By making use of the Canadian Constitution’s Notwithstanding Clause to wreak petty vengeance on his old adversaries at Toronto City Hall, Ontario Premier Doug Ford has actually done Canadians a favour. After 36 years of delusional complacency, we have now had confirmed what anyone who was really paying attention knew
Continue readingTag: Toronto City Hall
Alberta Diary: Ice Storm 2013: It’s still an emergency, and the PM is still missing in inaction
Canadian soldiers, summoned by Mayor Mel Lastman, clean up the streets of Toronto after the big dump of 1999. Below: Mr. Lastman. (Photos grabbed from the Toronto Star.) More days of silence from the prime minister of Canada have passed while the citizens of Toronto continue to dig themselves out
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Ford Nation dumped? Stay tuned for more program changes at Sun News Network
Toronto City Hall. Actual city halls in Canada’s largest city may not appear exactly as illustrated. Below: Rob Ford, Doug Ford, Kory Teneycke and Ezra Levant. Does anyone seriously believe Sun News Network cancelled Ford Nation after its inaugural show on Monday because of Rob and Doug Ford’s “relative inexperience
Continue readingMusings on Canadian Politics: John Tory will save us from ourselves
John Tory announced today that he is considering campaigning to be Mayor of Toronto in 2014. All I can say is, thank god. “I’m being asked to think about [running for mayor] and I’m being honest enough to say I am,” Tory, told CP24. I say thank god because Toronto’s
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Cashing in on Disaster Tourism: Rob Ford’s a boon to bloggers, if no one else
Your blogger drops pearls of political wisdom on the Toronto City Hall media. Below: Same fellow, outside the office of Mayor Rob Ford. Below that: Conservative Calgary talk radio host Dave Rutherford, said to be musing about running against Naheed Nenshi for mayor of Calgary. TORONTO If you ask me,
Continue readingMusings on Canadian Politics: Rob Ford’s nine lives will get him to the next election
By all accounts Rob Ford should not have any public support. He has spent the last fourteen years showing contempt for basic social and legal norms. He was charged with driving under the influence in Florida. He was accused of blowing past offloading streetcars in his van. He has been
Continue readingOPSEU Diablogue: Linda McQuaig for Mayor?
Linda McQuaig couldn’t resist. Standing at the Mayor’s podium at the Toronto City Hall council chambers, she told the Older Canadians Network: “I have never smoked crack cocaine.” Linda McQuaig for Mayor? The author (The Trouble with Billionaires w/Neil Brooks) … Continue reading →
Continue readingMusings on Canadian Politics: Mayor of Toronto has wrong public relations “strategy”
If you’re a politician and have been accused of doing something that threatens your job and reputation try to avoid the issues confronting you. Lay low, be quiet and hope the crisis will go away. This is not the advice a communications professional should give a politician when a career
Continue readingRailroaded by Metrolinx: A Dozen Oranges for Jack: In Memoriam from City Hall
“Jack was the reason I started voting.” – Message written in chalk on Nathan Phillips Square wall Much has been said about NDP Opposition Leader Jack Layton over the past few days, but much more can be written about the legacy he left as a City of Toronto councillor. His
Continue readingRailroaded by Metrolinx: A Dozen Oranges for Jack: In Memoriam from City Hall
“Jack was the reason I started voting.” – Message written in chalk on Nathan Phillips Square wall Much has been said about NDP Opposition Leader Jack Layton over the past few days, but much more can be written about the legacy he left as a City of Toronto councillor. His
Continue readingRailroaded by Metrolinx: A Dozen Oranges for Jack: In Memoriam from City Hall
“Jack was the reason I started voting.”
– Message written in chalk on Nathan Phillips Square wall
Much has been said about NDP Opposition Leader Jack Layton over the past few days, but much more can be written about the legacy he left as a City of Toronto councillor. His son, Councillor Mike Layton, will be hard pressed to continue his work, and fight against deep cuts to core public services at Toronto’s City Hall this September.
