Preville on Politics

May 2008 Archive

I have a new home

Posted on May 29, 2008 by

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

image for Montreal to adopt vacuum waste collection

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

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he wrote a killer post about two completely unrelated but very intriguing issues: why U.S.-based weeklies are already outdated by the time they hit Canadian shelves, and what Stephen Harper is really up to.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

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

… 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

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

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

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

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

This will never happen to you. Continue...

Toronto: A nice place to live, but I wouldn’t want to visit

Posted on May 15, 2008 by

Excuse me, are you a tourist? Yes? Okay, then: Hi! My name is Toronto, and welcome to my city! We’ve Been Expecting You!™ Do you like my new slogan? Really? Because it’s important to me that you are Somewhat Satisfied, Satisfied or Very Satisfied with your visit, and I will be asking you about that before you leave. Want to know something funny? The new slogan isn’t new at all! It’s actually a retread of an old ’70s jingle for a hotel chain. It went like this: “We’ll be ex-PECK-ting YOUUUUUUU!” Nice, eh? Anyway, here’s your welcome candle. Let me show you around. No! Really! I insist. I’ve shunted the kids into the backyard, just like Tourism Toronto CEO David Whitaker told me to do. Let’s go. Continue...

The Eglinton Avenue East death trap

Posted on May 14, 2008 by

When I interviewed Councillor Adrian Heaps, who heads the city’s cycling committee, for my column in the current issue of Toronto Life, I asked him if there was anywhere in the city where he thought bike lanes would not work. His answer: Eglinton East, where the cars move so fast at such high volumes that the street might as well be a highway. “I would not put them there right now,” he told me. This morning’s news (“2 dead, 8 hurt”) shows us why. Incidentally, that’s the second median-jumping multi-vehicle crash along that stretch in less than a month (the first didn’t result in any deaths, despite involving multiple cars).

Continue...

Privatizing the TTC—how could it be any worse than what we’ve got?

Posted on May 5, 2008 by

I’m gone for the rest of this week, and when I come back we’ll have a brand-spanking-new, totally redesigned—and renamed!—blog to launch in this space. But before I go, I need to point out two items. First, go peek at the very funny separated-at-birth photos of Toronto Mayor David Miller and London Mayor Boris Johnson over on Doug Bell’s blog, Spectator. Second, read Dr. Gridlock’s column in this morning’s Globe, in which he examines the possibility of privatizing part of the TTC, and in which he gets a key component of the logic backwards. Continue...

Toronto incomes are on the decline (or, The Friday Pessimist, Thursday edition)

Posted on May 1, 2008 by

Given that I’ve been harping on the state of the declining economy for nearly a year now, you’d think I’d be happy to have my prognostications repeatedly proven correct. At this point, however, it feels like piling on. Today’s Statscan Daily provides the latest census data on incomes. Dig a little deeper and you discover that Toronto incomes are on the decline—not a relative decline, but a real decline. I can’t find those numbers myself, but here’s a snippet from the e-mail notice I just received from Jack Layton: “The 2006 census data reveals a significant downward trend for Toronto families of 2.4 per cent despite a national increase in income of 3.7 per cent and a provincial increase of 1.4 per cent.” 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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