Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound MPP Bill Murdoch says it's time Toronto separates from the rest of Ontario.

I grew up in small town Ontario and I'd have to say that my town seemed pretty xenophobic.

I can remember once in my late teens my friends and i drove to Toronto to see a Maple Leafs game.  This was a pretty rare occurence to drive to the city (we lived 2 hours away).  We parked at Kipling station and took the subway in.

I suggested to my friends that we get off the subway a few stops early so we could walk in Toronto a bit before the game started.  One of my friends gave me a strange look and said, "Are you KIDDING?  Do you  KNOW how many DRIVE BY SHOOTINGS there are there?"

This was mid 90s.  I'm sure that things have changed somewhat, and that many more people in rural areas are going to the cities much more often.

My friend certainly wasn't any kind of KKK type or anything.  But, there was this attitude of the city as a very dangerous place, and i'd say there were racial undertones informing that attitude.  So, he wouldn't have seen any issue with a black politician, but somehow he had this idea that walking a dozen blocks in downtown Toronto would be asking for gang violence.

He lives in Toronto now and probably quite likes it (don't really keep in touch).

I don't want to try to make an argument out of an anecdote.  Just saying that, growing up in rural southwestern Ontario, I feel like diversity was less appreciated.  I observed xenophobia and amonst some an irrational fear of the city (Toronto).

Which one was captured and released...the coyote, or the man?

Dundalk is a pretty town.

That's what people in Russia do? :D

Darn Russians!  Don't let anyone tell you the Cold War is over.  We know better!

Lisa: Dad, you can't judge a place you've never been to. Bart: Yeah, that's what people in Russia do.

Good ol' long-in-the-tooth, 'nobody's fool' Bill Murdoch.  OMG, Bill, you're still around!  That's probably because my beloved Owen Sounders, albeit they know where they're from geographically, don't take no sh-t from nobody.  We loved you when I was there in the previous century, and they still do.

Only thing is, Bill, Toronto (center of the universe!) is the economic engine of Ontario, and like it or not, your area's best customer.  It's just not nice to say Toronto is hogging the whole food bin (even though it's true, but that's only because we're stealing money from you folks and anybody else who has cash coming to them from the province or the feds by way of transfer payments, because we don't know how to create and live by a workable budget) when it begs Messrs. Harper and McGuinty for more moolah to pay for its toys.

Yes, like it or not, you are amongst the vast and subsequently wealthy selling component of the province, and Toronto is the rich and greedy buyer.  You are, in a sense, the food (and technology) basket of Toronto (Hamilton, London, Windsor, Kitchener, Ottawa, Niagara and the golden horseshoe --all, by the way, of whom we steal from.  We're an equal opportunity thief because we let you provincial MPs...including you, Bill, decide how much we can steal.)

You need us so you don't have to be us.  Sure, the shoe always looks better on the other foot, to coin a metaphor, Bill, but it ain't always necessarily so.  We have problems you don't even want to begin to want.

The balance works, Bill.  To make us into a separate province would mean in the long run, you would end up being a have-not society, and even less equal with the center of the universe than you are now.  What good would that do anybody?

And anyway, we love you.  We vacation in your neck of the woods (come to think of it, we also hunt and fish there.)  We buy your produce.  We buy your technology and manufactured goods.  We buy your craft work.  We even by your old stuff and call it antiques so we can sell it to each other for a price that puts more than a smile on our lips...it puts an entire belly laugh on our bellies.  We ski down your hills and proclaim your butter tarts from afar.  When spring comes, we crowd your maple farms to gawk at the trees.  In summer we buy your beaches and swim in them. Throughout the rest of the year we build and attend your terrific colleges and universities.

Whether we're on your front lawn or our own, we buy, buy, buy!  As for those stolen transfer dollars...sure it hurts a little. but in the long-term balance of things, you get much of it back.  And don't worry about the future too much if I become Toronto's next mayor, Bill.  I'll try very hard to get the spending under control so as you folks can keep your justly earned cash for your own projects.  And we'll still love you as our "North country".

Dang!  i just wish I was there to vote for you again.  But more than that, I just wish I could spend more time there again so anytime I wanted to go fishing I could just walk out the front door, down the street a bit, and throw my line into some pristine water where the fish are edible.  (We don't have anything like that here in Toronto.)  And maybe around lunch time pop into a Chinese buffet on 2nd before going back to fish the afternoon away.  (We have TONS of those here!)

I think you'll probably be around until you just turn into dust and just blow away.  God bless you, Bill!  You're what makes our provincial MPs trustworthy.

Mark State

2010 Toronto Mayoralty Candidate (Hello to all my old buddies from Grey Bruce and area!  Markdale to Toby and everywhere in between.)

dp

Sorry, typo.  Not "on"  "of".

Oh, you'll love street view, webgear.   Go to google, click on maps, and zoom in somewhere.   You'll get increasingly closer satelite pictures of the earth, until you get down, usually, to where you can see dog houses in people's back yards.   In some places it zooms into "street view" and it's a view of a street as if you were walking down it.  

I took a street view tour of Pompeii a few weeks ago.  It's really cool. 

That is, after I took a look at the land around Ortona, one of the places my father was invited by the Germans to visit in the 1940's.  Bad hosts, by his account.

I am quite surprised at the imagery level for Afghanistan and Bosnia. You think the Germans are bad hosts, get invited by the Croatians for year long visit.