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 »

I’ve vis­it­ed the “Occu­py Toron­to” protest site three times, now. The cur­rent sit­u­a­tion is this:

A small, but rather pret­ty down­town park is filled with tents. They do not get in the way of any­thing. Traf­fic along the adja­cent streets and side­walks is unim­ped­ed. There is lit­tle noise. The park is self-con­tained, and the only peo­ple incon­ve­nienced are the hand­ful who stroll through the park in nice weath­er, and some office work­ers who cus­tom­ar­i­ly take their lunch­es to eat among the flow­ers. With the bad weath­er com­ing in, even this small group van­ish­es from the equa­tion.  Read more »

I’ve passed by the “Occu­py Toron­to” camp­site a few times, this week. Nor­mal­ly, I’m not much impressed by polit­i­cal demon­stra­tions. In North Amer­i­ca, they have proven woe­ful­ly inef­fec­tu­al over the last gen­er­a­tion. The peo­ple who orga­nize them are usu­al­ly far more inter­est­ed in the pas­time of demon­strat­ing that in accom­plish­ing any goals. In fact, they are most­ly counter-pro­duc­tive, because the Pow­ers That Be long ago fig­ured out how to turn them to their own advan­tage. So I always wince when I see the usu­al band of scruffy teenagers wear­ing cir­cle-As, the aging hip­pies, the pre­dictable “polit­i­cal the­atre” stunts, the mean­ing­less slo­gans, and the drea­ry chants. Those in pow­er love these peo­ple, espe­cial­ly the self-styled “anar­chists,” because they re-inforce author­i­ty, rather than threat­en it. Noth­ing dis­cred­its real oppo­si­tion in the eyes of the pub­lic more effec­tive­ly than a few sec­onds of TV footage show­ing a teenag­er with his face paint­ed, scream­ing unin­tel­lige­able slo­gans. They see what appears to them to be a mob of brain­less pranx­ters. The issues can then be safe­ly buried by the media. Read more »