Representing bicyclists, the homeless, those with HIV, union members, and cultural producers, Jack Layton was an activist for a just society, with the flexibility to adapt to the new realities of climate change, AIDS, housing shortages, labour policy and pay equity. Mentored as a student by ex-mayors John Sewell and David Crombie, his policies instituted from his 1982 election at City Hall became the foundation of a progressive Toronto; these same policies are currently under systematic attack through a new neo-conservative agenda, spearheaded by Mayor Rob Ford.
The Monday morning of his death, I awoke to find that R. Jeanette Martin had posted on Facebook a photo of Jack and Olivia riding on a tandem bicycle at Pride, clad in orange, surrounded by fluorescent drag queens, and tagged it This is our Royal Couple. This is how Jack Layton attended Pride, cycling in tandem with Olivia, emanating joy, pride and inclusivity, surrounded by the love of a community whose causes he championed far before it was fashionable. Olivia and Jack are, and were, a team that could not be beaten, and deeply in sync.
When I asked Jeanette permission to write about this photograph, she said that Jack would not have liked that his regulation headshot was published in the mainstream media to commemorate his death, that her office is still a wreck from culling her archives to find the best shot after the announcement, and that this is one of her favourite photos that she has ever taken as a freelance photojournalist. As her photo made the Facebook newsfeeds, the irony was not lost that our present mayor, Rob Ford, was present at Pride only in effigy, as dozens of people pointed out his absence in painted imagery and sign.
At 4 p.m., I biked to City Hall, and bought a dozen oranges in Chinatown, close to where Jack and Olivia once lived. A bouquet of oranges, rather than roses, seemed a fitting tribute to the one known simply as ‘Jack’, who advocated that the wealth of the commons, taken from our natural and social resources, was redistributed to enable each citizen to live with dignity, with the possibility of a brighter future. As I handed each of these oranges to my friends – artists, musicians, social justice activists, public sector employees- all proponents of city building – I asked them to say a few words, and photographed them with City Hall in the background. Most were speechless with grief.
Meanwhile, mourners chalked their condolences for an outpouring of affection covering the walls and ground in Nathan Phillips Square, writing well into the night. Jack Layton was a brilliant auctioneer with his red armbands and fast patter, but he auctioned for beneficial causes, such as the 519 Community Centre, not with the future resources of our country.
How do we commemorate a politician, activist and author who opened the first food bank, and wrote extensively about affordable housing issues in Homelessness: The Making and Unmaking of a Crisis? As suggested by the Toronto Star editorial this week, do we name a bicycle network, or re-name an existing Toronto space or service, such as Dundas Park, a homeless shelter, or, Huron Street, the short stretch of road leading to the house he shared with Olivia in Chinatown?
To honour his political legacy, I would suggest renaming a homeless shelter, and establishing a scholarship for developing homeless policy through donations through the Broadbent Institute. I am afraid if we name a commuter bicycle network, under the current regime, it will never come to pass.
Swinging his cane, Jack Layton may have hastened the progression of his cancer during his campaign for Prime Minister by leading the NDP to a landmark victory as a formidable opposition to the Conservative majority; it is moot to know, and something he hid from public view. He carefully chose not to share the prognosis, diagnosis or treatment of his spreading cancer so as not to influence the decisions of others during their course of treatment, and so as not to upset his supporters.
The unprovoked vitriol, in the National Post article by Christie Blatchford, hit a man when he was gone, when he was unable to defend himself. His legacy of orange hope will live on, long after her words will be forgotten. For Blatchford, his last letter was grandstanding with empty platitudes, but she has shown that the position of the new right focuses on a Canada whose soulless future does not include, or reflect, the common good it once served.
Rest in Peace, Jack. We will defend the house that Jack built.
This article is dedicated to my cousin, Ali, and her husband, Adrian, on their wedding day. May your relationship be as in sync as Jack and Olivia’s tandem ride.
Reference:
Christie Blatchford: Layton’s death turns into a thoroughly public spectacle, August 23rd, National Post, at http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/08/22/christie-blatchford-laytons-death-turns-into-a-thoroughly-public-spectacle/