One thing I do agree with: the notion too many writers weren't born here. That is a huge problem and it is why the novels of, say, Mordecai Richler ring so true versus those who brought their resentments of their small town/exurban upbringing to the city, then overcompensate by out Toronto-ing Torontonians, becoming dull, overbearing caricatures of what they think urbanites should be when native born Torontonians are much like the city itself: profoundly, deeply conservative and largely settled, placid, and content with things. Smith himself says this when he says he was "desperate" for big-city living. You know what? Most people born here, don't bring neuroses like that to their existence. They just...live, in a big city.
The problem with small-town writers who move here and bring that to their work is that it rings false, and sounds contrived to me, and results in a bizarre phenomenon of what I call urban hicks: writers and others so determined to think of themselves as urban, they bring the small-minded, provincial mindset they thought they left behind to the city. This results in them obsessively documenting the tiny sliver of the city they live in and those who live with and like them, and dismiss everyone else as "suburban" even though they probably have more familiarity with the city than they do. The range of ideas and themes can't be anyting but limited, and it just becomes flat-out boring. And then to go from this to say that something produced by these people is somehow representative of "Toronto" is so ridiculous, I don't know how anyone can write about it without it descending into farce. It's Leacockian. But they do try hard, don't they? And they get away with it.
