Toronto Culture and Multiculture Part IV: Sitting with the Gypsies

I was so stupid. Sitting with the gypsies and failing grade one. In a way it was all my fault what happened. The entire misunderstanding was my fault. That entire, horrible misunderstanding.

No way was I looking to mouth off asking too many questions. I was just trying to understand. Why this, why that, why not do it different. Why not do it how I thought was better. Wasn’t mouthing off. Kids didn’t go mouthing off behind the iron curtain. Just wanted to understand by authority what reason things were to be done that way. So stupid – me never realizing things weren’t done by authority any reason. Never realizing how most everything was done entirely by reason of authority behind the iron curtain.

So there I was, sitting with the gypsies, failing grade one. Not smart. Not good. The good smart ones sat fronting each row. They were the ones getting all perfect grades. Also kept order. Like orderlies, I guess. Snitching the rest of us was officially their job. Didn’t bother with me, though. Not back there with the gypsies. I was beneath their contempt. Too far back to see, nevermind snitch on.

Sitting with the gypsies didn’t make me one, either. The gypsies didn’t speak much Romanian – and I sure didn’t speak Roma. Even if I had, I don’t think they would have spoken to me. Yet, even had they spoken to me, it wouldn’t have done me any good. No conceivable incantation could have meant I’d get away unbuttoning my collar, slouching back from sitting at attention and join with them just marking time. Their immunity to the pecking orderlies wouldn’t have translated for me.

Official orderlies didn’t bother me. The wan’na-be orderlies did. The sore and persecuted ones seven or eight seats back from the front – one or two ahead of me. No hope getting up front for them. They’d have lied, cheated, stolen and killed indiscriminately to get ahead a couple seats, though. And that meant if my fountain pen smudged one line in my notebook, I got reported. If I squirmed a tad from sitting at attention, I got reported. If I even creaked my bench funny – yeah. Reported.

Got so I didn’t much have to sit at attention or fear creaking my bench any more. Because many days, I wasn’t sitting. I was standing. At attention, by my bench. Except when everyone went for recess. Then I’d get to sit back a while. Just me and Tovarisha Diriginta – Ms. Director. I’d put up my hand and she’d go on with whatever she was doing. About once a week, if I managed keeping my hand up all recess, she’d look at me with her marble eyes.

“Is there something you would like to say?”

Stupid me, there always was. Some objection. Some idiot question. How to make things better. Which, of course, just made things worse.

Finally, one day late that year, the waste hit the fan. Tovarisha hadn’t looked my way for weeks. Another recess ended. It got to be too much. My arm hurt and I couldn’t bear lowering it empty handed in defeat no more. Got to be too much. If I had to put my arm down in defeat again then rather down the throat of that orderly girl returning from recess. Put it down her throat and see how far down I could reach. Had I been thinking, it would have been along lines that if I was gon’na do that kind of time, better go ahead and commit some crime. But it got too much and I wasn’t thinking. As everyone was returning from recess I got up, grabbed my books, advanced two benches – and sat.

And then there was silence. Nobody went reporting to Tovarisha. Just all stared amazement at me.

Seconds passed. A minute. Another. Tovarisha looked to see what everyone was staring at. And she didn’t much react. Almost like she’d been expecting it.

“It’s just an animal,” she said. “Doesn’t know better.”

She came around, grabbed my ear and led me back. Not back among the gypsies. Four or five benches further. All the way back behind empty benches, where nobody sat or could be conceived to sit. So I became nobody.

Didn’t seem too bad at first, being outcast. Even the out of school drubbings stopped. Only the gypsies craned back my way once in a while – like they couldn’t believe what an idiot I was and almost pitied me. Seemed alright, at first. I wasn’t to speak or be spoken to – and it seemed a relief. But not for very long.

One particular day, it became imperative to use the facilities. What to do, absent voice and mobility? Nothing. Endure. And so I did. Most of that vividly particular day, I endured. But not long enough.

Afterwards, I was sent for a bucket and mop. The custodian returned with me. The bucket had been heavy and I’d wound up making another mess in the hallway. Anyway. Everyone stood in a circle while I was cleaning. Like visiting the zoo right there in the classroom. With Tovarisha, eyes of marble, tour guiding.

“See? That’s what happens when animals get out of control. We must teach it to not soil itself. Teach it to not soil our classroom. Teach it to not soil our school. Teach it to stop soiling our splendid socialist society! Teach this animal better!”

It happened only days after that. Less than a week, anyhow. A group of them from my class cornered me in the building I lived. By the huge, black cast-iron entry door. My hand was forced into the hinge. The door was shut. And the group vanished like they’d never been there. Which, of course, they hadn’t been. Not officially.

Found out, later, that throughout some twenty minutes the entire building heard me screaming. Can’t recall that part. Don’t remember anything but flashes. Alarming snapshots from some pitch of darkness place I’d never been – because it couldn’t have been me trapped there. How far from reaching the door handle was. My grandfather’s face. So many stairs to the second floor. How my thumb was hanging. How my thumb and arm were bandaged in place. And then a murky kind of twilight, a dim and endless boredom when entertainment was peeling dried blood off my arms. Like glue.

Months later I was able to twitch my thumb. And it was back to school. Grade two.

Not the end. Were this short story tall tale, it would be. Protagonist hears last nail hammered in his coffin. But there’s more point to this tale than woe. And it’s not that I’ve enjoyed peeling glue ever since. Or how I loathe buckets and mops.

Second grade was different. I was different. Couldn’t conceive questioning. All was obedience, no questions asked. Not by me. Not ever.

Started out sitting with the gypsies again. Soon enough, Tovarisha rolled her marble eyes at me. My obedience was impeccable, though. Impeccable to tiniest detail. It was her questions answered by my posture at attention – rigid as exclamation marks. Rigid as blades and cast-iron spikes facing her eyes.

My grades went from failing to perfect. I was moved up, one seat at a time, until I was second in row. Tovarisha announced that, should I continue sustaining such heroic progress, it was just a matter of time until I’d be first – in row, in class, an example to all.

My immaculate socialist rebirth was stained but once. There was this sad little man. Came around once every month to teach us art. He’d been inappropriately kind to me in first grade – got himself rebuked by Tovarisha. Never failed me when he should have. Justifiably should have. Art was one subject I ought to have failed. Couldn’t even get stick figures right when time came to drawing. Never could and still can’t. In any event, he was no longer sad when he came round our second grade classroom. He was pathetic. Stooped and trembling. Cringing.

We were to draw the school-yard. I did my best. But the art teacher insisted I hadn’t. Took my drawing and tore it.

“Why can’t you ever follow instructions?” he demanded while grabbing my ear and. pummelling me around some.

I didn’t bother trying to answer. Didn’t bother explaining that following instructions no questions asked didn’t mean I could figure drawing from sticks. He was nothing – I wasn’t there to answer his pathetic questions. Besides, I was more interested how come that orderly girl left class without permission.

Once the art teacher calmed sufficiently he took my grade-book, marked in a large 4, and returned it. That got to me. Standing at attention, staring at the row of perfect 10s culminating in a 4. I looked up from my grade-book, thinking, “This is an animal. It doesn’t know any better.” And I saw Tovarisha standing in the doorway. With the little orderly girl at her elbow.

And Tovarisha called out that pathetic art teacher into the hallway. Closed the door. We heard the shouting anyway. Both were shouting for a bit. He was much louder, initially. As I now realize hearing in hind-sight, hysterical. Soon, it was just Tovarisha shouting. Nothing more from him but a single sound. Sounded like a moan.

He came back in. Not trembling any more. Shaking. Injured like any other animal. Stood swaying a moment, searched and found me through watering eyes. Advanced. Tottered groping at my bench. Grasped my grade-book. Rummaged in his pockets. Pulled out a razor blade. Opened my grade-book and scraped at it with the razor. Placed razor back in pocket, cast about, found my fountain pen, made entry in grade-book, put fountain pen and grade-book down and stumbled from the room.

Never saw that pathetic art teacher again. Didn’t matter. His final entry in my grade-book answered every question I’d ever asked. Not that I was asking any more – but when I saw what he’d done, there wasn’t anything left to asking. Because grade-books were official documents. Had to be triple counter-signed – grading teacher, Tovarisha and parent. Forging signatures or altering grades once entered – totally illegal. Yet that pathetic art teacher had scraped away his original entry. Using razor blade much as I’d once used a bucket and mop. And his final entry in my grade-book was a perfect 10.

And the answer to all my questions – whether or not asked? Why like this and not like that? Why this way and not that? First and foremost and always: fear. Over, above and prior to all else, fear. Reason, as needed, might cower beneath and far behind. Far enough behind to ensure absolute, reflexive, blind flinching obedience. Otherwise, should reason dare questioning authority, reminders were ever crushing close at hand. Reminders how like animals those disobedient were subject to physical rupture, emotional shatter and spiritual fracture.

The point? Merely this. Simple-minded as my not realizing how intolerantly totalitarian life behind the iron curtain was, it is yet simpler minded – and more hazardous – not realizing how relatively tolerant, multicultural, free and democratic life here in Toronto, Canada is.

But for isolated flickers, state society governance has and continues to be by might – not by right. Might made right in the past. And increasingly, it does so again. Might, however, is not established by tolerance. Precisely not. Might is established by totalitarian intolerance to opposition.

What matters the specific character of totalitarian intolerance? What difference whether opposition be exterminated by communism for putative class enmity, by fascism for putative inimical inferiority, by fundamentalism for putative heresy or infidelity to God’s truth? It matters naught. Reason ceases signifying when intolerance turns totalitarian. There’s no reasoning – or questioning – when truth is re-written at gunpoint.

Not so here in Toronto, Canada. Building from cultural foundations in principled tolerance, we demonstrate to the world that right makes a greater might. We serve by example to the world truths and possibilities of multiculturalism and democracy elsewhere remaining unrealized.

Toronto hockey might let us down. But Toronto cultural diversity is unmatched. Toronto multiculturalism isn’t just world class – it’s a beacon to the world. And so, increasingly, is the freedom and democracy of Canadian society a light in the darkness. Wasn’t so until quite recently. But it is so becoming. We haven’t changed – not in any way radically – but we seem to have in the eyes of the world. Because the star-striped backdrop we’re inevitably seen against has turned inside out like over exposed negatives.

United States used to be the bastion of democracy. Now, it’s on a rampage. Since becoming the sole super-power and since the tragedy of September 11th, 2001, the United States has taken to overpowering. Taken to super-powering. More like an angry bear than the eagle far above – striking swift and deadly effective only when it must. So taken by super-powering, the United States becomes lost to it’s own founding democratic principles. There is no imposing democracy. Like a garden, democracy is cultivated – and, when absolutely necessary, defended. Democracy, like a garden, must be preserved and defended from coercion. No conceivable way can it be established by offensive – military or any other kind. Only by defensive. Democracy means cultivating free say in human life – precisely not coercing, ever, other than vital defence. To stop coercing.

Canada will not replace the United States as the bastion of democracy. But contrasting as a free and democratic beacon – illuminating what cultivating democracy in all reason demands? Increasingly.

Rooted in tolerance, we cultivate our free, democratic, multicultural society as a garden grown increasingly dramatic – and not only by contrast. Just one problem. We fail to appreciate the source and significance of the very principle of tolerance we are culturally rooted by. And this lack of cultural self-identification – this cultural self-disrespecting – means worse than Toronto living in no one’s imagination. It means worse than Canada living in no one’s understanding. Not only do we fail appreciating who we are – we fail guarding what we stand for.

The conquerors in history, the mighty of the world – they make no apologies. Not when they win. Totalitarian intolerance? Absolute oppression? Genocide, even? Too bad. When they win, they win. And since might makes them right, they require no reason but overpowering force. Since might makes them right, victory becomes self-evidence their gods are stronger, their destiny more manifest, their ideology more justified, their ways more precedent.

Not so with us. Rooted in tolerance, we do eventually grow mightier than the mighty of the world. For they live by the sword. And die by it. They rise and expand, they decline and fall. As they gamble the fortunes and misfortunes of war, we cultivate consistently. And so long as we stand adequate guard, so long as we cultivate our garden just long enough, we ultimately win simply by default of not losing.

But that’s the problem. We tend to forget standing guard. We tend to forget defending the garden we cultivate. Why? Because we don’t appreciate our own tolerance. Not in principle – we’re too materialistic to understand principles. More importantly, because the very principle of tolerance rooting our culture and guiding our democratic, multicultural ways leaves us prey to guilt. Debilitating, easily invoked guilt. It’s because we’re so committed to tolerance in principle that charges of intolerance, however spurious, get us wheeling – cartwheeling – right off the edge of reality.

We must start appreciating, understanding, even celebrating who we are and what we stand for. We must ask some better questions about the meaning of our tolerance and where, in principle, our tolerance comes from. Lest we fail guarding who we are, what we stand for – and decline, stumble and fall instead. We owe it to the world as much as we owe it to ourselves.

Quit Whining Already!

What's should the normal response be when the federal government hands you over a billion dollars for you transit infrastructure, even if they are doing it as a cheap political ploy to get votes in the GTA? "Thank you, sir! May I please have another!" Instead, the chair of the TTC (among others) is already whining that the billion dollars came with strings attached. It can only be used to extend the subway line from Downsview Station to Vaughan. He argues the money could be better used elsewhere, like to replace the Scarborough LRT.

True, the money could be better used elsewhere, but beggars can't be choosers, and after the release of yesterday's Toronto budget, city council is definitely a group of beggars. So quit whining already, and do your jobs, councillors! Come up with better money management solutions for this city!

I wish I could do that with my tax dollar, tell the city council where I wanted it to go. City council seems to be able to find the taxpayers money to renovate offices and move people around to feed the egos on the executive committee. They can find the taxpayers money to give themselves free meals so that they can leave earlier for work. And yet, every year, there is a huge debt that keeps getting bigger, and no real solutions from David Miller except to point the finger at the provincial and federal governments with one hand and beg for money with the other, and raise the spectre of breaking his promise of capping tax increases to inflation.

Why does David Miller continually refuse to look at money saving solutions that will cost union jobs, but instead pretty much lets them run amok at City Hall. Trust me, $19/hour for a summer student is way, way, way overboard when it comes to spending taxpayers' money, and with a constant (and possibly shrinking) budget, the departments are forced to hire less people at the rate, further eroding city services.

Torontorians are getting less and less value for their money because city council seems to find more and more ways to waste it. No one with any clout seems to have learned anything from the whole MFC fiasco. Instead, they make excuses like, "It keeps jobs in Canada" when single-sourcing TTC vehicles from Bombardier, when they would have saved a lot of money, our money, not their money, going with a non-Canadian solution. So, quit whining about the debt and apply some common sense to it. People shop at Wal-mart and a whole host of other discount stores because it's cheaper. There is no qualm about keeping jobs in Canada when trying to make ends meet, and trust me, Toronto is barely making ends meet.

So, please, please, quit whining already. I mean, in what job can I have the same absymal results year after year, and still be allowed to give myself raises, raise my prices (taxes), shorten my workday at whim, and change my evaluation period from three to four years to give myself an extra year at the trough with no accountability? I suppose if you were self-employed, but any rational self-employed person would take a good hard look at the escalating debt level and put a plan in place to resolve the issue. Besides, you aren't self-employed. You work for us, the taxpayers of Toronto. It's not a cliche. It's a trusim that many at City Hall seems to have forgotten.

Man, Vaughan is looking better and better all the time, especially with that subway going in.

Toronto Culture and Multiculture, Part III

Being Torontonian means having nothing to declare. Took me a long time discovering it.

My second year in Toronto, there was this particular boy in school. Particularly self-assured and a little scary. Had that inscrutably hazardous Stone Cold Clint Eastwood character mix to him. Nobody knew who he was. Everyone knew not to ask. Anyhow, one day he showed up with a rather nice tennis racket. Nothing extraordinary – but all the other boys acted like it was. Acted like that tennis racket was some kind of holy grail. They kept on and on about it. Where’d he get it? How much did it cost? How was it different from their tennis rackets? How was it different from his old tennis racket? On and on.

Me, I didn’t get what the racket was. Like, who gave a flying tennis ball? Most of them didn’t even play tennis. What was so spectacular about it? Why did it matter? Was it supposed to make him more special, somehow? What annoying nonsense. Got so irritated I blurted out: “Yeah, he got it at the Household Finance.”

