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Toronto: Love it or hate it?

Some of you guys likely know the old town better than I do now. But, up until when I retired, what I found interesting was becoming familiar with the upwards of 240 neighbourhoods within the city's six boroughs.
 
Couple of growing up in Toronto stories my mother reminded me of the other day.

My mother gave birth to me at St. Joseph's ( and my sister four years later ). In those days mothers stayed in the hospital for a good seven days. The nurses were wonderful. Back then you could smoke in hospitals. ( It wasn't until about 1986 that they started banning it. That is the year I quit. )

Mom said, "The nurse would bring you and I had a cigarette here, a breast here, and you there. Then they took you away, and brought you back at next feeding time. " :)

Another thing she reminded me of ( for what seems like the millionth time ) involved Metro Police. I was about 13, maybe 14.

I'm a lifelong gun owner. My mother's car was parked in the garage. The garage was dark, and her car had a black vinyl top. I absentmindedly laid my Crossman 38T on the roof, went to do something else, and forgot about it. It was an air pistol, but it looked like something Dirty Harry would have carried. Most of the kids I grew up with had air guns. We used to shoot in the ravines.

Anyway, mom goes driving off somewhere, it slides of the roof. A policeman sees it. ( I think he actually witnessed it, or maybe it was reported. )

Co-incidentally, there had been a recent bank robbery in the area involving a woman. So, I guess they figured she tossed it out the car window.

They set up some sort of "dragnet". It was not a routine type stop for a traffic violation. Took her into the station, went through her purse and the car. I think she came close to having a nervous breakdown that day.

She turns 89 this year and was still furious at me about it when she reminded me the other day.
 
Is Anchorman 3 being shot in Toronto?

Group Of People In Brampton Parking Lot Fought With Weapons & Police Are Investigating
Peel Regional Police are asking for help from the public to share videos if they have them after many people were attacked with a weapon in Brampton over the weekend.

On Sunday, August 28, at around 1:30 a.m., officers said in a news release they went down to a parking lot at Mclaughlin Road and Steeles Avenue West, where a huge fight broke out between a "large group of people."

Officers said weapons were involved but didn't disclose what kind were used. Police said that several victims suffered non-life-threatening injuries from the fight.

In a video shared on Twitter, it appears that at least one person is waving a sword in the crowd of people in the parking lot, with others using their fists to fight.
 
Look at this fellow using a high-guard attack.

CityNews. :03 seconds in
Someones been watching Kingdom of heaven
 
Although it seems the current government is trying punch holes in the Greenbelt.

Saw this about that this week.


“The people have spoken,” he said. “They don’t want me to touch the Greenbelt, we won’t touch the Greenbelt.”

In today's news,

 
Almost unlimited land in Canada and everyone flocks to the small patch that is the GTA.
 
Almost unlimited land in Canada and everyone flocks to the small patch that is the GTA.
🙄

…or Vancouver, or Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Montréal, Quebec, Halifax…

Not everyone wants to live in Gibsons, Fort St. John, Weyburn, Red Lake or Rouyn-Noranda…
 
Anyone who doesn’t want to live in Gibsons has never been to Gibsons.
 
Saw this about that this week.




In today's news,

It's funny how the timing of some recent greenbelt land purchases worked out, isn't it. Even the tracts that haven't been farmer-owned for years, land developers know how to play the long game and that eventually, lobbying pays off.
Almost unlimited land in Canada and everyone flocks to the small patch that is the GTA.
Covered in mainly Class I and II farmland (well, the parts not already paved).
 
At three different points in time, I had managers who commuted one or more times a week to Vancouver from Gibsons, some other community in the outlying islands or Sunshine Coast that I can't remember, and a small community along the Thompson River canyon. Advantages of WfH or fast boat services (no, not the one upriver).
 
First of all, my wife was born inToronto and after we got married, we lived there for a number of decades before moving first to Oakville and then several hours north of Toronto. Despite the great restaurants, concert venues, art galleries and museums, Toronto is becoming an increasingly inhuman place to live with its constant rush-hour traffic, a subway system that hasn’t kept pace with the city’s explosive growth, obscenely-high skyscrapers that create terrible wind tunnel effects and alienation, not to mention growing gun crime. A few weeks ago we went downtown to stay at the Royal York hotel (to celebrate our wedding anniversary). Over the course of the three days we were there we saw quite a number of not only homeless individuals but people with significant mental or substance abuse problems as well. One woman decided to position herself in the centre of John Street, intentionally lie down on the middle of the road and seemed to be daring vehicles to run over her. I realize that other large (and small) cities in Canada are having problems as well. But it seems to me that the explosive growth the city is occurring is not being met at all. Is it that developers have bought off the politicians? Possibly. Is it that the citizens should be paying more in taxes? Maybe. I obviously don’t have the answers as the problems are complex and interrelated. Yet I do wonder if former mayor David Crombie, if he had had his way in the 1970s, would have helped make Toronto a much more human city through wider use of low-rise development, much like what currently exists in many of Europe’s larger cities. Still, that alone wouldn’t be sufficient. I guess I’m not changing with the times but I sure miss the Toronto that used to be.
 
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