one great city!

I'm warning you now that I'm going to post the entire lyrics to a Weakerthans song in just a minute.

I live in Toronto, the most reviled city in Canada. Oh, sure, there are jokes about lots of places, and some of them are pretty mean. But to the best of my knowledge, no other hometown is greeted with universal sneering by the rest of the country. (When I lived in Vancouver, someone serving me a muffin said "Where are you from?" and when I told them said "Oh. They're still letting you in, then.") You see, Toronto takes itself a little too seriously. Our desperate protestations that we are a World! Class! City! read pretty much like taking out a billboard that says we have no self-esteem, and yet we believe ourselves to be somehow more sophisticated than the rest of you rubes. Naturally, this attitude provokes a certain hostility. But here's my secret:
I love Toronto.
I love the fish markets lining the streets of new Chinatown, where I grew up. I love the pathways through the ravines. I love the guy who panhandles in my neighbourhood with a paper coffee cup at the end of a makeshift fishing pole.
I love being able to get Greek food and sushi within a few subway stops of one another. I loved the old streetcars, and I love seeing photos of them. I love looking around in a crowd sometimes and realizing I am the only white face for a hundred metres.
I love sweater-weather here. I love that we have a high school especially for queer kids. I love the stark, awful grief expressed on our AIDS memorial, and I love that it sits right next to the dog park, and people come to sit on the steps in front of it and live.
I love the places where kids still play street hockey. I love the Grapefruit Moon restaurant, named after a Tom Waits song and run by a sweet owner and a handful of cool staff. I love the transit system.

I have lived other places and loved things about them, but my love for Toronto is the kind of deep love that some people have for the places where they are born and grow up. The geography of this part of Ontario is in my body, and nowhere else feels like home.

The song One Great City! can only have been written by someone who feels that way about their home. When I was taking my heartbreak tour of Vancouver and points east in 2001, I stopped in Winnipeg for an aimless thirteen hours to see if I could see something of what that love hangs on, just because of the Weakerthans music. I want people to be passionately attached to our cities. Maybe if we loved them more, we would feel more responsible for them. Maybe they could be better places. Maybe we could make them that way.


Late afternoon, another day is nearly done
A darker gray is breaking through a lighter one
A thousand sharpened elbows in the underground
That hollow, hurried sound
Of feet on polished floor
And in the dollar store
The clerk is closing up
And counting loonies trying not to say
I hate Winnipeg

The driver checks the mirror, seven minutes late
The crowded riders' restlessness enunciates
that the Guess Who suck, the Jets were lousy anyway
The same route every day
And in the turning lane
Someone's stalled again
He's talking to himself
And hears the price of gas repeat his phrase:
I hate Winnipeg

And up above us all, leaning into sky
Our golden business boy will watch the North End die
and sing "I love this town,"
then let his arcing wrecking ball proclaim
I
hate
Winnipeg