Can't disagree with that, but one has to remember that the path from mediocrity to excellence must start somewhere. For a place like Toronto with a long history of apathetic provincialism in its mindset and DNA, that will have to come in a series of incremental steps.
You raise a valid point about what's (in my mind, at least) perhaps one of the more dispiriting aspects of being a Canadian.
We look at Australia and find a nation that superficially resembles us perhaps more than anywhere else: we're both former British Commonwealth settler colonies, geographically massive but with many stretches of barely habitable land, our moderate-sized economic and demographic heft falling somewhat short of qualifying us to be in the foremost rank of global powers.
Yet I have gotten the sense that Australians have a certain cultural impetus to achieve excellence and greatness that still eludes many Canadians, in large part. You see it in the finessed quality of their urban realm and infrastructure (of which the Metro is but their latest example), their commitment to punching well above their weight in the Olympics, the seriousness and maturity in the discourse surrounding their military, foreign affairs, and geopolitics...just to provide a few examples.
It's just so disheartening that a nation with so many of the same historical and cultural fundamentals as us chooses to adopt the mindset of a regional micro-superpower (for lack of a better term) while we continue--this many years after Confederation--to resign ourselves to this infantile, pathetic "aw-shucks" state of mind whereby we sit on the laps of the imperial hegemon of the day (first Britain, and now America) and treat ourselves as nothing more than a marginal subordinate backwater, hoping naively that the rest of the world will love us for it.
Sorry if this is a long off-topic rant, but as a Torontonian and Canadian with strong patriotic instincts who wants to see this place excel and thrive, this is a topic I feel extremely passionately about.
