XPost: can.politics, tor.general   
   From: Panca@nyet.ca   
      
   On 10/15/2014 12:07 PM, ken.selin@gmail.com wrote:   
   > Olivia Chow's experience in Toronto municipal politics   
   > and as a Member of Parliament makes her - by far -   
   > THE BEST CHOICE.   
   >   
   >   
   > She's the only candidate in favour of A LIVING WAGE.   
   >   
   > She's FOR THE PEOPLE: a "true" DEMOCRAT.   
   >   
   >   
   > She's truly AMAZING!   
      
      
   Yeah, but she's running in a city that elected the likes of Rob Ford, Mel   
   Lastman - two rightwing politicians who never quit stepping from one scandal   
   into another - between drinks.   
   __________________________________   
      
   We look back on the Mel Lastman administration and remember bumbling,   
   corruption and civic decay. Even as Lastman arrived in office, Toronto had   
   endured a thorough screwing-over by a provincial government that downloaded the   
   costs of transit and social services onto the city, cancelled its subway   
   expansion plans and forcibly dissolved a two-tiered system of regional   
   government that had become a model for the world to create the forcibly   
   amalgamated new city.   
      
   Amalgamation led to an identity crisis. And into that stepped Mel, an   
   unapologetically brash furniture salesman with hair plugs. In private life,   
   Lastman had made it into The Guinness Book of Records for actually selling a   
   refrigerator to an Eskimo, and as the long-serving mayor of North York, he was   
   a braggart for his sleepy suburb and a well-known friend to developers.   
      
   Backed by most of the establishment conservative boys from the old Metropolitan   
   Toronto backrooms, he won office as the first megacity mayor thanks to a big   
   suburban vote lured by the promise of a tax freeze. Under Lastman, whose two   
   terms lasted from 1998 to 2003, the city’s politics became mired in   
   controversy. A computer-leasing scandal that wasted tens of millions of dollars   
   gave way to allegations of outright bribery, and confirmed a widespread   
   impression of back-door access for lobbyists in a corrupt administration.   
      
   Toronto’s post-amalgamation budget-balancing strategy during that time became   
   an annual ritual of begging the province for a bailout. The token efforts at   
   official boosterism were uninspired — a generic Yonge Street festival, for   
   instance, or a summer where fibreglass moose were installed around city streets   
   (an idea stolen wholesale from Chicago).   
      
   When the mayor took official action in a crisis, he embarrassed us, calling in   
   the army to clear snow or appearing on international television during the SARS   
   epidemic and claiming not to have heard of the World Health Organization.   
   Lastman’s personal life and demeanour were even more bush-league — it was   
   alleged that he’d maintained an entire separate family after an affair filled   
   newspapers, and he worried aloud that he’d be eaten by dancing cannibal   
   tribesman if he visited Africa. Jane Jacobs talked about the decline of the   
   city; playwright Deanne Taylor wrote about a City for Sale. It was a disgrace.   
      
   And then there were these from further back in Toronto's history:   
      
   There was Sam McBride in the 1920s and 1930s who was prone to physically   
   assaulting city councillors. There was George Gurnett in the mid-1800s, who   
   stripped an anti-corruption opponent, beat him, covered him in pine tar and   
   rolled him in chicken feathers. His successor, John Powell, shot and killed a   
   rebel reformer.   
      
   And there was Allan Lamport, who famously said, “Toronto is the city of the   
   future and always will be,” and spent the equivalent of over $300,000 in   
   today’s dollars secretly entertaining guests at the Royal York Hotel while he   
   was mayor in the 1950s.   
   _____________________________________________   
      
   Makes one wonder if Torontonians have a penchant for the wild and ridiculous  .   
   . .  or if maybe their water system is contaminated with some hallucinogenic   
   drug.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)