Painting with the Toronto brush
All of us have our hot-button issues and we often get branded as radical for it. There is one opinion that I hold that sets me aside, and it started to come to the forefront when I started University. I met people who were not from Toronto, but when I referred to a map, their homes were in what I called Toronto. My second year roomate in particular swore up and down that he was from Oakville, and not Toronto. After years of friendship, he has since come around to my way of thinking, that Oakville is Toronto.

Other friends have been much less understanding, and they absolutely refuse to accept that Oakville, Mississauga, Ajax and North York are all Toronto. Of course I am not denying the existence of the geographically defined borders, nor do I attempt to undermine the work of various city councils that run these communities. What's being disputed here, isn't the accuracy of the statement, "I am not from Toronto", but the relevance of it.

If someone tells me they are from Auburn Hills, Michigan, that doesn't mean they aren't from Detroit. If someone says they are from Chesterfield, Missouri, they can still be from St. Louis. Someone claiming to from Chingford, England is at the same time a resident of London. The rest of us define Vancouver as all of the yellow stuff on the map around the dot indicating Vancouver.

If my roomate had pointed to his home on a wordless map of Canada, close the intersection of Winston Churchill Boulevard and Dundas, 75-80 percent of Canadians would identify that as Toronto. In a black and white world, then yes, we would trust the word of the local resident than the opinion of the mass majority. The truth however lies somewhere in between. The entity of Toronto is not limited to the geographic borders or the jurisdiction of the government that administers it. Cities are landmarks for us also, and the farther away we are, the bigger they are to us.

   [ posted by William @ 2:04 PM ]