A long time ago, Peter Usti­nov described Toron­to as “New York run by the Swiss.” This was dur­ing one of the peri­ods when our city was con­sid­ered a mod­el for oth­ers [see my piece from five years ago about that peri­od]. But it was not the first time. While it has sagged and stag­nat­ed at times, there were sev­er­al peri­ods when Toron­to has been con­sid­ered an epi­cen­ter of progress and moder­ni­ty. Dur­ing those peri­ods, some able peo­ple rose in civic pol­i­tics. Nev­er per­fect peo­ple, but at least tal­ent­ed and rea­son­ably civic-mind­ed. The sleeze­balls, hacks and pinch-nosed bean-coun­ters were at least tem­porar­i­ly eclipsed. Read more »

Shake­speare didn’t have Romeo and Juli­et com­mit sui­cide in the first act, and then let the remain­ing char­ac­ters pitch tents on the stage and chat aim­less­ly for the remain­ing four acts. That was because Shake­speare was a drama­tist. His aim was to move peo­ple to emo­tion, to make them think, to shock, hor­ri­fy, or delight them. Let us, for the sake of argu­ment, assume that he was pret­ty good at it. Today’s pro­test­ers could learn a thing or two from him. Read more »