Okay Toronto. So Niagara Finally Gets The Better of You. Get Over It And Deal With Your Own Problems!

A Commentary by Doug Draper

How do you get municipal honchos in Toronto so hopping annoyed that they are hopping higher than the CN Tower?

A view from Niagara Parks Commission lands of the rapids foaming above the Horseshoe Falls. Photo by Doug Draper.

Try running a few ads on Toronto-area television stations and a website urging people to consider Niagara as an escape from all of the gridlock, noise, crime and other chaos in the city. That might do it.

In case you have not yet heard all the crying from across the lake, Toronto has its knickers tied in a knot over something a Niagara body said about it in a bundle of ads late this July. The Niagara Parks Commission launched an ad campaign – featured on its website and on Toronto TV stations – encouraging Torontonians to visit its scenic parklands along Falls and Niagara River corridor, as well as other Niagara area attractions. And why? To “shake off the city,” that’s why.

Suffice to say, Toronto officials and some media outlets based in that city seem ready to throw at least a few people down our way over the Falls in the wake of these ads.

In a July 21 article in The Toronto Star, entitled “The Niagara they show … The one we know,” (that meaning that we “show” romantic images of Niagara’s wine country and they “know” the tackiness of spots like Clifton Hill, the reporter barely goes out of his way to be balanced with a lead sentence that reads; “We can diss you too, Niagara.”

Of course, wouldn’t you know that of all the nice places in Niagara that the author of The Toronto Star story could have discussed, he chose Clifton Hill? Kind of like one of us judging all of Toronto by the Eaton’s Centre – an abomination of a mall generations of New York City have been wise enough to keep out of Manhattan.

In another article, published the same day in The Globe and Mail, the reporter Anthony Reinhart declares that the Niagara Parks Commission ads might just as well read; “Dear Toronto – We think your city is a crime-ridden, graffiti-laden, gridlocked urban prison that you should escape now. Please spend your time and money here instead. Best, Niagara Parks Commission.”

Well, as that worn-out cliché goes; ‘If the shoe fits, …”

Let’s face it, Toronto, your own unabated growth – all of that low-density sprawl around you in the Greater Toronto Area that few politicians, municipally and provincially, have had the guts to address in a ‘smart growth’ sort of way – has caught up to you to a point where living or visiting your city is becoming increasingly dysfunctional.

You and successive provincial governments have not effectively addressed these sprawling growth and unsustainable, car-dependent transportation messes and maybe, just maybe, you ought to greet the Niagara Parks Commission ads as a bit of a wake-up call for you. Maybe, just maybe, they should inspire you to work a little harder to turn your city into a model

Hey Toronto, maybe instead of getting so upset about the Niagara Parks Commission running ads, asking people to shake off your city to come here, you ought to work a little harder to turn your city into a model urban environment for North America that is economically and environmentally sustainable. That might mean a helluva lot more than one of your mayoralty candidates – George Smitherman – racing to Niagara earlier this week with a letter to the Niagara Parks Commission reading; “It is with utter dismay and simmering anger that I learned that the NPC, an agency of the Government of Ontario, has resorted to building itself up at the expense of Toronto. That’s just not right.”

Well, Mr. Smitherman, I think I feel confident in saying that it is with ‘utter dismay and simmering anger’ that many Niagara residents watched you, while you were the Ontario Liberal government’s minister of health, turn your backs on countless thousands of people in this region working to save the Victorian Order of Nurses as a home-care service in Niagara. Instead you let some secretive agency of the provincial government called the Community Care Access Centre (CCAC) cut the VON’s services off for a private firm that hired some of these dedicated nurses back lousier wages and benefits.

Mr. Smitherman – or ‘Furious George’ as they called you – also turned your back on calls from many Niagarians, including doctors and health-care professionals in this region, to locate any new hospital, complete with a cancer and heart treatment centre for our region, somewhere in the middle of our region. But you supported the Niagara Health System, another un-elected body created by the provincial government, in its bid to build this new hospital on the western outskirts of St. Catharines, in the riding of your Liberal buddy and then-fellow cabinet minister Jim Bradley.

So I don’t think we need you coming down here now, trying to tell an agency of the province far more venerable than the NHS or CCAC how to do business. And obviously God help us here in Niagara if someone as Toronto-centric as you becomes that city’s next mayor.

As for the crime stuff, maybe the media in Toronto ought to take a step back and ask itself why it fills its news spots with so many crime stories when, in fact, national statistics who the rate of crime, even in Toronto, has gone down. Is it just to sell papers or, in the case of radio and TV stations, draw more listeners and viewers?

Whatever the reason, the Toronto media has to take some responsibility for the perception the rest of the province and world has that Toronto is ‘crime-ridden’. Don’t blame that rap on the Niagara Parks Commission.

(Click on Niagara At Large at www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary on matters of interest and concern to residents in our binational Niagara region.)