{ The Night Shift: Will Toronto ever really be able to embrace its greatness? (with notes from the cutting room floor) }
Ah, Toronto. This week, I asked a question that someone’s probably asked before, but, with everything that’s been going on in politics and the budget this year, it’s never been, or felt, as real as it does right now. At least to me it hasn’t. I’m not trying to answer whether or not we’re a world capital or if we’re even “great.” This, I know. But, ultimately, I’ve realized we are responsible for our own growth, so I put the question out there.
I cut this bit that follows from the original story, but now I think it was (perhaps) more necessary than I realized. It explains a lot about why I give a damn about this city now, but why it wasn’t always so easy to do so.
—
I grew up in the Jane & Finch area in the ’90s, and lived there until I was about 16. Truth be told, it wasn’t exactly a place you could be proud of, at least not outside of our own community borders. (Just read these Urban Dictionary definitions to get a sense of what the reaction was like when you told people where you lived, and what they would automatically think about you.) I was around a lot of kids my age who, myself included, were sometimes made to feel like they “would never make it out the ‘hood.” To look back is to see how these experiences - these moments of doubt - really coloured a lot of what I thought about the city as a whole. Of course I knew there was more out there, but it either felt unavailable to me, or unable to provide what I really wanted out of life. I wanted to opt out, to go somewhere legendary. If Jane & Finch was any indication, this city wasn’t where dreams would come true, where people could “come up.” If anything, J&F made me hungry for better things, for more than what I thought Toronto could ever offer. (Plus, let’s remember: Toronto wasn’t even “all that” back in those days anyway, so…)
But then, things started to change, and the city started to change. I stopped letting things like my lack of money or my lack of pristine postal code define what was possible. I’ve watched this city grow tremendously in the past decade as an observer of it, and even more in the past year as a reporter of it. Each weekend, I get to see the interesting things people are doing and how this city really is better; my serious thoughts on its potential move even further away from that defeatist noise. On the worst days, I used to think about how these limits might be it for me; I used to hate that thought. But, for many reasons, it doesn’t feel like such a tragedy anymore. I want to be here. This is where the real action is happening - and, really, it’s still only the beginning. Why would you want to be anywhere else right now?
—
Toronto is great, and I think that’s pretty clear. I just wanted to keep reminding people what we’ve got here now, and what we can look forward to. If we’re “pre-climax,” or on the cusp of a “moment” or whatever, the future of this town really could go either way. Especially if we keep undercutting our services and developments. Yeah, people don’t want to think of Toronto as NYC or LA or whatever (hey: we probs never will be), but we can build our own, even better thing if we can fucking take it seriously sometimes.
This was for The Grid.
(Toronto Tempo from Ryan Emond on Vimeo.)
