In a scholarly work this past week from the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, we learned that the City of Toronto is ready to cut the parental apron strings of the Province of Ontario. If you have never been involved in Toronto politics, you might even believe that is possible.
It took this writer back to an event in the early fall of 1969. Driving down Yonge Street to the office, we stopped the car for a red light at Dundas Street. Shortly after stopping a head appeared in front of the car hood and it was glaring at me. It was David Crombie, a lecturer at Ryerson at the time, he was obviously on his way to work.
David detoured and came around to the driver’s side of the car—where the window was conveniently open. He stuck his head in the window and said: “Peter, you and I are friends, so I am not going to tell you what I thought of your article in the paper yesterday about myself and CIVAC.
“But I have to warn you, watch out for Shirley (his wife). She’s mad.” And with that David drew himself up to his full 5 foot, eight inches or so and stomped through the traffic to continue on his way to Ryerson.
David Crombie went on to his fun-filled career as Toronto’s ‘Tiny Perfect Mayor’ and as a Conservative Member of parliament in the Mulroney government. Your writer stayed safely away from Shirley Crombie.
But all we had written about was the facts. David and his friends were not going to solve Toronto’s problems with their civic action (CIVAC) party. And to make matters worse, we talked our late friend Senator Keith Davey into helping organize an attempt at bringing Liberal politics to Toronto’s various city halls. The laughter was a little forced later on when we referred to it as our own Mack Sennett comedy.
The facts are that Toronto is the liberal engine that runs Ontario. The Ontario Landowners with their extreme right-wing ways can scream all they want but without Toronto, this province is a backwater worse off than Louisiana. And while outsiders can say they hate Toronto, those of us who really know the city love it. And the outsiders would miss it.
Whoever is in charge at Queen’s Park knows that they have to look after Toronto. It might be the adult child living in your basement but you never want it to leave. It has no political structure to help it survive in the wilds.
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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry
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