Hey ushahid, welcome to the forum! Don't worry about saying sorry. I think Lenser was joking around by saying that those old people would rise up like zombies to seek revenge for all that added density
You're right: Toronto might be a bigger, worldlier city than it was in 1977, but back then Toronto could lay claim to having the tallest freestanding structure in the world and the 6th tallest building. That's a claim that it will never get back. Ever.
The bar on skyscraper height has been raised considerably because developing world economies have just taken off in the last 20 years, and it's just so much easier to build a supertall in those countries. The cost of construction labour is much cheaper and the risk that developers are willing to take in economies that grow so quickly is so much greater, that it will always be easier to break ground on a 100 storey office tower in Shanghai than here.
That said, if you're interested in height, we have come a long way ourselves in the last 10 years. Back in the early 2000s, a 30 storey proposal was considered tall and 50 storeys was off the charts. I remember when the first Residence of College Park building was proposed and we were all flabbergasted because it was 52 storeys. These days that's normal. Another thing: back in the early 2000s, most skyscraper proposals in Toronto were seriously lame architecturally. I remember people went crazy in 2003 because we got Spire, a building that was both tall and good looking (they used to fall into either one camp or the other). These days there are still quite a few duds here and there, but the architectural bar has been raised considerably. I never thought that we'd ever get a skyscraper designed by Daniel Libeskind, but here we are.
Look on the bright side of things...