[URBAN NOTE] "To remember the Galleria Mall is not to hate change"
I liked Edward Keenan's Toronto Star article about the Galleria.
My esteemed colleague John Semley recorded a video column for thestar.com this week, pithily taking the vinegar out of “people who lament the passing of so-called ‘vintage Toronto,’” including the “tacky, gaudy neon stretches of Yonge St.,” and the “iconic eyesore Honest Ed’s.” The occasion for his comments was that some of us had been pouring one out and saying a few kind words in anticipation of the likely redevelopment of Galleria Mall, near Dufferin and Dupont.
“Nostalgia is fine and everything, but there’s a certain phoniness in shedding crocodile tears for a halfway rundown strip mall that most of us only went to to smirk about how halfway rundown it is.” Instead, he says “good riddance” and suggests we all need to “embrace newness.”
Now, I can’t be sure Semley is talking about me here. But as perhaps the only mainstream newspaper columnist to have recently written a remembrance of Galleria Mall - and as someone who has written lovingly in the past about Yonge St. neon, Honest Ed’s, and Captain John’s, among other passing eyesores - I figure I might as well make a point of clarification. Because whenever I write about memories of a place to mark a significant change, I get responses from people that are variations of “good riddance”: Why you getting sentimental about that ugly, unloved relic, Keenan? What do you want to do, freeze the city in amber? Save some junky old restaurant or store? Why do you hate change?
The thing is, I love change. I think that the mark of a living, growing city is that it’s constantly evolving, constantly being reinvented, as new generations and new immigrants make their own marks atop the footprints of those who came before.
I just also like noticing change - taking note of things, especially landmarks, that have been an odd or familiar or interesting part of the city as they’re about to disappear. I think of it like a little retrospective slideshow played at a graduation ceremony: we’re moving on to bigger and better things, and we’re happy about that, but we sure had some moments there in that place we’re leaving behind, didn’t we?
My esteemed colleague John Semley recorded a video column for thestar.com this week, pithily taking the vinegar out of “people who lament the passing of so-called ‘vintage Toronto,’” including the “tacky, gaudy neon stretches of Yonge St.,” and the “iconic eyesore Honest Ed’s.” The occasion for his comments was that some of us had been pouring one out and saying a few kind words in anticipation of the likely redevelopment of Galleria Mall, near Dufferin and Dupont.
“Nostalgia is fine and everything, but there’s a certain phoniness in shedding crocodile tears for a halfway rundown strip mall that most of us only went to to smirk about how halfway rundown it is.” Instead, he says “good riddance” and suggests we all need to “embrace newness.”
Now, I can’t be sure Semley is talking about me here. But as perhaps the only mainstream newspaper columnist to have recently written a remembrance of Galleria Mall - and as someone who has written lovingly in the past about Yonge St. neon, Honest Ed’s, and Captain John’s, among other passing eyesores - I figure I might as well make a point of clarification. Because whenever I write about memories of a place to mark a significant change, I get responses from people that are variations of “good riddance”: Why you getting sentimental about that ugly, unloved relic, Keenan? What do you want to do, freeze the city in amber? Save some junky old restaurant or store? Why do you hate change?
The thing is, I love change. I think that the mark of a living, growing city is that it’s constantly evolving, constantly being reinvented, as new generations and new immigrants make their own marks atop the footprints of those who came before.
I just also like noticing change - taking note of things, especially landmarks, that have been an odd or familiar or interesting part of the city as they’re about to disappear. I think of it like a little retrospective slideshow played at a graduation ceremony: we’re moving on to bigger and better things, and we’re happy about that, but we sure had some moments there in that place we’re leaving behind, didn’t we?