(Toronto) T.O.'s too expensive, dirty, dangerous

The Toronto Sun ^ | Fri, July 14, 2006 | CONNIE WOODCOCK

[fanfan]

When you live in a small town, a day in the city is a big treat -- all those shops, all those restaurants, all those things to do. Where to begin?

My daughter and I used to visit Toronto once a month for a doctor's appointment and spend the rest of the day wandering around, visiting bookstores, shopping along Bloor Street, eating lunch at a nice restaurant.

But sorry, not anymore. We come and go as fast as we can, not even pausing for lunch.

The thought of spending a day in Toronto "enjoying" myself makes me tired. As for my daughter, it frightens her.

She refuses to walk along the street alone because she's terrified of panhandlers and she's barely comfortable even when I'm walking with her. And frankly, I'm nervous about squeegee people, who seem to be popping up all over the place again. Funny, I thought that was illegal now, but apparently not.

And then there's the dirt, the garbage blowing in the streets, the weeds growing up between the cracks, the general air of neglect.

Let's not even discuss the possibility of being caught in the crossfire of a passing gunfight because although the chances may be slight, they certainly exist and that's not attractive either.

And they wonder, down at city hall, why tourism continues to decrease. Which brings us to the latest insanity from the politicians -- the idea of charging 905 residents more to visit the zoo than 416ers. After all, the logic goes, Toronto residents already pay for the zoo through their property taxes, so let's charge GTA residents more. What are they thinking? Don't they want tourists anymore around here?

One big reason why Toronto's zoo always has a huge deficit is it, like everything else in Toronto, costs too much.

A family of four can easily spend more than $100 for a day at the zoo. Admission alone for two adults and two children comes to $60. Parking costs $8. If you take the TTC, you'll spend $2.75 per adult cash fare (which is what tourists often do) and $1.85 per child one way. And then there's food.

And on top of this, they want to charge 905 residents more?

Hasn't it occurred to anyone that we all contribute to the zoo through our provincial taxes? Heaven only knows they whined long enough before they got those provincial bucks.

But then, this is only the latest in a series of tourism-destroying tactics the city has been indulging in.

Remember last year's $4-million disaster -- the "Toronto Unlimited" slogan, which made absolutely no sense? Remember the contests to see how much better people could do for free?

But that was nothing compared to the complaining from city hall a few weeks ago that tourists aren't paying their parking tickets, Albertans being the cheapest of all. How do you suppose that sort of thing sounds if you're a tourist from Alberta? And what do you think the chances are of you coming back?

Sure, we lose tourists for lots of reasons that can't be controlled -- the strong Canadian dollar, the confusion about passport requirements at the border, the price of gasoline. And Toronto politicians aren't alone in shooting themselves in the foot over tourists. The province is pretty good at it too.

Don't forget the millions they poured into the Toronto production of The Lord of the Rings, which is closing in September after an abbreviated run. Seems not enough people were willing to spend up to $125 a ticket. Wow, what a surprise!

Maybe it's time the zoo and the TTC and everyone else in the tourist business -- hello city hall? -- took a long, hard look at themselves and cut prices. And not just a little bit either.

And while they're at it, they could clean the place up, deep-six the weed spray bylaw, get rid of the street people, stop ticketing out-of-province cars and make it a little more pleasant around here. Then the tourists will come.

It worked for New York City and it can work here.

[AnnaZ]

Hmmm... dirtier, and still without Montreal's class. (LOL)

[CaptainCanada]

Sad to hear that Toronto has decayed so much over the past twenty-five years...

Believe very little of what you read (even here).
Toronto has NOT changed as much as this report would have you believe and
I'd still rather walk any street in Toronto at any time of the day than
in any major American city - and I've been in most of them...
So don't be discouraged from visiting any Canadian city, you're always welcome
and unless you are a young black male "known to the police", you need
have no worries about becoming a potential victim of gun violence.

[TheMole]

From http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Levy_Sue-Ann/2006/07/09/1675770-sun.html

July 9, 2006

Our city's in decline

Dirty streets, panhandlers, weeds everywhere ... 'There doesn't seem to be any pride anymore'

By SUE-ANN LEVY, TORONTO SUN

On Canada Day, I took a trek by bike to the Toronto Islands.

What should have been an easy five-kilometre jaunt down to the ferry docks from my Yorkville home turned into an obstacle course. I found myself weaving around a gauntlet of construction crews repairing two separate water main breaks, potholes, sidewalk cracks that looked more like gullies, windblown coffee cups and papers and a phalanx of street people.

