cold in winter, and far from beautiful..." small? We are the fourth largest city in US/Canada! Bitterly cold? I know we are far from mild in the winter season, but has this idiot been to Montreal, Helsinki, Quebec City, Moscow, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Oslo, Calgary? In fact our winters are comparable to Chicago's.
I agree that Toronto is no winner in the beauty department, but it is definitely getting better, and we do have our share of interesting buildings especially in the last few years, as everybody in this forum is well aware.
The whole paragraph about filipino nannies was just lame and unnecessary.
I could go on but I rather recommend two of the best most complete articles written about Toronto both published in National Geographic Magazine, the first one in the August 1975 issue, and my personal favorite in the June 1996 issue. Maybe one day I'll scan them and share them with everybody in the forum.
In general, I was surprised, considering The Economist proven prestige, that they would publish a report of such low quality.

Well I suppose after the inevitable shift of the Atlantic Gulf Stream occurs, England will be shivering in its collective Wellingtons in comparison to Canada's temps.

 

[Tewder]

I think we need to be 'big' enough to allow that some of the negative perceptions of outsiders, British or American or ROCers for that matter, do have some validity, no matter how skewed. We're not perfect and far from it. No big deal. Many of us around here have been criticizing, hopefully constructively, the defeatist mediocrity and lack of vision that so often seems endemic to the city. The point is we do it because we believe Toronto at heart is so much more than what it challenges itself to be, and this is not about what outsiders think but about what we think of ourselves. I do see changes that are encouraging but this only makes me want to be more critical and more demanding, not less.

Toronto to me right now seems a bit like an awkward adolescent that still has a bit further to grow, mature and develop in order to truly feel actualized, independent and confident in its own skin. I think we need to get past the ideological navel-gazing, dropping the Multicultural nonsense and fully embracing the liberal/tolerant stew of ethnic groups/cultures we are as just a fundamental aspect of a bigger Toronto identity that we need to start to build and to value. Otherwise we simply continue to be culturally colonial, which is to say derivative and arrested. I also hope we will one day see the end of the impulse that propels the best of us away from home in order to pursue approbation, reward or success, whether the arts, sports, sciences or commerce. It is possible to achieve all of this here as some notable examples show us and the richness of what we do and who we are would be even greater if we didn't constantly lose the best of us to the glory of other places. I would hope a more actualized Toronto would go a long way to changing this, which in turn would further contribute to a more actualized city, and so on...

 

[hbl33]

I think we need to be 'big' enough to allow that some of the negative perceptions of outsiders, British or American or ROCers for that matter, do have some validity, no matter how skewed. We're not perfect and far from it. No big deal. Many of us around here have been criticizing, hopefully constructively, the defeatist mediocrity and lack of vision that so often seems endemic to the city. The point is we do it because we believe Toronto at heart is so much more than what it challenges itself to be, and this is not about what outsiders think but about what we think of ourselves. I do see changes that are encouraging but this only makes me want to be more critical and more demanding, not less.

Toronto to me right now seems a bit like an awkward adolescent that still has a bit further to grow, mature and develop in order to truly feel actualized, independent and confident in its own skin. I think we need to get past the ideological navel-gazing, dropping the Multicultural nonsense and fully embracing the liberal/tolerant stew of ethnic groups/cultures we are as just a fundamental aspect of a bigger Toronto identity that we need to start to build and to value. Otherwise we simply continue to be culturally colonial, which is to say derivative and arrested. I also hope we will one day see the end of the impulse that propels the best of us away from home in order to pursue approbation, reward or success, whether the arts, sports, sciences or commerce. It is possible to achieve all of this here as some notable examples show us and the richness of what we do and who we are would be even greater if we didn't constantly lose the best of us to the glory of other places. I would hope a more actualized Toronto would go a long way to changing this, which in turn would further contribute to a more actualized city, and so on...

Which truthfully Toronto is maturing like this, so far. Even though I've been criticizing how Toronto is not taking its revitalization seriously, on cultural senses it has been fully developed, and it is norm to take these attacks as a minimal matter than a full blow to the city. As soon as I bashed Toronto about the current situations, I started to understand how T.O. evolves to the identical one of NYC, London and Paris. To that sense, Toronto is a stronghold in mosaic culture for Canadians. I know that Korea can't handle enough blows when regarding the racism and social discrimination; same thing for Japan, even at their most cosmopolitan state.

 

[allabootmatt]

I saw this in Intelligent Life a couple of weeks ago and thought it utterly bizarre. I mean, the guy's sentiments are sort of understandable--Toronto friendly, tolerant, but unspectacular, etc.--yet what I was amazed by is how lame his experience of the city seems to be. I mean, if you were looking for someone to write a story about travel or expatriation or whatever, surely it's preferable to find someone a little more plugged in?

