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

Michelle wrote:

I'm not sure how Torontonians are to blame for coyotes...where does that come from?

I can see how trapping them and then releasing them in a rural area could be considered dumping them somewhere.  But I don't really get what else you can do.  It's a bad thing to release wild animals back into the wild?  You can be sure that the coyotes weren't born in Toronto, so obviously we're not just creating coyotes to plague rural folks with.

What's the solution?  Kill them?

Okay, I've heard you loud and clear, folks.  I'm officially an idiot for saying coyotes likely aren't born in Toronto.  I realized it as soon as I read kropotkin's post, that of course coyotes could be born here.  I guess because I think of them as pack animals and I don't normally see packs of dogs running around that maybe the kind of migrate into the city or whatever.

I don't know what I was thinking.  :D  What can I say.  I'm just some ignorant kid from small town Ontario.  We didn't have coyotes where I grew up!

It sure helped me wile away the time...

Polunatic2 wrote:

  And at the end of the day, which hockey team do most Ontarians identify with?  (Yes I realize that Hamilton won't get a franchise until Toronto gets one first). 

Montreal?  that is who all my friends in  the North cheered for.  The Maple Laughs who would cheer for such pathetic losers.  That was before one saw tax evasion of its owners and some pedophile employees using the Gardens as bait.  It just occurred to me actually that the Leafs organization does represent Toronto properly. 

My family is from NB although I grew up in N. Ont, most Maritimers cheer for Montreal.  In Northern Ontario in the 50's and 60's the mines had many Maritimers and Quebecois who came for the work.  Not many Leafs fans amongst them.

[quote=kropotkin1951]

That was before one saw tax evasion of its owners and some pedophile employees using the Gardens as bait.  It just occurred to me actually that the Leafs organization does represent Toronto properly. 

[/quote]

Wow, that's a spectacularly shitty thing to say.  So, Torontonians evade taxes and are pedophiles, are we?

I agree with Polunatic.  I've often heard racist code (and not so "code") from small town folks (and yes, I've lived in small towns much longer than I've lived in a big city) when it comes to Toronto, particularly certain areas of Toronto.  (Of course, I hear racist crap here in Toronto too, so it's not like I'm saying that small-towners have a lock on racism or anything.)  I heard that sort of thing way more often in my travels in small towns/cities/rural areas than I've heard derision of rural and small city areas from Torontonians (although of course I've heard that too while living here).

For the most part, Torontonians I've been in contact with are FROM smaller centres, like to visit them, and some long to go back to them permanently.

For one, the notion that the when the province bails out Toronto, the rest of the province is somehow paying to give Toronto some privileged position that we "don't deserve" - i.e. that we're whiners always looking for the rest of Ontario for help. The reality is that many of the rural and small town low income (or no income) folks come to Toronto for work because their communities have been ravaged by free trade, unsustainable exploitation of natural resources and other capitalist exploitation. Some folks end up on social assistance. Some end up living on the streets. Torontonians pick up the tab but we can't afford it because of the Harris government's downloading of social services and cuts to welfare rates (partially continued by McGuinty). 

Polunatic2 wrote:

For one, the notion that the when the province bails out Toronto, the rest of the province is somehow paying to give Toronto some privileged position that we "don't deserve" - i.e. that we're whiners always looking for the rest of Ontario for help. The reality is that many of the rural and small town low income (or no income) folks come to Toronto for work because their communities have been ravaged by free trade, unsustainable exploitation of natural resources and other capitalist exploitation. Some folks end up on social assistance. Some end up living on the streets. Torontonians pick up the tab but we can't afford it because of the Harris government's downloading of social services and cuts to welfare rates (partially continued by McGuinty). 

And the flip side of that is that people who are on the margins gravitate out to rural areas and small towns because rents are cheaper and there may be more availability for seasonal employment.

There is a symbiosis that goes back and forth on almost every issue you can name.  That's why people like Murdoch and Dimanno are just two sides of the same coin of ignorance and mistrust.

And could we please, pretty please, put this small town and rural people are more racist and homophobic myth to rest.   The simple reality is that jackasses live everywhere and in similar proportions.  In a larger urban centre though they can enclave (and thus hide better) in a way you can't in rural areas and small towns.

Stargazer wrote:

Webgear wrote:

Why would the rural poor bash the urban poor? What rural person is anti-worker? 

 

Webgear, unfortunately I have encountered many rural people who are not only anti-worker, they are anti-union. "Why should these union people be paid more than me?" Same applies to the rural anti-worker types. They live all over the place.  People are people. Personally I blame it on the Toronto Sun.

