by guest, Jacob Scheier
Toronto may very well elect a guy who would make a far better frat house president than a mayor of large multi-cultural city. At this point, I fear we could just decide this election through a chugging contest – since the results would be the same. Rob Ford guzzled the most Blue, ate the most hotdogs, got the most ignorant and angry people to vote him. It might all very well be the same result in the end.
People keep saying to me I can’t believe this guy could be our mayor. Of course, by people I mean people I tend to hang out with, who for all intents and purposes draw the border of Toronto somewhere south of Bloor Street and, not further east then the Beaches and not further west then maybe Lansdowne. As it turns out though, there are actual living, breathing humans living past those borders, who not only consider themselves Torontonians but also have the voting registration to prove it.
For me, I kind of picture places like Etobicoke as equivalent to say what lies beyond Shell Beach in the movie Dark City. If you have never heard of this movie, you might be one of those Torontonians who lives north of Bloor or west of Lansdowne, who in other words resides outside of what I like to call Torontopia. Anyway, Shell Beach is the furthest end (or I suppose one of the furthest ends) of the city in Dark City. Upon getting there though (Spoiler Alert) it is actually just water and sand painted on a wall and beyond that wall is nothing but stars and space, beyond that wall is the abyss and, beyond that wall is Rexdale, as far as I’m concerned.
That is pretty much how it is for me. And for, whether they will admit it or not, for many people I know (the kind of people who are really jazzed – and I say that word ironically because we like to be ironic in Torontopia, especially when we’re hanging out in bars on Ossington – about the new Jarvis bike lane).
Of course I am aware that real people, in real communities live in these places where Rob Ford’s base seems to be. But it’s not part of the Toronto I identify with. It’s another world entirely.
And this is the problem – I am part of the problem, in a sense. Or the problem is since there are two Torontos, there ought to be two different cities with two different mayors – at least two. Those of us who love our downtown, gay pride partying, all night art exhibiting, bike and public transport-friendly-ish city can elect someone who will nourish it (like Joe Pantalone). And those who want a suburban waspy car culture “city” can elect the appropriate mayor for that. Is my characterization of places like Rexdale ‘fair’ ? Probably not. But I don’t give a shit – that’s kinda of the point. I don’t want to be able to give a ‘fair’ description of the place, since that would involve actually going there.
Of course there are people in Rexdale who don’t fit into that waspy culture and people downtown who disdain gay pride and multiculturalism. I am willingly to participate in some kind of refugee program for such people.
Ultimately the solution to avoiding the tyranny of quasi-libertarian suburban-nites is independence for urban Toronto (Torontopia), for Toronto to be a city onto itself (Actually maybe a country onto itself). In the meantime though I am going to vote for Joe, since he is, as far as I can tell, the only candidate who actually wants to protect and nourish the kind of city I want to live in – the kind of city we (though of us within the borders of Torontopia) already live in. I understand the impulse to vote for the Anyone-but-Ford, aka Smitherman. But I can not see the city Smitherman envisions. I can see he’s really wants to be mayor but that’s not something to stand for. He could be mayor of quiet beach town painted on the wall of Dark City for all he seems to care – as long as he has the title of mayor, it seems he would be happy. Might idealists like myself be responsible for Ford winning. Well, that’s one why to look it. When Ralph Nader was accused of costing Gore the election in 2000, he said, being both sincere and ironic, that Gore was the one who had cost him the election.
Ford will win, if he wins, because those living (and I mean more psychologically than geographically) in the abyss beyond Dark City’s Shell Beach – beyond the Beaches, will have voted their values and ideals, while the rest of us could not muster more moral clarity than ‘Ford is bad.’
