[URBAN NOTE] "Toronto Is Exactly the City Canada Deserves (to Bring Us Together in Mutual Loathing)"

[rfmcdonald]

Vice's Ishmael N. Daro writes, with no small amount of humour, about the reasons why the hatred of Toronto unites the rest of Canada so well. Must-read.

We are taught from an early age that those who live "out East" are selfish swindlers intent on fucking over the rest of the country, and many people are still mad about policies that privileged Central Canadian elites over the Western provinces going as far back as John A. Macdonald's first government.

This hostility is by no means confined to the flat provinces, though. Virtually every region has reason to resent Toronto, for sins both real and imagined, but it usually comes down to the fact that so much of the country's wealth, power, and influence is based there. Hatred for the city is so universal it even spawned a documentary in 2007 titled Let's All Hate Toronto.

Having lived in Toronto for the past two years, I can confirm that exactly none of that hatred is misplaced.

Last week, Globe and Mail sports columnist Cathal Kelly helpfully reminded many Canadians why the country's largest city is so loathed outside its borders. In a lazy column about the FIFA Women's World Cup, Kelly lamented that the competition was kicking off in Edmonton's Commonwealth Stadium and not in Toronto. After gratuitously insulting Edmonton by calling it ugly and bush-league, and claiming the stadium holding the World Cup opener "says 'high school'" because it has a track around the field, he even suggested "the real victim here is Toronto."

Kelly, who has many bad opinions, managed to provide in one piece of writing a perfect encapsulation of what makes Toronto so obnoxious to the rest of the country. The column both reinforced Torontonians' arrogant self-image of being the centre of the country, if not the larger universe, while also making the city seem like a bunch of thin-skinned whiners.