Hogtown Blues
Dear Editor:
The Toronto pols who walk like earthlings always cease to amaze me. They are incapabla of realizing that they are suffering from delusions of adequecy. Their latest MENSA idea is for us to measure our own airspace. Measuring how we feel depending on the amount of pollutants we inhale is not going to solve anything. What are we expected to do? stay indoors when the pollution count is high? And pollution is only one of Toronto’s major problems. We are in dire need of an ombud to find out how Toronto, which once was known far-and-wide as “the City that Works,” became the city that works, not? We need a report that explains in plain English why, and how, we deteriorated to the point where our hospitals are overloaded and understaffed, our roads are crumbling, our streets gang-ridden and littered and the TTC reduced to using duct tape to keep its dilapidated busses running? We need someone to tell us why Toronto fell from being the third biggest live-theatre center in North America to having a state-of-the art theatre in North York sitting empty? We need to know why the tourists are staying away from here in droves? We need to know how we ended up with municipal politicians who come up with hare-brained ideas like a sidewalk tax, and couldn’t even agree on where to sit while having their picture taken? And, finally, we need to hire someone who can tell us in plain English how we can correct this mess and return Toronto to its former status as “the City that Works.” In short, we need an ombud of the calibre of Sheila Fraser.
William Bedford
Toronto
