Returning home from a visit to Toronto this past week was like returning to a peaceful oasis. Not that Barrie does not have more than its share of construction going on with homes as well as the rebuilding of the Highway 400 bridges through the city. Yet Toronto felt like a battle ground. I spent most of a day driving around the city east to west and up to the northern suburbs. I never knew just where I would come to another traffic jam in a city of constant construction. And I see that the Don Valley Parkway is still jammed at any hour.
Toronto is no longer a city for a polite driver. It has the rude drivers of New York City at the speed of the crazy drivers of Rome, Italy. But I loved the experience, the learning, the old views, the new buildings, the staggering heights of new condominiums. I saw a lone transit vehicle test-driving the Eglinton Crosstown LRT. Ask when it will open and Torontonians will laugh while people in Scarborough are bitter as delays and construction seem to forbid them access to downtown.
But the political anger was the most interesting. Oh sure, the younger generation seem to have bought into some of Poilievre’s bull, yet over all, the city is cold hunting grounds for conservatives today. The jokes about Doug Ford are among the most scatological I have ever heard. Any Torontonian who tells his neighbours that Trump Lite Poilievre is just what Canada needs might as well move.
They don’t have many positive comments on Justin Trudeau but then Poilievre came out with that common sense crap borrowed from the Mike Harris government, he cut his own throat. That conservative provincial government was the worst experience of the last quarter century in Ontario, I read a column in the Toronto Star last weekend where a sycophant of Poilievre had written that the conservative leader was taking a “back to basics approach.” Anyone who believes that Poilievre is going to improve life for Canadians, lower our taxes, as well as food prices, energy and trade must have just fell off the turnip wagon.
I was surprised when Trump won the presidency in the United States. It was a serious learning experience. The same type of bad news could happen here in Canada, and we sure as hell would regret it.
-30-
Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry
Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to: