🍁 🍁 🍁 🍁 🍁 🍁 If it wasn't for Canada 🍁 🍁 🍁 🍁 🍁 🍁

Toronto is part of Canada? :open_mouth:

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No, Toronto is its own universe.

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…and a Bizarro one at that…

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BoingBoing has an interesting relevant story today:

A Europe of city-states

…the accompanying post argues that large cities effectively transcend their host nations and will become the 21st century’s geopolitical order.

Sounds like Toronto. At least in its own mind.

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New York probably has a head start on many others. What other city can you list that sends members of their police force to the scenes of international terrorist incidents?

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The City of London Police are in the same league. Not on the terrorism front, as “we are the world’s copyright police!” That includes - without even a British court order - ordering a Canadian domain registrar to redirect a website based in Singapore to competing websites based in London.

Of course during the London Olympics City of London Police went absolutely insane with copyright enforcement. But they’ve only expanded their copyright force since them.

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Also, Toronto has earned a certain reputation in Canada. The Globe & Mail, billing itself as “Canada’s National Newspaper”, is known elsewhere in Canada as “Canada’s National Toronto Newspaper.” (The National Post being “Canada’s Other National Toronto Newspaper.”)

Other Toronto-based “Canada’s national…” companies tend to do the same. (though it did surprise everyone when Much Music begrudgingly recognized that Vancouver exists.)

Companies like Microsoft will open a store in Toronto, and then wonder why their store-only products aren’t selling in the rest of Canada. (Yes, the 950 XL phone looks awesome. No, I’m not buying it if the only way to get it serviced or replaced is through the mail to Toronto.)

NHL games with non-Toronto teams will occasionally be pre-empted on TV nation-wide by local-level Toronto sports.

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If it wasn’t for Canadian hooligans, this thread might’ve stayed on-topic.

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Oh Toronto. LOL
I love it so, but its so funny how much the rest of the country hates us… and the average Torontonian has NO IDEA.

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If it weren’t for Canadians, there wouldn’t be Canadian hooligans (хулиганов?) to hijack the thread. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Depends. All the transplanted Montrealers have a fair idea…

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Didn’t i say the point of this thread was to mourn the existence of Canada, not to celebrate?

If it wasn’t for Canada, I could be complaining about other game rule-breakers.

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There are so many Montrealers here! Why are they all leaving Montreal? Did they get sick of the bagels?

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The joke during the last referendum was that if Quebec were to separate, so many Montrealers would flee to Toronto that we’d rename it “Moronto.”

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Pretty much the same reason as I’m in Ottawa - followed the money out of the city. When I was a kid, Montreal was the largest city in Canada, and most corporate HQs (almost all of the banks) were in the city. 1976 put paid to all that, despite Montrealers pretty much voting federalist en bloc.

That’s the problem with first-past-the-post: there were a number of times when the PQ got in with majority governments despite actually losing the popular vote in a two-horse race. Greater Montreal has slightly more than half the province’s population, but can’t elect a government by itself.

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Shortly after the last referendum, with the separatists promising to immediately hold another one, forty-three municipal councils in Quebec passed resolutions expressing their will to stay in Canada. That includes many on the Island of Montreal.

The PQ quickly gerrymandered Montreal and the surrounding area to stop that from happening again.

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Well, the amalgamation of the cities didn’t last too long - the West Island is (except for Lachine and Roxboro) pretty much as it was before. Gatineau is still amalgamated, but it depends on the Feds so much for its regional economy that there is no hope that it wouldn’t secede, amalgamated or not.

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If it wasn’t for Canada, Justin Bieber would be an American. This seems like a reason to celebrate, not mourn.

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If it wasn’t for Canada, America wouldn’t be able to extradite Justin Bieber and wash its hands of him if he got into the slightest legal trouble.

(Apparently America has decided that it still can’t get enough of him.)

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Nah, they finally cottoned on to our returns policy: you break 'em, you keep 'em. We sent down a perfectly normal, if somewhat nerdy, pubescent boy. (Come to think of it, somewhat nerdy is normal for that age.)

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