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wild goose chase

wild goose chase

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What impressions do others have of Toronto when you tell them you're from there? Are you excited when others mention your hometown (I must admit, I am).

I'm living in Chicago right now, and I can hear ads for Porter Airlines on the radio.

I notice that although some Americans don't know that much about Toronto or just associate it with Canada more broadly as one of our cities, I'm impressed at the number of people who have at least visited or commented on it. Also, I meet international workers and students who tell me they've been to or have family in Toronto.

It's interesting the range of impressions and ideas people get from Toronto -- from that it must be a terribly freezing city, to a clean city, or a city with lots of immigrants, or somewhere you can barely find on a map, or somewhere where grandma lives.
 
The English staff at an English pub I frequented in Frankfurt were surprisingly familiar with Toronto. Nobody else knew wtf I was talking about.
 
I lived in Montreal for 10 years, in the 1990's and it was amazing the amount of anti-Toronto comments I heard. At first I used to get into debates/arguments but I soon realized it wasn't worth it. Sometimes I would just tell people I was from a small town, just to avoid the negativity. Montrealers really have a dislike or resentment about Toronto, or they did back in 1990 to 2000.
 
A common joke I seem to have during my travels, speaking to various locals around the world, is that everyone has a cousin, a friend or simply knows someone who lives in or has lived in Toronto. It's funny that way.
 
A few Americans I've talked to said Toronto is a "nice city". No one said "beautiful city", but it's a nice city. Sounds about right to me.

Torontovibe said:
I lived in Montreal for 10 years, in the 1990's and it was amazing the amount of anti-Toronto comments I heard. At first I used to get into debates/arguments but I soon realized it wasn't worth it. Sometimes I would just tell people I was from a small town, just to avoid the negativity. Montrealers really have a dislike or resentment about Toronto, or they did back in 1990 to 2000.
Click to expand...

Toronto has improved quite a bit since the 90s, so I wonder if attitudes have changed much. Probably not.
 
Living in BC there are some definite mixed reactions. There's sometimes a reflexive smugness towards Toronto. I've said this before, but it seems to be strongest with BC-ians who've never visited Toronto.

If you buy into Vancouver/Victoria's 'idea' of itself things are all about being close to nature, being 'progressive,' being beautiful and this kinda imagined "California of Canada." And the stereotypical idea of Toronto is that it's too concrete, too sprawl-y, too Bay Street, too dirty and whatnot. So I think some people kinda start to think of Vancouver as 'not Toronto.'

I should note that of people who've actually visited Toronto here the views about Toronto are overwhelmingly positive. I think Vancouverites are often surprised by how diverse Toronto is. Toronto's like the United Nations compared to Vancouver; Ukrainians, Poles, Portuguese, Chinese, Koreans, Filipinos, Jamaicans, Indians, Italians, Jews... Vancouver's diverse in the way that Miami is with one clearly dominant minority group.
 
diminutive said:
I should note that of people who've actually visited Toronto here the views about Toronto are overwhelmingly positive. I think Vancouverites are often surprised by how diverse Toronto is. Toronto's like the United Nations compared to Vancouver; Ukrainians, Poles, Portuguese, Chinese, Koreans, Filipinos, Jamaicans, Indians, Italians, Jews... Vancouver's diverse in the way that Miami is with one clearly dominant minority group.
Click to expand...

Vancouver certainly doesn't have the Italian, Portuguese, Jewish and Caribbean communities and ethnic enclaves that are so visible here, for example, and it's hard to think of any ethnic community in Vancouver that doesn't really have a presence here.
 
There's a huge Barbados-Toronto connection. Tons of people have cousins/aunts/uncles in the GTA, and many, many kids go to university in Toronto (I was on the same plane coming back with a Bajan couple that had just dropped their kid off at St. Michael's College residence for UofT while I was doing the same next door at Vic with my daughter, e.g.) Lots of kids complete high school in Toronto as well, mostly private so the more well-off, natch.
 
I was in Maine about a month ago and the comment I got was "Oh, it's such a big city". Then again for people in Maine everywhere is a big city I guess.

In general my impression of what Americans think of Toronto is that they feel Toronto is one of theirs. What I mean is that they really don't make much of a distinction between Toronto as an entity outside of The United States of America versus other cities in other parts of America where they don't live. I think this is a compliment. We may feel it is slightly insulting or ignorant because our world view makes this huge us against them distinction between Canada and the US.
 
Much like yon New Englanders, Czech folk also think Toronto is "so frikking huge" and full of "all those 'skyscrapers'".

I'd also like to take this opportunity to mention that in my experience, the only people who have negative things to say about Toronto are people in BC. Anywhere else I've set myself down for a bit, the people either didn't know what a Toronto was, we're ambivalent or had only neutral or nice things to say. In Vancouver, they pitied me for being from here....for some reason.
 
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