For the past few days, I’ve been in Toronto, covering the Juno Awards.
For a Calgarian, to say that you are spending any amount of time, energy and money in Toronto, you run the risk of dealing with insurmountable eye-rolls from anyone west of Manitoba. It could be tower envy (theirs doubles the size of even The Bow); I think it might be a little more familial.
Being from the Maritimes, I don’t have a steadfast allegiance to either city. But for devout Calgarians, it doesn’t get much worse than Toronto. We treat Ontario’s capital like our big brother. Sure, we should listen to him, but what does he know? We are younger, cooler and think that our mother (Ottawa) should like us better. Wanting to dislike Toronto is in a Calgarian’s genes.
The sibling rivalry is funny because the two cities couldn’t be more different.
While we make fun of the fact that they once called in the army to deal with a snowstorm, Calgary is regularly crippled by three centimetres of show. We have a beautiful blue river; they are surrounded by an unswimmable lake. Their subway goes underground and is rarely affected by traffic or pedestrians who don’t look up from their phones; we luckily don’t have miniature subway tokens that are way too easy to lose.
The best thing about having a big brother is that we can learn from his mistakes.
Toronto has been around twice as long as Calgary, and chances are it may know something that might be useful to us as our city goes through municipal “puberty.”
Instead of building out, Toronto often revisits and then revitalizes older neighbourhoods. For the upcoming Dalhousie residential project, we should take tips from Toronto – it has been successfully doing it for years.
Same goes for our struggling Calgary International Film Festival, which will probably always be the bit player to TIFF. But that doesn’t mean we can’t be a great second or third stop for the buzziest of films.
That’s not to say that Torontonians can’t learn a few things from us: Even though it’s smaller in size, tourists from around the world would choose the Calgary Stampede over The Ex every single time. (And it’s not just because our mini-donuts are better.)
And it would be impossible to compare the two cities without mentioning our internationally praised mayor to the always bewildering Rob Ford. If given the chance, I think Toronto would gladly trade back Dion Phaneuf for the refreshing politics of Naheed Nenshi. It’s a rare day when Toronto is jealous of Calgary. Relish it.
Our city is growing at a rapid pace. We have the opportunity to learn from our big brother’s mistakes and make Calgary one of the finest cities in Canada. And, at the end of the day, since we still have to have dinner with him on Parliament Hill, we might as well be civil about it.