That is not a mentality confined to rural areas sadly.

It is not just Ontario and TO. The Lower Mainland sucks the resources out of the regions and gives nothing back except school and hospital closures. THe decisions are made on Howe Street out here and it those decisions that shut mills that get rural people angry.  Especially when they saw in the 1990's there companies being bought up by multi-nationals who sold off the assets and stole the cash reserves and then left town.  Yeh they get resentful and blame the city folk because that is where the corporate masters live. Building a highway for the elite of Vancouver to speed to their condos in Whistler is not a big hit in places that have lost their main industry due to shell games.

even if we have rid ourselves of Harpercon MPs  

Oh sure play the envy card!

Webgear wrote:

Stargazer, thanks. Can we agree that anti-rural and anti-urban types are equal across the province?

 

Absolutely webgear. They are all over the place. It's sad actually. I have many friends who would be considered "rednecks" and a large chunk of them vote Conservative and don't seem to realize that a vote for Cons is a vote against the working poor. It's not confined to any region - rural or urban. It just is.

The Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound MPP, who made headlines this week for suggesting Toronto become a province on its own, said in a news release Thursday that "the attitudes" of people such as Toronto Star columnist Rosie DiManno and Warren Kinsella, a "Toronto-based Liberal advisor and strategist to Premier Dalton McGuinty," explains it for him.

.........

DiManno's column read, in part that "Bill Murdoch, who represents Bruce-Grey-Owen-Sound, which I think is somewhere due north, made his comments this week at a meeting of the Bruce Country Federation of Agriculture, which sounds vaguely gay-Commie to me."

Bookish Agrarian wrote:

 Personalized walking tours provided by sexy, if greying farmer boy

Oh my....

Perhaps we can organize a "cultural exchange" program, Bookish, now that the weather is a bit nicer.

How about... you walk my 'hood with me... and I'll walk yours with you? 

........

On a more serious note, which that damned Polunatic brought up (  ), which I didn't want to mention, first because I preferred the silly route, and second because most babblers here (who hate Toronto) don't hate Toronto for the reasons that Polunatic listed. But it's a good reminder, that such friendly bantering and nyah-ing can quickly go south, and I don't mean southern Ontario.

There are reasons why the majority of new immigrants, as well as the majority of Canada's populations of colour, choose to live in urban centers, and not just Toronto. Urban-bashing can take on racist and classist bullshit, none of which I read in this thread. 

And certainly to imply that there's "more" racism in smaller communities because of classist crap, is completely wrong.

There sure as hell is racism in Toronto and other cities in Canada. And for folks of colour there are job networks, school programs, informal support systems and all sorts of things that one can have access to when the population is of a significant enough size, some initiators get funding, and have it justified to funders on the basis of statistics. Of course some people don't want that and don't associate with members of their country of origin in any capacity. Immigrants and POC are not monoliths.

But the kind of urban-rural mobility is generally less of a choice for folks of colour for those reasons. 

This is, of course, changing, and the next few decades, if we live that long, should be interesting to watch.

And having Rosie DiManno represent how Torontonians feel about, well, anything, makes me want to freak the fuck out. It's not a coincidence, of course, that the right wingers such as RM, whether rural, urban or sub-urban, always manage to have the most access to air time. Grrrrrr.

I don't recall Ovid running at the provincial level.

Nope, from the early 60s until 1987 Liberal MPP Eddie Sargeant was the MPP for the old riding of Grey-Bruce.

And then it was Ron Lipsett from 87-90 when Bill Murdoch won the riding on his second try as a Conservative, after having lost the Liberal nomination fight to Lipsett in 87.

Interestingly Sargeant was as much a maverick in his day as Murdoch.  It is something in the water I think.

Less interestingly 90 was the first campaign I played a large role in having canvassed most of the Brooke area of Owen Sound and significant portions of the rest of the west side and being the candidate driver. 

The rest is, as they say, history. 

kropotkin1951 wrote:

Hog Town is as Hog Town does.

I grew up in Northern Ontario and can attest to the fact that TO is hated just as much there as the CoU is in BC.  Interestingly I thought you had to get at least north of Parry Sound before the real hatred for Hog Town shows up.

No way!!!I live on the Niagara Peninsula...

Argo's Suck!!!!!

Adam, what was wrong with Ovid?

what point was that adma?

Really I want to hear what point you think you were making....

Okay thanks,

I vote we keep Toronto and kick Bill Murdoch out of Ontario. Now let's go dancing ...

The man was likely from Toronto, coyotes like the smell of corruption, greed and immoral activity, hence why the man was attack.

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.)