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I am from the West Coast, and I can say that Vancouverites have a special, misplaced hatred for Toronto. It's so weird and irritating. Montrealers, I can understand their gripes, but Vancouverites are on another level. My Victoria-based family/friends prefer Toronto over Vancouver, but the Vancouverites? Some of my family sleep-walked through their visit here, ready to be unimpressed by sight after sight.

Archivist: The pre-planned retorts are key. I have a bunch as well. "Without the mountains, it's Halifax with a lot of Asians." They hate that one. A new one will be, "You managed to fuck up the Olympics." That one will be rebutted with insecure rants on weather, uncontrollable factors, fellating by Canadian media, Canada's performance etc....
 
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I met a guy who told me he was leaving because crime was crazy in Toronto and the murder rate was the highest in North America. He said he was moving down to Miami, where he thought it was much safer and nicer. When I told him Miami had a higher murder rate than Toronto, he said "prove it". When I did, he never spoke to me again. lol What's wrong with people? Why didn't he just do a simple search on the net? lol
 
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Torontovibe said:
I met a guy who told me he was leaving because crime was crazy in Toronto and the murder rate was the highest in North America. He said he was moving down to Miami, where he thought it was much safer and nicer. When I told him Miami had a higher murder rate than Toronto, he said "prove it". When I did, he never spoke to me again. lol What's wrong with people? Why didn't he just do a simple search on the net? lol
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This reminds me of this girl I met at an office I worked at. She moved to Miami and had already moved back before I met her. She said to me "I moved to Miami last year because I thought it would be cool but it turns out that it's just all black people there"

I think it's the most offensive thing anyone has ever said to me! When someone says something that offensive, it happens too fast to even have it soak in on time to say something! haha
 
Roy - that's a very good response. I like it. My best retort ever, I think, which I believe I've posted here before, was in response to someone at a party in Vancouver who said, "but we have the beautiful mountains to look at". I said, "Ontario had mountains long before you did, and we got over it. Been there, done that". She was incensed and I decided it was good.

If things are a bit slow, I opine that I always enjoy the view of the rockies while in Vancouver. That gets them going too.

I have always wanted to paid to be a kind of ambassador of Toronto to the rest of the country. I'd show up on stages in Red Deer and say, "I'm so happy to be here in Brandon" and then not really be interested in correcting the mistake. Stuff like that. But I digress.
 
Blind Toronto hatred is frustrating. Like the above posters, I don't mind intelligent discussion about the positive and negative points of the city, but when people have a blind hatred based on totally nonfactual and nonsensical reasons, and they don't want to hear anything different, then it is upsetting. And you don't have to go to Vancouver to find haters: even the 905 has its large share, which I find ironic since by definition the suburbs cannot exist without a city. I feel the local media is partly responsible for propagating misleading stories about Toronto and perpetuating lazy storylines of "big bad city" versus "small town innocence" long after those stereotypes have become painfully outdated.

But mostly, I think Toronto has simply become a blank canvas onto which anyone can paint their own views and beliefs.

If you want to see Toronto as ugly, you can find ugliness. If you want to see it as a crime-ridden hellhole, you can find evidence of that too. But on the other hand if you want to see it as a creative hub, a centre of green development, a playground for live music, a long series of festivals, a multicultural foodie paradise, etc., you can also find evidence of all those things. Toronto is what you make it. Some people visit or move here (usually for jobs) with a negative preconception and then they put on blinders and refuse to change their minds or take advantage of what is around them. Like American or Canadian tourists who visit Italy and only eat at McDonald's because "the food there is weird" some people cannot be saved.

It is also frustrating that most Torontonians I know, including myself, harbour no ill will towards the rest of the country and will happily visit other cities and smaller towns with great enjoyment of the different experiences and landscapes. It's sad when the appreciation of our wide, varied country is not returned in kind, or is met only with rudeness and ignorance.
 
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It's common amongst Torontonians too... albeit not about Toronto. The common hater attitude amongst Canadians in general is that the US sucks and Americans are asses. I find it very similar to the anti Toronto attitude amongst western Canadians.
 
Though I kid around, I agree with PukeGreen's comments about how various people see Toronto. I think to some extent, our image of the city is distorted by being privy to every petty grievance that there is, whereas what we get from other cities is usually quite a small amount of information. I recently ventured into a Vancouver forum and was surprised to see how bitter they were about certain aspects of their transit planning and how much Toronto was discussed in pretty neutral terms. Anyways...

I've spent time in many Canadian cities and there is always something beautiful if you are looking for it. A recent day in Thunder Bay was, in fact, quite fabulous and interesting.

Re: US attitudes. I tend to cut Canadians some slack on this regard, I think it is natural wherever you get large and small nations side by each. The larger place looks at the smaller place as being boring and irrelevant, and the smaller is defensive about the larger. I am thinking New Zealand / Australia, Uruguay / Argentina, Ireland / UK etc. etc. Not hard to see how it develops, but it just seems a natural outcrop to me. Would not be surprised to see it in other places, like Portugal / Spain, Namibia / S Africa etc., but here I am more or less guessing.
 
Archivist said:
Re: US attitudes. I tend to cut Canadians some slack on this regard, I think it is natural wherever you get large and small nations side by each. The larger place looks at the smaller place as being boring and irrelevant, and the smaller is defensive about the larger.
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I think this describes Toronto vs. almost any other Canadian city very well.
 
^Agreed. We saw an unbelievable amount of completely baseless vitriol spew out of the mouths of UTers on the "Worst City" thread a few weeks back. Ignorance goes both ways.
 
I used to feel the need to defend, or explain, the city of my birth, mostly to snooty Montreal folks. Having reached a certain age, I no longer rise to the occasion. Beauty, or whatever, is definitely in the eye of the beholder, - in order to judge ,you at least need to behold. And, there's a helluva lot to behold in Toronto.
 
I can be a big Toronto hater when I want to be. I think it's disgraceful, Canada has the unique problem of an overutilized public transportation system (unlike the US) and yet the subway is still so embarassingly inefficient. Also, I question how Toronto can be a wealthy city yet look so ugly in some places. Even the run down areas of Manhattan are more aesthetically pleasing. For example, the Lower East Side, in my opinion, looks nicer than Queen West. There's also a big issue of homelessness here.

But nonetheless, it's true. Some people have the dumbest complaints about Toronto. One girl claimed she had to go to downtown Hamilton to go clubbing because downtown Toronto was too dangerous. They both have virtually the same crime rate, but I guess CP24 has really gotten to her. And even my sister thinks living in Toronto is the equivalent of living in The Bronx. The idea that Toronto is some sort of haven for crime is so ridiculous.

Some people who make opinions about Toronto are entirely clueless. I told one of my friends Yonge and Eglington was a nice area and his response was "I would never want to live in Scarborough". Another person I worked with thought Toronto was only downtown and that Jane and St Clair was NOT Toronto.

Also, some people who live in the suburbs (especially Mississauga) HATE city life. It's so bad that some people don't even want to go down there to see a show or go to a conference. Personally, I love nothing more than trips downtown.
 
Hipster Duck said:
^Agreed. We saw an unbelievable amount of completely baseless vitriol spew out of the mouths of UTers on the "Worst City" thread a few weeks back. Ignorance goes both ways.
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There's a difference between baseless critisisms and legitimate critisisms. People had perfectly good reasons for not liking Houston or Phoenix.

No one's going to pretend a terrible city is an amazing, misunderstood city.

And either way, freedom of opinion. Even if it doesn't quite add up. No one needs to be silenced.
 
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