News   Jan 24, 2025
Stacking Blocks
 110     0 
News   Jan 23, 2025
Multi-Tower Proposal at Dundas and Neyagawa in Oakville
 1.1K     3 
News   Jan 23, 2025
London Dock's Sloped Facade Transformed with Sapphire Balconies' Glide-On System
 920     1 

Toronto Comedy Festival

Re: Why cant I edit?

^They may be holding off until the French government allows for positive stereotypes of Americans.

Good to see that Toronto-envy is still alive and well among some Montrealers.
 
Re: Why cant I edit?

Yeh I agree with SD. Toronto also suffers from the whole mini-NY syndrome that seemed to take hold in the 80's. Thankfully the city is growing out of that.
 
Re: Why cant I edit?

While the festival sounds great, I'm opposed to giving $500,000 to help start another festival that another city is already doing.

That $500,000 could instead be used to beef up our current line of major festivals. Pride, Caribana and the new Luminato Festival could all use those funds to expand and promote its programming.

Louroz
 
Re: Why cant I edit?

Toronto also suffers from the whole mini-NY syndrome that seemed to take hold in the 80's. Thankfully the city is growing out of that.
Click to expand...

I've never known anyone who thought that way.

If anything, the city is more grown up than people give it credit for...it's the media who are finally growing up.
 
Re: Why cant I edit?

I think that perceptions of Toronto are extremely dependent on one's generation viewpoint and general social milieu. Robert Fulford, for example, has harped on numerous occasions that Toronto reminds him of a mid-western US city in its social mores, something which Clifford Krauss (the former NYT Toronto correspondent) was said to agree with in Fulford's profile of him in Toronto Life. An older (60ish) acquaintance of mine, an ex-Saskatchewaner by way of San Francisco now living in TO, has made similar comments about Toronto seeming somehow mid-western, a small-minded kind of place, on numerous occasions. This seems to be a common attitude among folks 'of a certain age.'

But it is truly bizarre--how many midwestern cities have no dominant ethnic groups, (by US standards) flaming-left politics, a world-level Gay Pride parade and the planet's top film festival, let alone the dozens of other things that make Toronto so incredible? I suppose it just goes to show that it takes a long time to change perceptions of places, even when the reality is so drastically different. In any case, the number of people with memories of stuffy, Anglo "Queen City" Toronto is certainly dwindling as such individuals age. Only a good thing.
 
Re: Why cant I edit?

While the festival sounds great, I'm opposed to giving $500,000 to help start another festival that another city is already doing.
Click to expand...

Toronto needs to have everything. It is the only way to solidify our claim on the centre of the universe.
 
Re: Why cant I edit?

"If anything, the city is more grown up than people give it credit for...it's the media who are finally growing up."

Yes I agree the media largely perpetuated the NY comparison, rarely Torontonians. Unfortunately it was sold as a destination to toursits as a 'Swiss New York' for many years as well. That's a comparison that still lingers in the minds of a lot of people not familiar with the city.
 
Re: Why cant I edit?

The whole New York obsession thing seems to have faded away in recent years thankfully.
 
Celebrate Toronto Street Festival Eliminated!

It appears that this new event will get City Council Executive Committee approval this week for a $500,000 development grant.

The highly successful Celebrate Toronto Street Festival will be sacrificed with funding, staff and city resources redirected to support this new Comedy/Street Festival slated for mid July.

No word in the staff report about how this move will affect the Summerlicious promotion that usually coincide with the CTSF.

The new Festival will have a large street festival component with location still to be determined. Heavy promotion will be spent promoting to border States and before airline movies. Taped international broadcasts with “Live from Toronto†segments will be aired.

Personally speaking, I would have preferred that city focused on building upon existing successful annual events. The city should have directed this new start up funding to the new Luminto Festival slated for June. I’m also sad that the CTSF go. I do not feel that staff took into consideration that the event was first initiated to celebrate the birth of the Megacity and that the 5 celebration sites up along Yonge Street symbolized the uniting of all the former municipalities as one.

We gave up a beloved annual summer tradition in favor of taking a risk on some Montreal copy cat festival.

Louroz
 
Re: Celebrate Toronto Street Festival Eliminated!

From what I understand, "beloved annual summer tradition" is a bit generous.

One of the reasons I didn't care for it was the hypocracy of celebrating the megacity after Lastman and every other councilor (apart from some right-wingers from the old City of York) was supposedly against it. Of course one of the reasons for the megacity was to silence the lefties against Harris from the old Toronto, and Lastman was perfect from the province's point of view. He got his subway, he got the Conservative/Godfrey machine, he won.

Secondly, and most importantly, there was no appeal in most of the venues or acts anyway for someone like me. Perhaps for families with young kids, but little else. How many UT forumers actually "celebrated Toronto"

I see this as the city finally moving on in a way, and trying something new.
 
Re: Celebrate Toronto Street Festival Eliminated!

Sad to hear the Celebrate Toronto Street Festival may be gone. I enjoyed it.
 
Re: Celebrate Toronto Street Festival Eliminated!

I got the feeling during the last two years that the street festival attendance was declining (as was interest) and that there were less and less 'events' at each location. Last year in particular, you could see the festival slowly dying.
 
Re: Celebrate Toronto Street Festival Eliminated!

^Really? It seemed to be getting more elaborate. Guess it was just the advertising.
 
Re: Celebrate Toronto Street Festival Eliminated!

Once they cut out some of the intersections, the Street Festival lacked continuity and became like a chain with missing links. It gradually faded from the public consciousness as a coherent concept. Like the Yonge Street pedestrian mall in the 1970's - which we thought would return every summer and just keep getting better - it will eventually be but a distant memory for some oldsters to claim to have once experienced in Toronto's distant, golden, late 20th century past.
 
Re: Celebrate Toronto Street Festival Eliminated!

Is it just me, but doesn't anyone find it sad that Toronto is giving up a festival that is celebrating itself in favour of another city - Montreal???

There was huge public and media uproar when Miller last proposed to cut the Street Festival from the city's budget.

The whole approval process just seems really sneaky and done without any public consultations. How about the businesses at those intersections?

I doubt that this new festival will continue the multiple venue concept on Yonge Street.

Louroz
 
You must log in or register to post here.

Back
Top