Remember when Toronto was thought of as one of the nicest, cleanest, most welcoming cities in the world? Well, I do. And it wasn’t all that long ago, relatively speaking. But things are changing. And not for the better. Toronto seems to be experiencing what other large cities have already suffered through… a population that is getting so large, so crowded, and so impersonal that it is losing that “togetherness” feeling that it once had. This loss of connection is manifesting itself as a growing hostility towards strangers, towards people who are considered outsiders, towards people who aren’t you. And it’s getting ugly.
Like any problem of this kind, it’ll only get worse if it doesn’t get nipped in the bud by (a) awareness of the problem, and (b) a desire to make a correction to our trajectory before its too late. Sure, right now there are lots of bad apples who are getting all the press, but there are also just as many, if not more, people who want Toronto to retain its untarnished reputation. Who will win?
I have some thoughts on this issue.
See Toronto the Hostile? in the Ramblings section of this blog.
Words with Brad 