A great city is one in which great people have done great things. Toronto is a city in which comfortable people have done comfortable things.
Toronto doesn't even want to be great, though. It wants to be "world-class" instead.
That expression is used in a strange way in Toronto. Logically you would think that world class was a pretty low standard. For example, at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, signs by the elevators inform you that the hospital's mission is to provide world-class health care. Since the general standard of health care in the world is pretty low – even lower than Canada's – that seems a disturbingly modest ambition.
What Torontonians seem to mean by this is that they aspire to the class of the world cities. However, Toronto is already officially recognized as a major world city. There is one higher class of world city ("full service" world cities), but the variables keeping Toronto out of that class are chiefly related to population. That is, Toronto doesn't have enough people to get into the top rank. If Torontonians want to get into that class they'd better start making babies.
Instead, Torontonians have taken the approach of cargo cultists. They look at cities which seem world-class to them, and they notice that those cities have institutions that Toronto doesn't. Back in the 1970s Toronto had to have a major league baseball team and a major league stadium to put it in. Toronto eventually got one of each, and the cargo cultists redoubled their efforts in their quest for other institutions they considered world-class.
One of these institutions was an opera house, which Toronto has finally acquired. Now, an opera house was a hep and happening institution back in, oh, 1740 or so, but these days its value to the cultural fabric is questionable. Opera is a fossilized art. Ancient works are trotted out and people attend largely as a public service – they're promoting the arts! Well, by going to the opera they're promoting a dead art.
By the way, I am aware that composers still write operas. I am also aware that they couldn't get them performed without extensive subsidies from government and business. So maybe opera is an art on life support rather than a dead one, but it's no longer a sign of exceptional urban culture. My life isn't any better because there's now an opera house down at Queen and University, and I suspect yours isn't either.
Another activity favoured by Toronto cargo cultists is bidding for Olympics and world's fairs. The world-class cities they admire hold Olympic games and world's fairs, they notice, so they conclude that if Toronto holds the Olympics or a world's fair it will be world-class, too.
They need to look about them, eh? Montreal had the Olympics, Montreal had a world's fair, and Montreal is only a minor world city, as the list I've already linked to shows. Perhaps having the Olympics and world's fairs makes you less of a world city, because back when Montreal had its world's fair it was definitely a few steps ahead of Toronto.
Then there's architecture. World-class cities have buildings by Daniel Liebeskind, so Toronto had to have a building by Daniel Liebeskind. World-class cities have buildings by Frank Gehry, so Toronto had to have a building by Frank Gehry. Any building.
Mr. Liebeskind's proposal apparently consisted of a sketch on a cocktail napkin; as his building nears completion it comes ever more closely to resemble a trailer park after the tornado. Meanwhile, Mr. Gehry's plans for the Art Gallery of Ontario include a section which is strikingly reminiscent of the bus terminal in St. Catharines, Ontario.
Toronto does have an agreeable open space designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe – oh, wait; they did have one until they insisted on obstructing Mr. Mies's carefully planned sight lines with a monstrous "sculpture."
Well, I don't want to demean anyone's religion, so I'll make a proposal to the Toronto cargo crowd which fits right in with their ideas. People in world-class cities couldn't care less about what people in other world-class cities spend their money on. Maybe if Torontonians emulated that attitude they'd start getting somewhere.
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