"Think Canada's the place to be? Think again!"

I know many people who would pee their pants with glee about this.

*sputters*

Wah wah waaaaaah. Sorry he couldn't study a bit harder, hope he enjoys his job at the sports memorabilia store.

I'm glad the Seattle Times doesn't feel the need to factcheck these sorts of things.

Wow, sign this woman up for the new and improved Conservative Party of Canada, now with 50% more Reform.

over ten years!

I'm actually giving the Times credit for running this just to get a gagload of hate mail in return, and for cheap publicity. Fact checking, HA! Why?

WHY ARE YOU FUCKING LIVING IN SEATTLE IF YOUR GRAND FEAR OF A FUTURE OF AMERICA IS ONE BIG SEATTLE? MOVE! GO TO "REAL" AMERICA, LIKE BOISE OR SOMETHING.

(ps. if she'd like to see more rusted-out cars she's more than welcome to go to North Dakota, Missouri and even places like Yamagata Japan.)

Welcome to Toronto?
Lisa Hutchurson
Staff writer

(December 6, 2003) TORONTO — Usually we don’t dedicate a large, front-page story to Toronto unless something really big happens, like the outbreak of another virulent disease.

But then we saw how the Toronto media had taken time out of their busy schedule — running cheesecake shots (“Deanna is a hazel-eyed Sagittarius with a goal to land a career in advertising… ” ) and roasts of unwitting stars du jour — to take the pulse of our very own city!

In writing about the ferry to link Toronto and Rochester, the Toronto media even bothered to take a thorough, seven-minute-or-so look at all its American neighbor has to offer, listing the many pros and cons:

CONS: Violent crime and treacherous neighborhoods and massive layoffs and crumbling buildings and soul-crushing gloom and dirty-faced citizens in Les Miserables costumes begging for greasy Garbage Plates in the streets.

PROS: Love Canal is a mere 85 miles (or 136.79 kilometers) away!

So, we here in this beleaguered city on the south shore of Lake Ontario — having received our latest proverbial wedgie in the hall, this time courtesy of Globe and Mail reporter Jan Wong — thought, “Hey, wouldn’t Torontonians love it if we did the same for them?”

So a team (OK, two people) went to investigate. As tourism officials up there say, it was “time for a little Toronto.”

Our first taste of Toronto (motto: Come for the all-day rush hour! Stay for the inefficient public-transit system!) began Tuesday with the call center at the Toronto Convention & Visitors Association. We can tell you we felt the love immediately from the customer service representative as we misunderstood one of this goodwill ambassador’s questions, to which she laughed as though she were Paris Hilton eyeing our latest Target boots.

Then she tried to sell us on pricey lodging, despite our request for “something inexpensive in a decent area.” Albeit grudgingly, she obliged us by recommending the lowly Best Western: $68.49 American a night for two people. Of course, this didn’t include our $11.50 parking charge, our $3.41 Canadian goods and services tax (GST), our $4.78 provincial goods and services tax (PST), our continental breakfast tax (CBT), our convenient tray of soaps tax (CTST) and last but not least, our totally hosed in Toronto tax (THTT).

Our next sampling of “The World’s Best-Kept Travel Secret” was driving into it late at night. Half-blinded by the retina-searing, nuclear-waste-orange street lamps of the Queen Elizabeth Way (QEW), we could still catch a glimpse of the world’s tallest, free-standing structure: one of several thousand construction cranes, about 136.79 kilometers high.

No crumbling buildings here. There are, however, plenty of poured-concrete, 1970s-contemporary leftovers lit with enough blacklights to make them look like a pothead’s apartment.
We found the Best Western on Carlton Street, despite all the minuscule or missing street signs — signs that should’ve borne the proud, distinctive names of Canada’s feisty, rebellious and independent past: King Street, Queen Street, Winston Churchill Boulevard, Parliament Street, Unsubstantial Commonwealth Realm Avenue and Lumpy Pudding Crumpet Lane.

We got up early the next morning to catch the local TV news, chock-full of the makings of Torontonian civic boosterism:
In a poll that asked 500 Toronto residents what issues City Council should focus on, 16 percent said “safety” and 10 percent chose “homelessness and poverty.” “Traffic” and “public transit” each garnered 7 percent. One percent surveyed were most concerned about “killing the bridge” — or nixing construction of an island airport bridge already approved by council four times. We have no idea what happened to the other 59 percent surveyed.