On a more general note, I think it's important to keep in mind the British psyche here--which is a fairly complex animal as I have learned living in the UK for some years now. Britain has a deep-seated inferiority complex--different, but no less intense than Canada's, I guess. Problem is, there just aren't many places to sneer at anymore to compensate. Real living standards in most of continental Europe are considerably higher, and the rise of EasyJet and so on has made this obvious to a large portion of the population. The U.S. is, obviously, an immensely more vibrant and promising place, even with its terrible problems--scratch any British business person and they will sing the glories of America, etc. Australia, meanwhile, has such fabulous weather compared to this storm-lashed island it's hard to be hard on it. That leaves Canada, which is a handy target--far away, cold, quirky, misunderstood, etc. The London papers are unbelievably snide about Canada, when they cover it at all--which is usually to note with relish and pity some snow-related calamity or animal attack. I don't mean to excuse any of Toronto's flaws, but there's an element of it's-not-about-us-it's-about-them here.

Interesting to compare stuff like this with the practically rapturous coverage Toronto receives several times a year in the Travel section of the New York Times--generally written by people who seriously know their sh*t.

Also, I think to Europeans Toronto is a strange animal. Canada as a whole is sort of obscure to most people on this continent, particularly the notion of urban Canada. 'North American big city' to 98% of Europeans means New York, or, maybe, Chicago; Montreal and Vancouver get passes (when they get noticed, which is pretty rare) for being associated with nature and semi-French, respectively, both of which are relatively easy for Europeans to process. An English-speaking, non-mountain-surrounded, non-American large urban centre in North America doesn't compute.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying: I wouldn't expect much in the way of Toronto-loving from Europe, which is in many ways an incredibly insular place. Meanwhile, Canadians and the people who love them are turning Toronto into an immensely interesting city, one that is--dare I say--considerably more vibrant than any on the European continent except London, and quite a bit more livable than even that exception.

Cheers from Tower Hamlets!

 

[allabootmatt]

Edit with an addendum: I incidentally remember some story in the Times (of London) last year by Howard Jacobson in which he sort of grudgingly praised Toronto as 'civilised' or some such after a lot of claptrap about 'the sickening smells of the North American continent' or some such, and I remember thinking, this is someone who lives in Britain? And he's complaining about stuff smelling bad? He also, of course, had the obligatory digression about the 'underground city,' which no UK writer can possibly ignore.

 

[Cooool]

Those comments are absolutely scathing.

But honestly, I think the reality is that Toronto is not so different from Chicago and New York. I was rather surprised how run down parts of Manhattan looked despite the fact it is passed off as a wealthy borough in the media through shows like Sex and the City and Gossip Girl. Obviously, Chicago and New York are much bigger and have more touristy sights like Millenium Park and Central Park, but there's not much difference in quality.

 

[Hipster Duck]

Meanwhile, Canadians and the people who love them are turning Toronto into an immensely interesting city, one that is--dare I say--considerably more vibrant than any on the European continent except London, and quite a bit more livable than even that exception.

Wait. What? Are you honestly telling me that Toronto is more culturally significant right now than any continental European city? Do you really think that there is more going on south of Bloor street tonight than in all the 30 square miles of Paris? One day are they going to write books about the Communist's Daughter like it was Les Deux Magots?

Matt, you're one of the more educated forumers and I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Still, you have to convince me that Toronto really is this cultural dynamo that basically leaves the likes of Paris, Berlin, Madrid and Milan in the dust because I can't, even with my most generous hometown pride, begin to see how you came to that conclusion.

 

[hbl33]

Wait. What? Are you honestly telling me that Toronto is more culturally significant right now than any continental European city? Do you really think that there is more going on south of Bloor street tonight than in all the 30 square miles of Paris? One day are they going to write books about the Communist's Daughter like it was Les Deux Magots?

Matt, you're one of the more educated forumers and I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Still, you have to convince me that Toronto really is this cultural dynamo that basically leaves the likes of Paris, Berlin, Madrid and Milan in the dust because I can't, even with my most generous hometown pride, begin to see how you came to that conclusion.

Toronto is only 215 years old. All European Cities you've mentioned including London are over 800 years old!

 

[PukeGreen]

On a more general note, I think it's important to keep in mind the British psyche here--which is a fairly complex animal as I have learned living in the UK for some years now. Britain has a deep-seated inferiority complex--different, but no less intense than Canada's, I guess.

This is my thought, too -- some of the author's comments reveal as much about his own insecurities, and those of some Brits, as it does about Canada and Toronto. Some of the comments are based in truth (yup, it's kinda cold here and we're a bit insecure relative to the US, sure) but the article also contains many off-the-cuff bizarre conclusions based on anecdotal observations that are not universal to Torontonians. All that stuff about the Filipino nannies and dinner parties has nothing to do with Toronto; surely a certain demographic of people everywhere have nannies and dinner parties. I don't.

As for the mostly ignorant comments beneath -- bah, trolls. The same sneering anonymous people that pop up beneath every article about every topic on every news site. Again, anyone who feels a need to troll news sites attacking other cities obviously has some insecurities of their own.

Finally, it's interesting to note that, criticisms aside, the author does claim to like Toronto and backs it up by continuing to live here. So perhaps actions speak louder than words in this case.