One able-bodied young man was sound asleep at the corner of Bay and Queen Sts. -- oblivious to the stares of the many tourists who stepped over him to get to Nathan Phillips Square, which Mayor David Miller claims to have cleaned up with his trademark broom.

Another pesky panhandler had parked himself on the sidewalk at the foot of Bay St., forcing tourists to walk around him to get to the ferry gates. En route home I spotted a beggar -- bare-chested and sporting a red Santa Claus hat -- who has recently taken up harassing tourists in Yorkville.

The downtown core looked sad, filthy and far from welcoming. I was ashamed and disgusted that visitors to Toronto would see the city this way.

Howard Camber felt much the same when he returned to the city he once called home last month.

The very moment the consultant reached Spadina Ave. from the Gardiner Expressway with some friends from Buffalo in tow, two "drug addicts" pounced on his car demanding money, he said. Squeegee "kids" hit him up for more money at both Richmond and Queen Sts.

Walking through Yorkville that evening, they encountered more beggars. In the 24 hours they were in the city, Camber figures they were approached by panhandlers 15 times.

He said Americans are "grossly tired" of being "harassed" not just by street beggars but by the green hornets who ticket them if they park two seconds longer than their ticket allows. "They're finding Toronto to be a tourist-unfriendly city," he said.

Camber, who lives on an island off the northeast coast of Florida, was just one of dozens of people who responded to a column I wrote two Sundays ago about Toronto's tired, shabby and decrepit state.

I received e-mails from readers living both in Toronto and far beyond it -- all expressing despair about the city's less than beautiful parks; the grafitti, posters and filled-to-overfilling litter bins that are too few and far between; the cracked sidewalks decorated with dog poop and unkempt weeds; the sour smells from city sewers and even the the highly touted "litter vacuums" that some say leave behind as much trash as they pick up.

For most, the plethora of panhandlers around the city is by far the biggest sign Toronto has fallen into disrepair.

Many felt that for all the mayor's talk about his "Clean and Beautiful City" plan, Toronto has declined under his watch.

"You hit a sad nerve," Stephanie van Hoof told me from Whistler. B.C. last week.

The 30-year-old former Toronto resident came home for a visit in May, as she's done for the past six years. This year the city's crumbling architecture, the lack of upkeep and the general grimy state really hit her. For the first time, she said, she was "no longer sad" to leave.

"There doesn't seem to be any pride anymore."

Al Eisele is so incensed with the panhandlers who harass him when he tries to eat his lunch "in peace" in St. James Park at Church and King Sts., he wrote me while on vacation in New Brunswick.

IT'S NOT WORKING

A Toronto businessman who didn't want his name used contacted me the day after he got back last week from a visit to Stockholm and Helsinki. He said the difference between those cities and Toronto is "night and day." No matter where he went during his travels, the streets were clean and there were no panhandlers.

"I don't care ... how much money is being spent on making Toronto presentable -- it hasn't worked!" he said.

Ann Dempster provided me with a long list of concerns about her Yonge and St. Clair neighbourhood, including the overflowing garbage cans -- stinking of dog poop -- in a small parkette in Forest Hill village.

"Bring back Mel (Lastman) ... at least he paid attention to communities," she wrote.

Alma Anderson told me she's tired of the grafitti painted on walls and posters on public street poles that make the "city look really uncared for."

Toronto resident Paul Korn told me he thinks the greasy and grimy streets all need to be power-washed.

Donna Ferri-Santoro, who's lived in her St. Clair W. neighbourhood since 1960, has renamed one stretch "Beggars Alley" because of the number of apparent drug addicts who hit on people for loose change in one short block.

"(The mayor) promised with that broom he was going to clean (the city) up ... he hasn't cleaned up anything ... it's even worse," she said.

So far during her summer "listening tour," mayoral candidate Jane Pitfield has gotten an earful from Torontonians about the city's shabby state.

"In their opinion the city is still dirty, especially in the downtown core," she said. "The streets are not being swept and they're not being cleaned with water."

FOOT DRAGGING

Pitfield had hoped to have an anti-panhandling bylaw in place for the summer tourist season.

After three months of procedural wrangling and foot-dragging by Mayor David Miller and his minions, her request for city officials to explore a "quality-of-life" bylaw bannng panhandling finally got council approval in a 25-11 vote just one week ago.