Canada’s fatal DWIs are on the rise for the first time in a decade. In 2001 — the most recent statistics available — 38 percent of fatally injured drivers had been drinking, up from 34 percent in 1999. And 15.8 percent of Canadians polled in May admitted they’d driven drunk in the past month.

Three youths were charged in the slaying of a 12-year-old Toronto boy and the wounding of his stepdad. The boy had been beaten with a baseball bat before getting his throat slashed. The suspects allegedly had a hit list of 13 to 15 other targets.

The QEW was clogged again, as documented by TV rush-hour cams.

Deciding on a driving tour anyway, we start barreling down the QEW at a breakneck speed of 17 miles an hour. It takes us a half-hour to go three miles.

Our first destination is City Hall. But first we have to pass the friendly community of homeless people living in tents where the expressway meets York Street. Our mission: to chat with newly elected Toronto Mayor David Miller. Described by the Toronto media as “a 44-year-old Harvard-educated veteran of local politics,” Miller was elected on a promise to stop “a most unacceptable decline in city services,” clean up “polluted port lands,” tackle “persistent litter and graffiti problems” and “put an end to the corruption and backroom deals that marred the leadership of flamboyant, ex-furniture salesman (and former mayor) Mel Lastman.”

Understandably, Mr. Miller was busy inside City Hall — a concrete building straight out of The Jetsons topped with a flying saucer sort of edifice. Urging his new City Council to revoke support for the bridge, Miller stressed the need to focus instead on a “stunning, revitalized waterfront.”

“As we approach this debate,” he was reported saying beforehand in the Globe and Mail, “we must ask ourselves — will we ever revitalize this waterfront, will we ever clean up our polluted port lands, will we ever make this shoreline inviting and beautiful from Scarborough to Etobicoke if we allow the construction of the bridge to proceed?”

Not that the rundown industrial buildings, stacked boxcars and chainlink fences we saw along the beach wouldn’t provide ferry riders with a welcoming backdrop.

Time to hit the CN Tower, “Canada’s Modern Wonder of the World.” This time, however, we’d take a cab. Big mistake. By the time we got there, it cost $30; the driver got confused on the way to Cherry Street. At least it softened the blow for the bare-bones, $14.47 per-person tower ride.

The wait didn’t seem that bad either, with only two people ahead of us in line at the city’s premier tourist attraction. And we must recommend the tower’s glass floor. Not only do you get to look straight down at the concrete tower, but also the view includes a quaint parking lot.

We passed on eating at the tower’s 360 Restaurant (motto: Hey ROCHESTER! OUR restaurant still REVOLVES!) Sure, it may have been a little pretentious (black pepper pappardelle on Quebec wild boar ragoût with Pecorino Romano), but it still managed to stay ridiculously overpriced ($57 American for a 16-ounce portion of Canadian prime rib).

We could, however, afford Planet Hollywood, strategically housed at the base of the tower. The salmon was so raw and fishy-tasting it had to be sent back, and the American celebrity-oriented decor was less than stunning: white sheets of paper with exciting black, laser-printed dummy text (lab props from a Hugh Grant movie!) kept safe behind Plexiglas.
On to Nicholby’s Gifts & Souvenirs, also at the base of the CN Tower, for all of your shot glass and snow globe needs. “Lowest prices in Toronto!” read the sign. For $5.87 American, we could buy a half-mug proclaiming “Toronto was so expensive, I could only afford half a cup!”

Good thing the people are friendly! Like the woman who shoved her way in front of us at the subway token desk when we refused to produce our loonies at lightning speed and refused to step back, even when Token Guy asked her to. Or the woman in the regional transit line who saw our cameras and immediately interrogated us like a border official. Who were we? Where were we from? And did we have anything at all to declare?

Reporters from Rochester, N.Y., we said. And we did have something to declare: Toronto, which excels at the art of trashing, was starting to get a little stinky itself. The woman took it well, displaying a real can-take-it-as-well-as-dish-it-out attitude, even accusing us of being “unfair” and “biased.” Deliberately interviewing people in horrendously long lines! Shame on us!

Unfortunately, because of the time and hassle involved in trying to traverse this sprawlopolis — that is, if we didn’t want to hang off the back of a streetcar so smushed full of people, their faces were pressed against the glass — we didn’t get to many of Toronto’s other cutting-edge attractions, like the Ontario Science Center, which — on a visit two summers ago — looked as if it hadn’t been updated or repaired since it opened in ‘69.
Next on our mission: a more literal taste of Toronto. Although the townies suggested chichi Thai, Chinese and Greek, we longed for something truly Toronto. Unable to even find anything even distinctly Canadian, we settled on a borrowed dish — a Quebec favorite known as poutine. This cup o’ fries congealed with pumped-on brown gravy (we think it’s Heinz) and cheese curd makes our Garbage Plate look like a garden salad. And it tastes like … well, like a cup o’fries with gravy.