One moment’s utter silence. Next, like every pin and second shoe dropping at once, the entire class cracked up. In hysterics. Falling out of chairs, rolling on the floor. That’s how hard they were laughing. All but two. Stone Cold Clint of the new racket was alternating glaring at me as if his food had turned poisonous bugs – and muttering to all else that alright already, it hadn’t been entirely that funny. Sure didn’t help him any. Between gasping, all kept assuring him that it had, indeed, been that funny. Funnier. Funniest. Laughing all harder at his expression. Laughing in his face. Laughing at him like they’d never stop.

And I wasn’t laughing either. Not for fearing getting my head bashed in by that damned tennis racket. However likely and totally deserved, getting bashed seemed relatively trivial. I wasn’t laughing because I still wasn’t getting it. Sure, when anyone looked my way I plastered what I hoped would appear a roguish, knowing grin on my face. Like I’d meant it all along. Like I might do it again whenever whim breezed. Anytime at all. Better watch out for me, boys and girls. But I hadn’t a clue.

Reason I’d blurted out “Household Finance”? Between not having yet mastered reading English, struggling with bouts of agoraphobia and flipping over 13 television channels – I was fast becoming a T.V. vegetable. A strange plant, hydroponically nourished by cathode rays. And possibly most overplayed, right then, was the “Household Finance” commercial. Couldn’t get that “Household Finance” jingle out of my head. That’s why I blurted it. No other reason. I’d gotten so irritated I had to blurt something – that’s just what came out.

Hadn’t a clue back then. Decades later, though, recalling the episode, it was obvious what happened. Clear as aquarium glass. That damned racket was nothing extraordinary. Stone Cold Clint was. Extraordinarily inscrutable character. And all those other boys would start asking themselves who to be – not when they’d grow up, but right away whenever Stone Cold Clint was around. Reasonably enough – he was so mysteriously extraordinary, couldn’t help but make them feel inadequate in who they were by contrast. Couldn’t help but make them question themselves – they certainly weren’t about to start questioning him. What wasn’t reasonable was those boys expecting to become more like Stone Cold Clint if only they got themselves tennis rackets just like his.

Not reasonable at all. Absurd. Pathetic. Too pathetic to put up with. But what could I say? That Stone Cold Clint’s new racket was nothing special? No way. Those boys figured Stone Cold Clint was so special, his gear had to be special too. Would have been heresy, questioning their faith in the sympathetic voodoo of product placement. Nor could I have asked if they truly believed superficial emulating – regardless how special he was – would really make them be somebody. Somebody really special. Coming from a nobody like me, that would only have served as confirmation.

But blurting out that Stone Cold Clint’s clan had to finance that tennis racket? Wow. Had I known then what I do now – and were I cleverer – I might have added that they got it no money down. Nevermind. The absurdity was punctured. Not knowing who he was, the mere suggestion he might be an overcompensating, posturing nobody got those boys wondering whether Stone Cold Clint’s new tennis racket didn’t better belong with the emperor’s new clothes. Got them realizing most likely it did. Got them realizing how preposterously they’d been fawning. Soon as absurdity burst, realizing flooded.

So – what’s the point? This: it was absurd those boys believing they could get personal character superficially emulating Stone Cold Clint’s behaviour; and it’s no jot less absurd us Torontonians believing we can get cultural character by merely – superficially – sharing experience. Those boys were either too childish or had uncritically bought into the voodoo of product placement. Us (not only) Torontonians are too behaviouristic, positivistic, materialistic in our beliefs to know better. Different reasons – identical absurdity.

That’s the point. That’s why I say being Torontonian means having nothing to declare. We are completely fallen into materialism. But, culture isn’t material. Culture is a kind of understanding. And there’s no getting any kind of understanding by transitive osmosis of experience – shopping all the right places. Getting any kind of understanding requires appreciating the meaning – the significance – of experience. It requires getting the cultural principles entailing and entailed by significant interpretation of experience. So I say being Torontonian means having nothing to declare as reminder how completely we discount understanding the significance of experience – whether or not shared – while believing culture is merely sharing experience.

That’s why so many repeat that Toronto lives in no-one’s imagination. We’ve discounted understanding – and imagination – to such extent, we don’t believe there’s anything like cultural principles to declare when it comes to who we are. We’ve got nothing to declare. Nothing to understand. Nothing to imagine. We expect getting to know each other – even to agree with each other – merely by making small-talk and eating each other’s food. Admiring each other’s tennis rackets.

