I am trying to figure out whether I am a Torontonian.
I was born in a city hospital and lived my young life, until I was ten, in a small Ontario village. I was shocked, at first, when I found myself, a country girl living in a big city. For university I chose a small city.
My young husband and I lived in Stratford for two years, where he taught art. Stratford never felt like home. It is one of those places where it is necessary to have your parents, grand parents and preferably your great-grandparents born on the local soil.
In time we found ourselves in the Toronto neighbourhood, where I grew up. Our children were little Torontonians.
When my daughters were through school, I moved to a tiny fishing community on the
Bay of Fundy. This is my home.
I can't ever remember thinking of myself as a Torontonian. People who live in New York are New Yorkers, people who live in Paris are Parisians and it would seem those living in Montreal are Montrealers. Toronto didn't have that same feel.
I always identified myself as Canadian, thus unconsciously giving myself a broad spectrum of landscapes, peoples and ideas from which to absorb my sense of belonging. As I was becoming something of an adult, the whole nation was celebrating Canada's nationhood in Centennial Year. The summer of 1967, canadians everywhere celebrated our Canadianess.
Toronto is an ever-changing city. I have deep roots in the soil, much of which now is hidden under mountains of concrete. I know where my great-grandfather grew his large family garden, where so many before me went to school and where all of them are buried. I know so many places that no longer exist. The old brown brick home, built for my great-grandfather and was my home for so long,was recently bulldozed down to provide a large space to build an impressive new dwelling supposedly better suited to a new era.
I would have thought the demolition of important places to me, would have been traumatic. The reality, in a sense, makes things easier. The scenes are completely obliterated, so I can more easily project, with the inevitable quirks of my imagination, the pictures of other times. Just as I walk through the old Eaton's store on Queen St., stopping to rub the toe of the large, bronze statue of Timothy Eaton himself, I can stroll or stop in all the places my memory has collected.
I still know the changing neighbourhoods with their parks, trees, churches shops, restaurants.
I was born into Toronto the Good. The Toronto with empty Sunday streets, where large department stores, curtained their windows to encourage city dwellers to keep their thoughts on higher things. Toronto was a city of churches. This did not necessarily make Toronto the good, but no doubt contributed to Toronto the dull. Liquor was a highly regulated with taverns, continuing into the 1960's, maintaining separate entrances for men and ladies with escorts. At one time, licences were required to to purchase liquor.
Toronto was a bastion of Protestant thinking, whose strict rules of public deportment were imposed on all the citizens.
For decades and decades, the mayor of Toronto by tradition needed to be a member of The Orange Order.
However, all Mayors did not fit the same mold.
Sometimes the city was Toronto the Odd. Few know little of Charles Lance Miller, whose Will began the Great Stork Derby, leaving a sizeable sum of money to the mother who produced the most children in the decade after his death.
Mayor Philips became "The Mayor of All the People" in the 1960's. His Jewish faith broke the non-protestant barrier. Phillips Square at City Hall commemerates his service.
David Crombie won the hearts of everyone, with his fight to save the neighbourhoods. At my polling station, a second ballot box had to be brought in to hold all the ballots. Against Crombie ran Rik of the Universe and Rosie the Clown, (Vicky Gabereau), and a strong willed tea-totaller who wanted to return Toronto to the dry days
After amalgamation, "Bad Boy" Mel Lastman, a man everyone knew as a man wearing prison stripes, brashly promoting his chain of appliance stores.
Mayor Rob Ford, the Great Toronto Joke, isn't all that funny, but he has brought world attention to this World Class City. Dull old Toronto is not so dull and Toronto the Good isn't always that good.
In a bizarre way, it looks good on the city. Away with the stuffiness.
Maritimers, along with most of the rest of the country, love to mock the city. A special disdain is held for the city's acceptance of help from the Army to keep open the hundreds of miles of city streets during "The Big Snow Storm". The fact is the city kept going. Public transportation chugged along, stores were open, the elevators still carried men and women up and down the high towers of commerce, the hospital doors were open, although the children of the city got an historic snow day, a pleasure unknown to many generations of Toronto students.
Sure big cities make big targets and many take aim with just cause, but I know that enough of the Good still beats in the heart of the Old Lady. Smugness looks ugly on all faces.
I guess I'll have to claim my citizenship in Toronto the Good, the Bad, the Odd and the Ugly.
