Preville on Politics

I have a new home

Posted on May 29, 2008 by Philip Preville

For those of you not yet in the know, this blog “Preville on Politics” goes dormant as of this post. From this point forward, you can find my scribblings at “City State,” an expanded Toronto Life blog that, I am glad to announce, features some beautiful graphic banner by Evan Munday in lieu of a smirking me in the right-hand column. (Never liked that photo.) Henceforth, all smirking will be done exclusively through prose. Come join the newly-rebranded hijinx over here. Continue...

Montreal to adopt vacuum waste collection

Posted on May 28, 2008 by Philip Preville

Regular readers of this blog know of my enthusiasm for pneumatic waste collection. For years now, WaterfronToronto has been trying to get city hall to sign on to the idea for the West Don Lands. Well, I have just been tipped off to the news that Montreal has decided to install vacuum waste collection for its massive Quartier des Spectacles redevelopment. Continue...

Why U.S.-based magazines hit newsstands so late

Posted on May 26, 2008 by Philip Preville

This blog doesn’t cover national politics. For that there is Paul Wells’ generally excellent and witty blog at Macleans.ca. Yesterday he wrote a killer post about two completely unrelated but very intriguing issues: why U.S.-based weeklies are already outdated by the time they hit Canadian shelves, and what Stephen Harper is really up to. Continue...

I salivate at the prospect of a Miller-Smitherman-Ford cage match

Posted on May 26, 2008 by Philip Preville

Who will run for mayor in November 2010? Most people don’t care, but the city’s political operatives, apparatchiks and henchmen—they keep a low profile these days, but they are many—definitely do. They are currently busy playing the angles and looking for the ideal candidate. Rob Ford, freshly exonerated…innocent, whatever terminology you want to use, of his domestic abuse case, said he was considering a run at the job. On Saturday, John Barber addressed the open rumours of a George Smitherman campaign, as well as Ford’s musings. What Barber forgot to say was: “Whee! Gird yourself for a mean and nasty fight.” Continue...

Warrior cyclists jokingly call it the door prize

Posted on May 23, 2008 by Philip Preville

… but it’s not really a prize at all. Sunday’s Bells on Bloor parade will likely take on the feel of a wake as a result, but that’s just an even bigger reason to attend. What a way to kick off Bike Week. Continue...

Why transit sucks

Posted on May 23, 2008 by Philip Preville

File under “heresies, urban”: in today’s Report on Business section in the Globe, columnist Neil Reynolds explains why transit—especially the light-rail kind that Toronto is about to spend millions developing—is the wrong solution for urban traffic congestion. The best way to end gridlock, says Reynolds, is to make the roadways more accommodating to cars. “Buying bulk people-movers is an old paradigm,” he says, words that will surely drive TTC-heads bananas. But Reynolds may have a point. Continue...

Rob Ford: I’m innocent! Whatever! Make me mayor!

Posted on May 22, 2008 by Philip Preville

Of all today’s news reports on the withdrawal of domestic abuse charges against city councillor Rob Ford, only the Globe’s Jeff Gray gracefully captures Ford’s trademark ineloquence. Continue...

Politicians, bureaucrats or the general public: Whose ass would you rather kick?

Posted on May 22, 2008 by Philip Preville

Enjoy wielding authority and lording it over others in full public view? Then head straight to the city hall job board, because it’s chockablock with career opportunities for you. Continue...

The Globe and Mail eagerly sounds the Porter Airlines death knell, for the 118th time

Posted on May 20, 2008 by Philip Preville

Let’s play a game of You Be the Editor. Here’s the deal: the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration forces a local airline to shut down one of its seven return flights each weekday between Toronto and Newark, N.J. News? Yes. Front-page news? Of course not—unless you’re the Globe and Mail. No one has it in for Porter Airlines like the Globe. Ditto for Porter’s landlord, the Toronto Port Authority, a piddling public sector organization that, like the Freemasons, is assumed to nefariously wield much more power and influence than it does and, all told, takes up far more space and time in the city’s public imagination than it deserves. Continue...

The best thing about living in Toronto

Posted on May 20, 2008 by Philip Preville

This will never happen to you. Continue...

Author Bio Pic

Philip Preville

Veteran freelance writer Philip Preville lived much of his life in Montreal and Edmonton before he was lured, like so many Torontonians before him, by the promise of more work and a better living. A National Magazine Award winner and former Canadian Journalism Fellow at the University of Toronto’s Massey College, Preville writes Toronto Life’s politics column. He lives with his wife and one-year-old son in Riverdale, just close enough to the Don Valley Parkway that he can hear it when he steps outside his house—but just far enough away that it doesn’t keep him awake at night. On his office wall hangs a 1938–39 press pass belonging to his grandfather, Elias Gannon, who wrote for the Montreal Star.


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