[URBAN NOTE] "Be cool, Toronto"
The National Post's Peter Kuitenbrouwer suggests that Toronto is a cool city. How cool? Well, our rivals like us.
Marie-Claude Lortie, a columnist at La Presse in Montreal, posed a question the other day that no Québecois has dared ask: “Toronto plus cool que Montréal?” Translation, for those who need one: Is Toronto now cooler than Montreal?
Toronto’s presumed ranking on the coolness scale has been stuck for years below New York (bigger and more fun) and Montreal (smoked meat, respectable bagels and a decent hockey team) and others besides. Now there is change afoot.
On Monday La Presse published Ms. Lortie’s guidebook, Carnet d’une urbaine à Toronto - Notebook of a Downtowner in Toronto. It is packed with her breathless descriptions of funky boutiques and mouth-watering delicacies.
[. . .]
Libération, the Paris newspaper, last week proclaimed “Toronto-mania,” noting, “Toronto is seducing young Canadians.” Writing on the BBC’s web site, journalist David Allan asked, “When Did Toronto Get So Cool?”
Many have trumpeted Toronto’s building boom; in March we had 134 high-rise buildings under construction, compared with 116 in New York. Our coolness, though, lies far away from the highrises, these writers say. All three drool over the Drake Hotel, on Queen Street West; the writers extol the Gladstone, Balzac’s coffee, Magic Pony on Queen West, Bambi’s (a bar hidden in a basement on Dundas West) and Kensington Market’s bookstore, Good Egg.
Full disclosure: my friendship with Ms. Lortie dates to 1990, when we covered the Oka Crisis - her for La Presse, me for The Gazette. A year later, in 1991, she visited Toronto to cover an NDP convention.
“It was long before Starbucks or Second Cup,” she says. “I was desperate for a cappuccino. I went to Bar Italia. I was charmed by Little Italy.”
Fast-forward twenty-odd years and countless visits to Toronto. Ms. Lortie is sitting in Little Italy again, with her husband, when he asks the unmentionable: “Coudonc? [Holy cow!] Is Toronto now cooler than Montreal?”
Marie-Claude Lortie, a columnist at La Presse in Montreal, posed a question the other day that no Québecois has dared ask: “Toronto plus cool que Montréal?” Translation, for those who need one: Is Toronto now cooler than Montreal?
Toronto’s presumed ranking on the coolness scale has been stuck for years below New York (bigger and more fun) and Montreal (smoked meat, respectable bagels and a decent hockey team) and others besides. Now there is change afoot.
On Monday La Presse published Ms. Lortie’s guidebook, Carnet d’une urbaine à Toronto - Notebook of a Downtowner in Toronto. It is packed with her breathless descriptions of funky boutiques and mouth-watering delicacies.
[. . .]
Libération, the Paris newspaper, last week proclaimed “Toronto-mania,” noting, “Toronto is seducing young Canadians.” Writing on the BBC’s web site, journalist David Allan asked, “When Did Toronto Get So Cool?”
Many have trumpeted Toronto’s building boom; in March we had 134 high-rise buildings under construction, compared with 116 in New York. Our coolness, though, lies far away from the highrises, these writers say. All three drool over the Drake Hotel, on Queen Street West; the writers extol the Gladstone, Balzac’s coffee, Magic Pony on Queen West, Bambi’s (a bar hidden in a basement on Dundas West) and Kensington Market’s bookstore, Good Egg.
Full disclosure: my friendship with Ms. Lortie dates to 1990, when we covered the Oka Crisis - her for La Presse, me for The Gazette. A year later, in 1991, she visited Toronto to cover an NDP convention.
“It was long before Starbucks or Second Cup,” she says. “I was desperate for a cappuccino. I went to Bar Italia. I was charmed by Little Italy.”
Fast-forward twenty-odd years and countless visits to Toronto. Ms. Lortie is sitting in Little Italy again, with her husband, when he asks the unmentionable: “Coudonc? [Holy cow!] Is Toronto now cooler than Montreal?”