Billsman
January 10th, 2006, 10:32:31 AM
Why Toronto isn't Buffalo, and vice versa
http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20060110/1046960.asp
1/10/2006
By MARY KUNZ GOLDMAN
It's just across the lake, but really, it's worlds away.
That's why it's interesting to compare our town with Toronto.
Don't get me wrong: I'm not suggesting we beat ourselves up, envying Toronto's economic boom. Toronto is, after all, the biggest city in Canada.
Still, it's fun to get an outside perspective on Buffalo. And Toronto gives us that. Forget fears that, thanks to TV and McDonald's, the world is becoming smaller and all the same. Our two cities prove it's not so.
On the surface, it's funny enough. Toronto: "washroom." Buffalo: "bathroom." Toronto: Royal York. Buffalo: Royal subs. Names you don't hear in Toronto: Schwabl, Wardynski, Rizzo.
Dig deeper, and it's even more fascinating. Things to consider:
• Our stuff. Rick Spence, a Toronto business consultant, brings his family here for a weekend every year. His kids love the stores: "A Walgreens stop just before Christmas produced a treasure trove of Pokemon merchandise my younger kids were very excited about."
• Buffalo - talkin' loud! Here, you can walk out of Wegmans, say to no one in particular, "Looks like it's going to snow," and strangers will join the conversation. Don't try that in Toronto. They'll think you're a nut.
Spence says, kindly, of people here: "They always seem 15 percent friendlier and more outgoing - OK, louder - than the dour urban Canadians we see."
He adds: "Even your Christmas lights are usually done up bigger and prouder."
• Hold that door! Here, we go crazy holding doors for people. People will practically kill themselves so you don't miss an elevator.
In Toronto, folks let the door go in your face. When you hold it for them, they often just walk through, poker-faced, without thanks. It's a big-city thing. You can't take it personally.
• We wave that flag. "As Canadians, we're always puzzled by endless expressions of American patriotism (ribbons, bumper stickers, buttons, etc.)," Spence observes. He speculates: "The republic must seem much more vulnerable from inside the country than it does to those of us who live outside it."
• We jaywalk. Torontonians don't. And their drivers actually stop, not speed up, when the light turns red.
• Toronto's traffic is heavier than ours, but it's prettier. Here, folks cash their insurance checks and go on their merry way with bashed-in doors, duct-taped windows and dragging bumpers. Not so up north.
Rumor has it that Toronto has a law that demands cars be presentable. But guess what? "No, we don't," says Constable Wendy Drummond, media relations officer of the Toronto police. "We have emissions tests - you have to be environmentally sound."
• Toronto doesn't have our trashy booming car stereos. Drummond suggests that this, too, is a matter of courtesy rather than law. She adds, though: "We do get noise complaints. We enforce them when we can."
• Our slums are slummier. "We're not used to boarded-up buildings or rusting, derelict industrial sites," Spence says. "Buffalo isn't as bad as it was, but there is still a greater acceptance of - I don't know how to say it - urban wreckage."
He gently cites an abandoned Grand Island office building with broken windows that's visible from the I-190. "That would be unthinkable in Toronto."
• "A lot of Buffalonians are quick to talk down their city and what a dump it is - their word, not mine," says Spence. "That can't be good.
"And yet, there is so much pride as well," he notes. He tells of a Western New Yorker he met in a hotel pool. "He was seriously intending to move back, somehow, as soon as he could. I was very impressed with that."
http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20060110/1046960.asp
1/10/2006
By MARY KUNZ GOLDMAN
It's just across the lake, but really, it's worlds away.
That's why it's interesting to compare our town with Toronto.
Don't get me wrong: I'm not suggesting we beat ourselves up, envying Toronto's economic boom. Toronto is, after all, the biggest city in Canada.
Still, it's fun to get an outside perspective on Buffalo. And Toronto gives us that. Forget fears that, thanks to TV and McDonald's, the world is becoming smaller and all the same. Our two cities prove it's not so.
On the surface, it's funny enough. Toronto: "washroom." Buffalo: "bathroom." Toronto: Royal York. Buffalo: Royal subs. Names you don't hear in Toronto: Schwabl, Wardynski, Rizzo.
Dig deeper, and it's even more fascinating. Things to consider:
• Our stuff. Rick Spence, a Toronto business consultant, brings his family here for a weekend every year. His kids love the stores: "A Walgreens stop just before Christmas produced a treasure trove of Pokemon merchandise my younger kids were very excited about."
• Buffalo - talkin' loud! Here, you can walk out of Wegmans, say to no one in particular, "Looks like it's going to snow," and strangers will join the conversation. Don't try that in Toronto. They'll think you're a nut.
Spence says, kindly, of people here: "They always seem 15 percent friendlier and more outgoing - OK, louder - than the dour urban Canadians we see."
He adds: "Even your Christmas lights are usually done up bigger and prouder."
• Hold that door! Here, we go crazy holding doors for people. People will practically kill themselves so you don't miss an elevator.
In Toronto, folks let the door go in your face. When you hold it for them, they often just walk through, poker-faced, without thanks. It's a big-city thing. You can't take it personally.
• We wave that flag. "As Canadians, we're always puzzled by endless expressions of American patriotism (ribbons, bumper stickers, buttons, etc.)," Spence observes. He speculates: "The republic must seem much more vulnerable from inside the country than it does to those of us who live outside it."
• We jaywalk. Torontonians don't. And their drivers actually stop, not speed up, when the light turns red.
• Toronto's traffic is heavier than ours, but it's prettier. Here, folks cash their insurance checks and go on their merry way with bashed-in doors, duct-taped windows and dragging bumpers. Not so up north.
Rumor has it that Toronto has a law that demands cars be presentable. But guess what? "No, we don't," says Constable Wendy Drummond, media relations officer of the Toronto police. "We have emissions tests - you have to be environmentally sound."
• Toronto doesn't have our trashy booming car stereos. Drummond suggests that this, too, is a matter of courtesy rather than law. She adds, though: "We do get noise complaints. We enforce them when we can."
• Our slums are slummier. "We're not used to boarded-up buildings or rusting, derelict industrial sites," Spence says. "Buffalo isn't as bad as it was, but there is still a greater acceptance of - I don't know how to say it - urban wreckage."
He gently cites an abandoned Grand Island office building with broken windows that's visible from the I-190. "That would be unthinkable in Toronto."
• "A lot of Buffalonians are quick to talk down their city and what a dump it is - their word, not mine," says Spence. "That can't be good.
"And yet, there is so much pride as well," he notes. He tells of a Western New Yorker he met in a hotel pool. "He was seriously intending to move back, somehow, as soon as he could. I was very impressed with that."