Toronto “proper,”pre amalgamation could’ve probably stayed in the minds of those who were rolled into the “core.”IF this were the case,I think for the “core”to pay for all that’s apparently dear to it would mean NY proper costs. Sure you know that same “core”1400′ condo.in NY would be $2M + US vs.the mere $800 000CAD?Pay the true cost even in an amalgamated city,and you will have folks decry the inequity! The more you use the transit,want the bike lanes,arts,you ought to pay,but many don’t want to,or can’t. Anti Ford baffles because they want it all without paying the costs. After all,don’t we have subsidized arts buildings in the city where the lease is only equivalent to $1 ?! Seriously…
Ah, no. I’m not sure where you got the idea that suburbs are subsidizing the lifestyles of the core, but nothing could be more inaccurate. We have a higher population density and pay more in taxes for our smaller properties.In fact suburbanites, with there larger homes and properties get more tax benefits per capita than those in the core. Of course, if your willing to trust a man who repeated confuses $63,000 for $6,000,000 (bike lanes), than it’s not about facts or figures, but about sentiment.
The name “Rexdale” was presumably picked out of the air as an example of a beyond-Shell-Beach neighbourhood from out in the abyss. Great imagery, by the way.
It actually turns out to be an excellent illustrative example of the real state of the suburbs in the periphery of the City of Toronto.
Far from being a bastion of waspy car-culture, Rexdale’s a highly diverse neighbourhood, mainly non-white, with areas of endemic poverty and per-capita crime rates far in excess of those you find downtown. As with other outlying neighbourhoods, there are vast swaths to the Northwest of the city that are woefully underserviced by public transport and lack residential neighbourhood basics within walking distance like supermarkets or drug stores.
Indeed, a survey of the city’s outlying neighbourhoods (see http://www.unitedwaytoronto.com/whatWeDo/reports/povertyByPostalCode.php) suggests this is the case in most directions as move away from the core. Moreover, this economic and infrastructure disparity with downtown is on an upward trend.
As for where Rob Ford’s base actually is, the polls appear to indicate that it’s coming from all over the city, not from a specific area (http://www.torontolife.com/daily/informer/mayor-may-not/2010/09/20/ford-pocalypse-poll-shows-rob-ford-destroying-the-competition%E2%80%94even-downtown/). Case in point, there’s a whole gauntlet of Ford For Mayor signs just down the street from me along Coxwell South of Gerrard, hardly a suburban, affluent area representative of North American car culture.
As for why Ford has a support base at all, let alone such a sizable one, there’s a pretty good article on this in Toronto Life (http://www.torontolife.com/daily/informer/from-print-edition-informer/2010/09/29/mr-popular-why-rob-ford-winning-over-toronto/).
The Star’s Christopher Hume was on CBC’s Here & Now today discussing the upcoming election. He observed that when times are good, people vote out of greed, whereas when times are bad, they vote out of fear. And right now, times are bad.
But tapping into fear requires digging up an identifiable threat. The threat that Ford’s campaign has hit upon is that of a fiscally irresponsible, dysfunctional, supposedly corrupt city council whose members take unnecessary perks. However fatuous, it’s an idea that draws a lot of water with people who perceive they’re paying more and more in taxes and service fees and getting less for them, year after year.
In truth, for all his lambasting rhetoric, Ford apparently never showed much interest in how the city’s finances were run as Councilor. Shelley Carroll, David Miller’s budget chief, recently pointed out in an interview that his interaction with the budget committee and involvement in the budget process were both minimal.
In any event, whether his numbers add up or not, whether he supports or is against arts or subways or buses or streetcars is all largely irrelevant. At the end of the day, the mayor’s position is a remarkably powerless one. No mayor can autocratically sign these things in or out of existence.
The best mayor is the one who can build consensus between Councilors from disparate wards with diverging priorities, with the unions, with the all-powerful police, with business, and with all levels of government. It is a huge and daunting task, a crushing responsibility, and a thankless job.
And if there’s one thing that Rob Ford doesn’t appear to be it’s a consensus-builder. Sadly, with days left to go until election day, it appears as if he’s going to win.
But just as the Anything But Conservative campaign was largely a failure in our last federal election, so too the indignation about Ford is unlikely to keep him out of office. The reason is that it’s insufficient to vote against something. You have to vote in a concerted way for a specific alternative.