Friends are Electric

A revisit to my dislike of Toronto

To feel belonging to a place is necessary in order to like it.  Perhaps not a personal, direct belonging, but at least some form of it.  Not necessarily the feeling of `home’, but something like it.  A place here can be a physical place, such as a city, town or any other point on a map.  It can be a metaphorical place, such as the concept of home.  It can be part of society as a whole.  In order to belong you must be able to imagine yourself, your place, in it.  Without being able to do so you will not be enjoy a place.

Clearly by the above statement and past writings, I cannot imagine a place for myself within Toronto.  I am not alone.  I have a place elsewhere for myself.  The problem comes when both groups, and both groups are guilty, fail to recognize that not all of us can imagine ourselves in the same way as everyone else, and thus, as we all really know, there is no universal place.  No clear ideal which everyone must achieve, where everyone must be.  The pleasures of life are not the same for everyone, and we all must respect that.

I’ve written previously about my distaste for Toronto.  I’ve also claimed that this is not a mentality unique to myself, for truly it is not.  I explained one theory which I think provides the why to the action.

Now I shall refine that thought further.

I find Toronto as a physical place to be greatly unpleasant.  This is, however, just an opinion.  Many of us who grew up outside of the world’s largest cities would share such feelings owing to the total lack of anything natural within the city.  Certianly trees are planted all about, but never do they appear natural.  Even when a forested area is left, it is ruined by the excessive noise pollution of the roads which inevitably follow along near it.

This is not to say that the physical city lacks any attraction, since the ample opportunity for one to exercise boundless consumerism would be a desirable quality to many.  Any with an interest in urban architecture would also find their interests addressed within the city.  My argument is that these aspects of the physical city are insufficient to derive any enjoyment from, at least in my case.

There is the cultural city of Toronto as well.  One would be hard pressed to negatively write about this, and I shall not.  Pure cultural diversity is not the only thing that matters by a long shot, however, it can be a very positive thing.  I would say that Toronto as a cultural entity is somewhat positive in nature, if not wholly positive in nature.

The problem is neither the physical city nor the people who live in it.  The city itself is rather ugly and oppressive to me.  The people are friendly enough so long as you never utter the greatest blasphemy known to them, that Toronto is not the greatest place to live.  No, neither of these are the true nature of my distaste for this city.

The real problem is the idea of Toronto.  That, by virtue of living in Ontario at least, and perhaps Canada as a whole, one should be familiar with the street geography of Toronto enough to recognize a caricature of a map is the centre of the issue.  Toronto expects and demands awareness and seems unable or unwilling to cope with the idea that perhaps it is not the ideal form of life, eve for one person.  That, by living in the same province as the city, we should be informed of who the mayor is and what his daily actions are is an example of this.  (This last point is weakened by the fact that recent mayors of Toronto are eccentric enough to often warrant such coverage regardless of their city’s relative importance.)

I understand that Toronto is an important location and a very populous one.  I just find it impossible to care about where street x crosses street y and what shops can be found in such a local.  So please, a little understanding.

To anyone who lives within Canada, resentment of Toronto is a known but potentially strange phenomenon.  If you are not aware of it then you are probably from Toronto.  You may also live near another major Canadian city, and resent it for much the same reason which I theorise.  I personally hail from Northern Ontario, which is important as we probably have the greatest resentment for Toronto in the entire country.

As the title suggests, I believe that colonialism is to blame for these feelings.  Toronto is the economic capital of Canada.  Any reasonable person would admit this fact.  It follows that many international companies have their Canadian head offices in Toronto, as well as many Canadian companies.  This means that a large percentage of the decision making power in the Canadian economy is located in Toronto.  When a factory, mine or mill is closed by the head office of a company, likely located in the city, it is other parts of the country which suffer.  So, by virtue of housing these companies, the city is seen as responsible.

Beyond this, companies tend to place all of the management positions in the city.  This makes sense from their perspective as it keeps their corperate headquarters localised.  But this has the effect of keeping many of the high paying, non-directly productive jobs in Toronto.  From the perspective of the rest of the country, however, it seems as though the city itself is parasitising the country, feeding off the success of others while contributing only to its own well being.

Both of these factors, the disconnect between control structures within the city and the front line elsewhere and the parasitic relationship the city has with the rest of the country feel very much like colonialism without the violent  physical oppression.  If you add the media control and the fact that the rest of the country routinely hears local news from Toronto as relevant to their own location, you start to get more of the cultural aspects of colonialism as well as the economic which have already been described.

People within Toronto are unlikely to have an idea about the goings on in the province outside their city.  This is akin to the way many Canadians feel when watching “Talking to Americans” or other such programs.  The cause is the same: the colonial power has no need to know of the goings on in the colonies.

Within Ontario itself, Toronto also plays the roll as political capital.   Again, the reasons why the city is so dominant is clear to anyone who pauses to examine the situation, especially with regard to population and distribution of population.  But, again, to those who exist elsewhere in the province, there is still a dictatorship from the city.  Unless Toronto splits party support quite evenly, the votes of Northern Ontario, for example, are mostly irrelevant.  Once again, the structure is logical but leads to issues.

Considering the above arguments, it is easy to see why the rest of Ontario has an antagonistic relationship with the city of Toronto.  It is a political, economic and cultural oppressor and colonial power.  Within confederation, the same problems can be extrapolated to how the rest of the provinces feel towards Ontario.  The same considerations apply.  As well, anyone living near a major Canadian city, especially a provincial capital, can feel themselves sweeped away by the domination of the city.

The situation, by pure reason, makes perfect sense.  However, this pure reason is not considering the effects this has on people who live in the country, both inside and outside these cities.  The people within are largely oblivious to the way the rest of the country views them, which is largely part of the problem.   This is ignorance, pure and simple, and ignorance is an attribute to be combated.  People living elsewhere have the problem of feeling less important or slighted by this ignorance.  The end result is further dysfunction within Canadian confederation.

For now, I present no solutions or recommendations to this issue.  Personal education would go a long way to mitigating these issues, but I refuse to hold my breath.  Just as Torontonians are blissfully unaware, the rest of Ontario takes joy from its resentment. It is a truly dysfunctional relationship, but it helps to define the cultural landscape in this province and country, and perhaps that is worthwhile.