From: piton_m@summer.chem.su.oz.au
Newsgroups: soc.culture.canada
Subject: Re: TO ALL MISERABLE CANADIANS IN TO!
Date: 15 Oct 92 01:45:00 GMT
Organization: School of Chemistry, University of Sydney

Dear disgruntled (yes, that's probably you!):

Well, I've got to say that I'm deeply disappointed.  All this bullshit about
anti-US, anti-Toronto, anti-French, anti-blah-blah-blah, stuff on the 
board.  Can't anyone be positive about things anymore?  Case in point: some
fellow writes in to find out about Toronto and gets caught in a bloody shit-
slinging crossfire.  I was sitting in my office here in Syney (Australia) tel-
ling someone about the differences between Toronto and Sydney, and I mentioned
the general level of tolerance for foreigners.  Not 10 minutes later I see
this crap.  So let me tell you about Toronto as I see it.

I spent the first 5 years of my life living in and around Toronto.  My father's
side of the family is from TO (3 generations) and they've seen it change 
drastically, for both better and worse, over that time.  In general, it's main-
tained it softer side, particularly for a city of it's size in NA.  That's
basically why they still live there.  My mother's family is from Long Island
NY, in the US.  They've visited many times and they all agree on one thing:
they love it.  It's clean, people *really* don't give a shit about what colour
they are, how much money they have (except when it's their turn to pay the 
bill!), what they do for a living, etc., etc., etc.  Being black, middle-class
Yanks, they really appreciate that, as you can understand given the recent
racial tensions in NA.

I spent 5 years in Kingston, Jamaica.  That was fun as long as you were in a
group of 5 or more in broad daylight.  People were frequently shot for the
colour of their skin, for money, for their politial leaning, or just for fun.
That wasn't great for us Canucks so we left.  We didn't like it where we were
so we found another place in which we were comfortable and moved in.  To TO
we came.  Comfort, bland as though some may believe it to be in Toronto, was
still far more preferable to being shot at.  If I was from rural Canada, say,
somewhere in Quebec, and TO had too much "big-city coldness", or too little
Francophone culture, then I would have gone somewhere else.  My life, my
choice.

I'm in Sydney now, and have been for over a year.  I'm looking to return to
Canada, hopefully Vancouver despite to overwhelmingly cold winters, far colder
than in TO [...pay close attention to the forum....], because I'm a Naturalist
and that's where us tree-huggers and granola-eaters go to be happy, and
because Bay Street scrapes the shit out of my kayak.  The persona of Toronto
seems to have changed in the past few years into a miserable place to be.  
No one smiles and people look at you as though you're crazy for saying "Merry 
Christmas", even in December.  In Toronto, my wife and I were paying over
$1000/mo for a little one bdrm apartment while in Sydney -- which everyone
who's never been here says is so expensive -- we have a gorgeous two bedroom
townhouse (a terrace home, here, mate) for less than $C700/mo (at a higher
wage than in TO and Van.).  Milk was $6 for 4 litres.  Has TO gone crazy?
I hope I have, sometimes.

So, for that poor fellow coming (going) to TO from Japan, let me say I'm
sorry and ashamed for the crossfire.  Let me assure you that people in Toronto
may seem cold and iron-hearted but most love TO and accept people for who
they are, American, Japanese, or even Quebecois (oops!! Sorry, I forgot people 
are uptight about that too.).  Things are too expensive, but if you're from
Japan you certainly won't notice any differences there.  It's close to the
US where you'll undoubtably visit, meet lots of really kind people who are
not unlike Canadians, and buy lots of stuff duty-free just like us.  (If
your new-found American friends show up at you house in July with skis, just
humour them...)  In TO, the baseball's great, the hockey's rotten, and the
football is underappreciated.  The sushi's great if you're daring, as is the
rest of the food.  

As for the rest of you lot that got into that rowl, you should listen...er...
read yourselves.  If I was that fellow I'd think that the kind Canadians that
most foreigner's grand-parents have stories from way-back-when about have lost
their fuckin' minds, pardon my English.  If my leg was long enough, I'd kick
your collective asses.  If you don't have anything constructive (not neces-
sisarily nice) to say, then shut your keyboard.  Some of the early letters
were okay, but it's outta hand, mate!  If you don't wanna live in the US, TO,
Quebec, etc., then don't.  But don't ruin everthing for others.  It makes all
of us look bad.  Even those of us here in Sydney....

Mark, the Canuck DownUnder.
 
Newsgroups: soc.culture.canada,can.politics