Vancouver vs. Toronto

[callmemaybe]

Originally Posted by mooguy

I personally wouldn't call British Columbians "backwards" but they are very very parochial. The difference is even more glaring when comparing Toronto to Vancouver. Toronto is an important international city with a worldly outlook while Vancouver is very much a regional city who's citizens are often self absorbed and very insecure.

Would you say they're as bad as Quebec in that regard?

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by mooguy

I personally wouldn't call British Columbians "backwards" but they are very very parochial. The difference is even more glaring when comparing Toronto to Vancouver. Toronto is an important international city with a worldly outlook while Vancouver is very much a regional city who's citizens are often self absorbed and very insecure.

I don't believe for a minute that Vancouverites are significantly more parochial than Torontonians.

In both cities you have huge populations that are either immigrants or kids of recent immigrants. In the case of the immigrants themselves their main focus is often on their country of origin with a secondary interest in Canada or more broadly, North American culture. There is no difference between Vancouver and Toronto on this front when it comes to their children either, where in both places the kids are somewhat in between the old country and the new world. Once again - a very typical situation for cities with lots of immigrants.

The native-born population (and this can include descendants of immigrants assimilated over the generations) in either city also quite similar: the main impact of the "multicultural aspect" of the city is in cuisine, and on this front once again there is no tangible difference. (Let's say) white Vancouverites do not frequent Asian or Indian restaurants any less than white Torontonians do.

Vancouverites, unless we are talking about their culture of origin, do not consume TV, movies, books, music, etc. from foreign cultures (not counting the U.S. a "foreign" here obviously) any less than Torontonians do. Which is to say... not a whole lot in either case. The North American mainstream in all these cultural areas predominates in both cities.

Vancouverites are no less likely to incorporate Asian (or whatever exotic or foreign) design or décor elements into their homes than Torontonians are. Which is to say you see this stuff here and there but it's not what most people do.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by callmemaybe

Would you say they're as bad as Quebec in that regard?

I would like to provide some clarification on this widespread perception.

What Quebecers really are is bristling and somewhat touchy about what they perceive as being pushed around or swamped on their own turf.

Beyond this reality, though, Quebecers are on average probably more sincerely interested in the other cultures of the world (and I am not talking about U.S. popular culture or the culture of France here) than other Canadians are, including city dwellers in multicultural Toronto and Vancouver.

Honestly, if you straw polled the average Mme Toutlemonde in Ste-Mâchemâlo-de-Whateveux, a 100% hypothetical francophone town in Quebec, she is much more likely to have seen an Italian or Swedish movie or have read a book by Paulo Coelho or Gabriel Garcia Marquez than your average Dave Soares, Jim Wilson or Mary Friesen in Vancouver or Toronto. She is also much more likely to have stuff like Paolo Conte, Cesaria Evora, Trio Esperança, etc. in her CD collection.

Seems all very contradictory, right? A concern about cultural survival and support for protectionism on the hand, and openness and interest in the wider world on the other?

As an attempt at an explanation, here is something I wrote in a discussion forum almost 15 years ago. It describes the way things were and were heading at one point in our history, and the path that most people in Quebec absolutely do not want to return to or follow.


Let's put the Quebec issue in perspective by transposing the problem to Ottawa, where French-Canadians are about the same % of the population as English-Canadians are in Montreal. Let's say you are an anglo and have lived in Ottawa all your life, and speak rudimentary French
at best. Now, pick up the Ottawa phone book and find all the non-French and
non-English names and imagine that all of these people would have chosen to
speak French (and often only French) for their new life in Ottawa. People
from the Ukraine, from Poland, from Spain, from Portugal, heck even the
Germans and the Dutch choose French even though their language is part of the
same "family" as English! And of course, as these people go about living
their lives, some of them are entrepreneurs, and so one of them buys old man
MacKay's confectionery at the corner of your street, another buys the gas
station that was owned for many years by the Wilson brothers. And so on, and
so on. Pretty soon all the signs in the corner store are in French, you can
still get served in English at the gas station, albeit grudgingly. Everybody
treats you as though you're not "with it" because you insist on continuing
your life in English. And although you're still in the majority (even after
years of francisation), the onus is on you to speak French all the time,
often so that newcomers (for whom French is not even the first language) can
understand. They build brand new French schools in your neighbourhood, even
though there's nary a Tremblay or a Gagnon that's registered there :
everybody knows who the school is *really* for! The principal's name is
Jean-Claude Schultz and the PTA president is Marie-Josée Mulder. The top
student in your day, François Downing, who once wrote an essay about how
assbackward the English of Ottawa are, has grown up to become a top-rated
commentator who appears regularly in Ottawa's French-language media.
If you don't like it, you can always not patronize the gas station, the
confectionary, the buses, the taxis, the restaurants, etc. Heck, you can even
just stay home if you don't like it!

[CottonJohn]

toronto