The earliest she'll see a report back is September. But it's anybody's guess whether city officials will actually come up with something of substance, given Miller's view that panhandlers have a "right" to occupy the city's public sidewalks.

"People who've travelled to other European and North American cities feel that our panhandlinig is more aggressive than any city they've seen," Pitfield said.

"There are people who've come to Toronto and won't return because they have found that to be such an unpleasant experience."

Downtowner Shawn Whatley moved to Toronto from New York City exactly two years ago. He saw how its former mayor Rudy Guiliani turned the Big Apple into a relatively clean and "nicer place to live" -- in part by cracking down on squeegeeing, panhandling and sleeping on the street.

He believes Toronto needs a "strong, tough no-nonsense mayor" like Guiliani to bring the city back to its former glory. "I just don't think David Miller is that person," he says.

Camber feels most of city council just doesn't get it that Toronto is going downhill.

"I don't think they get anything other than surviving and keeping their own jobs," he said. "That's what Mayor Miller and the rest of them are good at doing -- talking but doing nothing."

[who knows what evil?]

I'd still rather walk any street in Toronto at any time of the day than in any major American city - and I've been in most of them...

I won't argue with that...I avoid American cities like the plague. Perhaps you have been reading about the crime wave in Washington recently here on FR...the capitol of the United States, and tourists aren't even safe...embarrassing.

[AnnaZ]

Thanks so much for that article. Unbelievable, and rather depressing.

[driftless]

I don't know, I liked Toronto the last time I was there...about twenty years ago. Walked around downtown, went to a Bluejays game at Exhibition Stadium (very good-looking ball girls/cheerleaders), went for a boat ride on the harbor islands....enjoyable short trip. Didn't see all the nasty stuff the writer saw.

[fanfan]

about twenty years ago

That, my FRiend, is the point.

[VOA]

Toronto was for years known as "Toronto the Good" because it had so few
of the problems that big cities often experience.

Yep.
In one of his speeches, Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias shortly details
the moral decline of the city from the 1800s to the 1900s.
A very sad fall from grace.

[Heartofsong83]

I think of it as Toronto the Bad now.

[goldstategop]

I have had no problem on my last two visits around Bay Street district. The CN Tower, the Skydrome and the world's longest street - Yonge Street, which goes on almost forever, are Toronto tourist landmarks.

(Go Israel, Go! Slap Down Em Hezbullies!)

[Levante]

"Will CAIR represent me for this indignity?"

Only if you claim to be Muslim and blow up a bunch of "infidels."

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

This article is a bunch of BS. I visited Toronto in August of 2004 and had a great time. Beautiful city, very diverse people. Asians, Indians (India), and Latinos all living together. Plus it's only an hour away from the Falls. It's a perfect weekend getaway, and it'll only get better since the Canadians are cracking down on the Muslim fanatics.

[Blind Eye Jones]

I'm from a small town as well, and in the 70s when I went to the University of Toronto, the city was great. But much has changed over the years: traffic and people congestion, urban sprawl, much dirtier and dangerous in some parts, more expensive and just a more intense vibe to the whole city. With greater population comes greater problems and the quaintness of the city has left for some overly busy, self conscious, cosmopolitan, wannabe New York image. The fashion is to be fashionable and flaunt it on the town folks. And living in squalor is so trendy. So, yes, I'd love to drive a giant bulldozer down Queen Street.

[fanfan]

This article is a bunch of BS. I visited Toronto in August of 2004 and had a great time. Beautiful city, very diverse people. Asians, Indians (India), and Latinos all living together.

I'm glad you enjoyed it.

I was enjoying it the last time I was there too, right up until I was mugged at gunpoint.

[DCPatriot]

I remember when they opened that current city hall building...the one that looks like a flying saucer between two curved books standing on end.

And the Ports of Call was nice.

[fanfan]

That was a pretty risky building for the 70's.

[DCPatriot]

It opened in the late 60's didn't it?

[fanfan]

You're right!

My mistake.

[DCPatriot]

RE: Toronto City Hall.....Construction commenced on November 7, 1961, and the building was opened on September 13, 1965 by Governor General Georges Vanier. The final cost of the new City Hall was approximately $31 million.

[goldstategop]

The Toronto City Hall is an impressive piece of urban architecture. A stone's throw away from there is Queen's Park, the home of Ontario's provincial government. Toronto is also the provincial capital.

(Go Israel, Go! Slap Down Em Hezbullies!)