That’s why, finally, (not only) Toronto fragments into monocultural communities. There are no over-arching cultural principles for us to agree on. Since we so absurdly believe culture is not entailed by and does not entail principles in the first place. There’s nothing to understand. Nothing to imagine. Nothing to declare. There’s just lots of different menus to order from. Thus, much as most all of us would like to discuss, debate, agree or even disagree what in principle makes us Torontonian – too bad. Nothing to discuss. Nothing more in principle than small-talk. So, sooner or later, of course we fragment. How are we to get to know each other? Learn about each other? Figure out who we are and what we stand for ourselves? No way. Not through small-talk. It’s not through small-talk we learn and get to know each other. And while small-talk makes not knowing bearable, insisting on nothing but small-talk is insisting not knowing. That can’t go on forever. Remain strangers long enough, sooner or later we won’t bother talking at all any more. Happening as we – don’t – speak.

Interestingly, Amy Lavender Harris ceaselessly demonstrates the wealth of Toronto literature. However, I don’t see Toronto’s literary wealth enlivening Toronto in our imagination. Just the contrary. So long we persist with nothing but small-talk, Toronto literature vanishes without cultural trace. Like stones dropped in a lifeless, inert lake – making neither splash nor ripples. Unless it’s in a classroom, on a talk-show or some publicly mandated forum, we don’t discuss, debate or celebrate meaning and significance of our literature. Literature? We don’t even discuss implications of newspaper articles outside the sports section. So much for imagination. So much for understanding. We’ve resigned all that to remaining strangers. Not good enough any more.

Coexisting as strangers can’t do indefinitely. The more diverse we become multiculturally, the less we can depend on culturally impoverished coexisting. We must discover those principles most significant to reversing fragmentation. We must discuss, debate and eventually celebrate understanding significance of those principles. And there is one (not only) I consider most significant: the principle of tolerance. We hold to this principle like nobody’s business. Unfortunately, we don’t realize it. It has precious little life in our imagination or understanding. It is my hope we will begin appreciating it –start understanding how it informs who we are. Perhaps even, eventually, celebrate how it pulls us together.

Toronto Culture and Multiculture, Part II

In Toronto we'd like to think our multiculturalism has made us culturally rich. What other city provides such opportunities for tasting the world -- as when crossing Toronto? Yet, at the same time, in the very midst of Toronto's unrivaled multicultural diversity, we feel culturally deprived. We say, repeatedly, that Toronto lives in no one's imagination. The Globe & Mail said it. The Toronto Star said it. Toronto Life said it (twice). We say so as a matter of fact. We mention it as we might snow in winter or puddles after rain.

It’s puzzling, though. Why would we feel culturally starved by the banquet of Toronto multiculturalism? What is culture, after all, but shared experience and tradition – including culinary tradition? And, since we share such diverse experience and tradition in Toronto – how could we possibly feel culturally starved here?

It’s totally puzzling so long as we believe shared experience to be the source of culture. It isn’t, though. Came to me a couple years back – while lecturing, of all things. Very much in passing, I’d said that culture doesn’t come from shared experience. At lecture’s end, one of the course directors demanded I reveal where culture does come from – if not from shared experience. I tried not answering. With the tide of almost 200 students fidgeting to leave, I tried laughing it off. Said that was another lecture – for another day. But she insisted. Vehemently. And the students had stopped fidgeting. Tide halted mid-stride. As if they actually wanted to know. What to do? Had to say something. So I said culture comes from shared principle. I said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Which it was, after I’d said it. But, regardless how obvious now, I haven’t forgotten that moment. Mostly due to her shocked reaction. Dramatic expressing that the very notion of culture emerging from shared principle rather than experience not only flies in the face of materialism – but gives it a spectacular shiner to boot.

Why we starve for culture surrounded by such diversity of experience as Toronto offers can’t cease puzzling while we believe culture emerges merely from shared experience. Fact is, shared experience is to culture as the visible tip of an iceberg is to the glacial sheet from which icebergs shear. Culture is tectonic. It is shared interpreting the significance of experience – regardless whether the experience itself be shared, orally told or posted on YouTube. Culture is shared signification in light of common principles. Culture is shared meaning. Far beneath and beyond ways of people coinciding, it is the very identity of peoples. Culture is who we are and what we stand for. It is the nation building mortar of common thought – and the often devastating bondage of common thinking.