“It’s the biggest seller here,” said the poutine purveyor at New York Fries (slogan: “Authentically New York” ).

Of course, no trip to Toronto would be complete without the homeless people, camped out on warm sewer grates.
“I’d rather stay on the street,” said Gary LeBouthillier, sharing some classy wine with friends. “The shelters have bedbugs. They’re disgusting. People are crazy. It’s dirty in there.”

More recipients of civic dumpsterism were to be found at Queen Street East and Sherbourne Street, just past the charming, barred shops with names like Stop-N-Cash and Chip & Dip Convenience.

“Yeah, you got your hookers and your crackheads and your drug dealers and your weed smokers,” explained the home-free Troy Davis. “They’re hiding now because it’s cold out. But in warm weather, between 10 and 2 a.m., there’s at least 50 of them on these four corners.”

Thanks, Troy!

It seemed a good time to end our day — and night, we’d discover — on the QEW.

Except the tent part.

Awesome! I bet it's like living in Woody Allen's Sleeper!

HOGTOWN ROASTED BY SOME TOWN IN THE STATES

Denizens of the centre of the universe were surprised to learn from the Globe and Mail's Jan Wong on Nov. 29 that there's a city across Lake Ontario in Michigan called Rochester, which apparently we will soon be able to get to on a fast ferry. Wong's view of the city -- plagued by violent crime, high unemployment, crumbling buildings -- was essentially that no one on this side of the lake should really bother riding the ferry. Apparently this didn't go over well in that sleepy little Illinois burg.

The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle struck back on Dec. 6 with a front-page article attacking Toronto ("Come for the all-day rush hour!" the story says, "Stay for the inefficient public-transit system!"). Among the horrors they found in our city were traffic and ugly orange lights on the QEW, a mayor too busy to meet with reporters from this uppity New Hampshire town, lots of construction, fish served (gasp!) medium-rare, expensive cab fares, people who were rude to them when they held up the queue at the subway and a hotel-room on Carlton that cost them the outrageous (by their pastoral Maine standards) sum of US$68.49 per night plus taxes.

Citizens of Toronto: we cannot continue to antagonize these people of Rochester, Massachusetts -- they have seen through our friendly charade and stung us with their razor wit. Call off the dogs, Rochester, we admit it: we are big and sophisticated and rich. You win.

Those restaurants in Montreal where you can bring your own wine are pretty fantastic too.

http://www.pvx.com/events/direxions02/images/skydome_night_sm_jpg.jpg
http://www.wttc.com/TO_skyline.jpg

Which is not to mention that electric purple shit on old city hall which is freaky looking enough, even in daylight (I think it once even cameoed in an episode of Star Trek TNG as an image from some alien world)

And whats wrong with that place? Not Niagra Falls with its Frankenstien eating a whopper tackiness?

I know what you mean though - all the "old time" signage etc? I guess that means we'll forget that they have a Home Depot and a Wal-Mart on the edge of town.

For the first month.

But yeah.. it's totally stuff like the signage that gets to me. I understand that it's becoming increasingly difficult for small towns to be relevant and profitable within Ontario, but that doesn't necessarily mean they have to whore themselves out to outoftowners who have some la-dee-da notion of how life out in the country should be, does it?

Taking sides Sydney Mines Vs Lunenburg.

This might have already happened, actually.

Niagra Falls has reached new levels though. It was always tacky, but now it's gone completely insane. To quite an awesome degree actually.

I don't think I've seen tobacco farms anywhere in the province except the southwestern bit.

http://www.europharmacy.com/europe/viagra.jpg

When we went to an American hospital, it was like entering a five-star hotel.

A five-star hotel that gives spongebaths!

P.S. One difference between Canadians and Seattlelites is coffee. A Canadian would never
choose Starbucks over Tim Horton's. That's one of the few things the Canadian government
can't control.

Or can they? Starbucks has (over the last ten years) quite firmly established itself in Canada (esp. Vancouver where Crazy McLooney seems to be from, based on her strike references), so obviously this is the Cdn Gov't exerting their market-fixing powers to play king-maker by forcing Cdns to frequent one US-owned coffee whatsit over another (Tim Hortons was bought a few years ago by Wendys).

If you're getting taxed 50 per cent (Cdn sp) you're not middle class.