Sadly, since Toronto elected Rob Ford as mayor, we're back to "world-class city" crap, although the actual phrase gets used much less than it did in the '90s. Ford wants a NFL team. He wants a stadium for the NFL team. He wants to host the Olympics. He wants a giant combined convention centre and casino so that people from elsewhere will "have something to do" when they're here on conventions (because none of the restaurants, bars, theatres etc. in downtown Toronto qualifies as "something to do"). He wants a monorail and a ferris wheel on the waterfront. These things will not get built but the debates over them consume huge amounts of time and energy at City Hall.
When I lived in Halifax I found it so nice to be in a place that seemed to honour its own history, that didn't appear to aspire to "world-class" status or crave validation from the rest of the world; this article is really disheartening. It's sad when our officials show such disdain for the places they were elected to run. All these Big Fucking Things, as the commenter above put it, are generic -- they have nothing to do with the places where they are built. The whole point of a convention centre, or a football stadium, or a Paul McCartney concert, is that it could be anywhere. But if you don't care about what makes Halifax (or Toronto, or Saint John) itself, what makes it special, I guess that's OK.
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When I lived in Halifax I found it so nice to be in a place that seemed to honour its own history, that didn't appear to aspire to "world-class" status or crave validation from the rest of the world; this article is really disheartening. It's sad when our officials show such disdain for the places they were elected to run. All these Big Fucking Things, as the commenter above put it, are generic -- they have nothing to do with the places where they are built. The whole point of a convention centre, or a football stadium, or a Paul McCartney concert, is that it could be anywhere. But if you don't care about what makes Halifax (or Toronto, or Saint John) itself, what makes it special, I guess that's OK.