[From the Vault] The Most Under-imagined city in the world
Follow me on Twitter: @FromKulak
Originally written 2019
The most populous cities in North America are Mexico City, New York, Los Angeles, and what’s the Forth?
If you said Chicago you would be wrong, at-least as of 2015, and it is not a Mexican city you’ve never heard of, though arguably Guadalajara at 13 might have a bigger footprint in the minds of most people with the release of Narcos season 3.
If you’ve seen the image at the top you already know the answer, though I wont be surprised if some people still don’t recognize it as Toronto.
And... I’ve already lost some of you.
You almost certainly don’t give a crap about Toronto. Indeed I’ve met many people who live in Toronto who don’t give a crap about Toronto. People who have lived and commuted within Toronto their entire life when asked “hey do you want to meet up at harbour-front” reply “there’s a harbour?” Indeed their is quite an impressive Harbour, sometimes it even Freezes Over. Or others who will break down lamenting the lack of green space and what a concrete wasteland the city is, when it is quite possibly the city with the most green space in the world due to its ample Ravine System full of Creepy Paths, Weird Wildlife, and Interesting Finds. Seriously the entire system stretches Hundreds of kilometers from the downtown core to the outskirts of the city, with a foot print 30x that of central park in New York, and I’m pretty certain at-least a quarter of the people in the city don’t know its there.
Then there are the people who will lament the lack of neighbourhoods and how everything’s a glass monstrosity, despite the city being littered with and defined by Unique, gorgeous, and historic Neighbourhoods, hell one is even Recognized as an Independent Republic.
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So why the hell is Toronto such a blank in the popular consciousness? There is a major city that is a 9-10 hour drive from New York or DC has a larger population than such storied places as Chicago, Boston, or Miami, is often quite visually striking, has quite possibly the most diverse population in the world, and oh ya, has a drinking age 2 years lower than America’s, has cannabis Dispensaries everywhere (both legal and illegal), and stores that openly sell fake IDs right next to strip clubs that will accept them, on the main street.
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The most popular theory is that it has to do with Hollywood economics. Toronto is one of the most popular locations to film movies (lots of Subsidies, low Canadian dollar, quick drive up from new York, lots of skilled people) and so Hollywood shoots all of its movies set in New York or really anywhere in the US in Toronto. If you watch the Titans DC show, Amazons The Boys, Suits, HandMaid’s Tale, or Orphan Black, almost every shot is somewhere in Toronto(minus maybe a helicopter establishing shot), and almost every east coast modern setting movie, good or bad, is filmed in Toronto with even the Quintessentially Boston movies Boondock Saints and Good Will Hunting being filmed in Toronto with the University of Toronto standing in for Harvard, something it does constantly, as desperate students trying to get to class are won’t to complain.
But this doesn’t explain anything. Toronto is flush with cash and Skill in film making that’s usually a recipe for far more films being set there. Compare LA and California which has almost always played every-town US (go back and watch Halloween (a movie set in Illinois) and play spot the palm trees) and western settings, but has also obsessively documented pretty much every story, subculture and location in the city with Names such as Beverley Hills and Mulholland Drive bringing numerous properties to mind.
And yet if we were to name movies set in Toronto you could maybe come up with Scott Pilgrim and a few David Cronenberg’s films if you were clever (Death to Videodrome! long live the true flesh!). Simply put i wouldn’t be surprised if there are more successful movies set in Anchorage, Alaska than Toronto. There are certainly more and better movies set in Alaska in general than in Toronto, despite Alaska only having a population of 700k while the Toronto city proper has a population of 2.8 million.
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How Canadian Content killed Canadian Culture: Judging by its Cultural Output, Canada is the last member of the Soviet Block. The dirty secret is there are tons of Canadian Movies and TV shows, many even set in Toronto or the also under imagined Vancouver (See: “every Frame a Painting’s” Video on the Matter), but they are utter trash.
Propagandistic Comedies utterly lacking in Humor, Puerile period Dramas whose only thematic through line is: how do we glorify the government and their desired vision of the Canadian people.
Simply put every Canadian artist has to make a choice sooner or later: will I dedicate my career to making good art and flee into the US media machine, or will I commit to making bad art and survive off of government subsidies. Obviously what you decide will inevitably depend on your skill, if your crazy good there’s no way your going to resist hollywoods siren call. So already we’ve created a trap for the mediocre. But why couldn’t their be a large production of medium quality art a-lot of GrindHouse and Horror or B-movies and niche Dramas those don’t always get the best people but people still watch it.
Well tell me, what do you look for in a B-Movie or a Horror movie? Usually its something salacious or shocking with the most popular coveting controversy like Ken Russel’s The Devils, or Cannibal Holocaust, or something ripped from the headlines and irresistible, something that will get people up in arms and earn the filmmaker that media coverage that will act as your advertising budget. Now can you get away with that if your primarily funded by the government?
I’ve seen shows about police in the prairies, but I’ve never seen a show that even tacitly acknowledges Native gangs make the Prairies one of the most violent parts of the country with murder rates well above the US average. I’ve seen shows about Gangsters in Quebec, but I’ve never seen a show that acknowledges the rank corruption in quebec, how organized crime runs through the provinces political machines, or that at one point Multiple former Mayors of Montreal were in jail. That just wouldn’t be something the government would like to fund. Nor would they be especially keen to tell the stories of how Robert Picton a serial Killer of well over 40 was able to prey on the vulnerable women thanks in part to the indifference of the RCMP, or how banditry and cowboy justice often erupts between Prairie ranchers and Indigenous Youth in infamous self-defence cases. They could tell interesting stories, but those aren’t convenient stories.
“Canadian Content” is a product of the Canadian Political class’s deepest fear: that nothing really separates the vast swathes of english Canada from the US, nothing really unites French and English Canada, and it could all come apart (with the inevitable loss of rents for the Bilingual Laurentian Political Elite) and break up ( as indeed it almost has twice, with Alberta eyeing a third whack at it). Simply put we need to subsidize all this Canadian Culture or else Canada will not have a shared culture at all. And they’ll be damned if they’re about to fund culture which highlights those divisions.
The obvious question: why should 38 million people, scattered across thousands of miles wilderness, on four separate coasts, with some of the harshest geography between them, and a thousand different background all thrown together by the vagaries of the British Empire... why should they share a unifying culture at all? Need not be asked.
“Canadian Culture” is a disgusting kitchy soviet production of Moose, Beavers, Poutine, “Multiculturalism” and “tolerance” (with the official position that the most important minority is the white one that speaks French), some conception of “The North”, The War of 1812, and the British Empire if the conservatives happen to be in Power.
Contrast the myriad actual cultures within Canada: Scots-Irish Maritime fishers, the Quebecois, the weird Montreal hippy Culture, the Upper Canada Loyalists who still hate George Washington, the Former rust belt in southern Ontario, the distinctive farming culture there and the pacifist dissenter religious cultures there (Amish, Mennonites and their breakaways), The weirdly aristocratic winery culture in Niagara the great lakes yachting culture, Toronto’s weird everything, the Inuit, the prairie natives, the weird cowboy culture of Alberta, the Dissenter religious valleys in BC, the Hippy laid back mixed with extreme sports west coast culture, the gold-rush wild north culture of The Oilsands and the territories. Those are only worth celebrating is so far as they serve a political purpose.
Toronto has a far smaller cultural footprint than a much smaller city like New Orleans, for the same reason a massive city like Kiev has a much smaller cultural footprint than say Florence. One has a unique culture and history its celebrated for decades if not centuries, the other has had decades of soviet style government mandated “culture”.
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