I have lived in one of Canada’s biggest cities all of
my life. Recently I have found my city, Toronto, unlivable. If you want to add
to the stresses of city living, study my city now and be glad you currently live
somewhere else.
With apparently 800 new Condominium buildings going up,
at the same time it seems, getting anywhere you want to go requires twice the
time it normally would.
We are constantly walking under scaffolding, taking
detours around surface construction (of more useless road blocking streetcar
lines) and generally having to take shuttle buses every weekend, when our
woefully inadequate and limited – mostly 60 year old subway is being bandaged
up.
No new roads have been built since the 1960’s to get
people in (or in my case out) either, so add traffic congestion and a
collapsing ‘expressway’ downtown to the mix.
Meanwhile, politically most votes seem to involve 30
city councillors voting against the Mayor and his brother whatever the subject. Seeing
beyond their political tenure seems beyond any of them. I compare it to a
Kindergarten. With an election coming up in October, an even sillier season
than what we have already had a couple of years of, is no doubt, coming soon.
I have now experienced a few of the world’s large
cities, i.e. New York, London, Paris, Rome, Madrid and others. I have not lived
in them, so I must allow that the stress their populations experience in daily
life, would of course, be different than the footsore treks a tourist takes for
a few days.
Normally I am an optimist and try to look forward. Perhaps
I will live long enough to see some of this mess cleared up, a better
government running the city and sometime in the future, locate an area of the
city not being torn up.
However, being as subjective about life as everyone
else is, I can’t help but say Take Me Away*…to a better place and start plotting
and planning on getting away from here.
*Pocketful of Sunshine – John Shanks, Natasha
Bedingfield, Danielle Brisebois 2008
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