Total fiction – culture emerging merely from shared experience. Yet, for Toronto, it has proven a highly useful and convenient fiction. For seating diversity, Toronto is front row centre. Progressive as it gets in terms of multicultural diversity. All that and more. While elsewhere, far less spectacular diversity has been feared to cause trouble. Like, pretty much everywhere in the world. Thing is, we don’t fear such trouble in Toronto. Got nothing to fear here. We’re culturally rich and fear no culture clashing – that’s how progressive we are in Toronto.

Hardly. We’re multi-culturally diverse – not culturally rich. Culturally, we’re starved. Toronto lives in no one’s imagination. Being Torontonian means having nothing to declare. What’s there to declare? So long as we maintain culture as nothing but shared experience, habits and traditions, there’s nothing to declare. Were we to admit culture as identity signifying shared principles, there’d be plenty to declare. Our cultural – maybe even personal – principles. But, while only we keep from admitting it, we reduce culture to shared experience fictions. Including culinary shared experience. Like taste-testing each other – instead of declaring who we are and what we stand for. As if who we are were reducible to what, when and how we eat. As if it came down to what’s in our spice-racks. As if. Yet, thereby, we may continue congratulating ourselves on spice variety in Toronto life. As if spice variety sufficed making us culturally rich – not just multi-culturally diverse.

Very convenient fiction – culture as merely shared experience. Enables our believing variety of experience available sharing in Toronto makes us culturally rich. Perhaps more importantly, it encourages our illegitimating those persisting declaring themselves. Since there’s nothing to declare. Right? Maintaining culture as shared experience, we look very far down our noses at them going on about who they are and what they stand for. Wan’na get included in legitimate cultural exchange? Shut up and stop declaring. No faster way getting disqualified from Toronto life than walking the streets declaring who you are. Shut up, stop declaring and open a restaurant.

More than just convenient – our fiction of culture as shared experience. Safety measure, too. The more diverse we become, the more hazardous should too many of us start running the streets declaring ourselves. Declaring who we are, where we stand, what we run the streets for. Because, if too diverse many of us run streets declaring inevitably contradictory principles – well, sure, it might lead to culturally enriching discourse. It might get us thinking a little more about who we ought and might yet be. But far more likely, if we run the streets declaring ourselves, it’ll just get us clashing cultural principles right there in the streets. And most of us would rather avoid that. Much rather. Most of us escaped here to get away from the consequences of precisely that.

So we’re mostly agreed. Culture is just shared experience. We require nothing but multicultural diversity to enrich us culturally. Nothing cold about Toronto but occasional weather. We aren’t culturally starved here. Most of all, we don’t hold with all that declaring. We’ve got nothing to declare here. Far as we’re concerned, too much declaring illegitimates culture. Yet more personally – too much declaring illegitimates character.

It has worked well for us. Though impoverished culturally, we’ve enjoyed unrivalled multicultural diversity – without fearing cultures clashing. It’s really something, how much we don’t make the (bad) news when it comes to cultures clashing. But we’re running into trouble now. In her February 8th Globe&Mail article (Do ethnic enclaves impede integration?) – Marina Jimenez warns: “Canada’s famed multicultural mosaic has morphed into a series of monocultural neighbourhoods. And she cites some shocking statistics. Apparently, in 1981, there were only six “ethnic enclaves” in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. By 2001, however, there were 254.

Sure sounds like trouble. But what sort? Should we look to a future when all our neighbourhoods become so thoroughly and pervasively monocultural that they proclaim independence and demand sovereignty association – or worse? Of course not. Neighbourhoods can’t secede. Trouble is, though, that they can – and increasingly seem to – withdraw into monocultural enclaves. Which, taken to eventual extremes suggested by Marina Jimenez, would mean irretrievable cultural fragmentation. City and country wide cultural fragmentation. In other words, an end to viable continuity across city and country – to be replaced by culturally segregated communities regarding one another with increasing suspicion and through increasing mutual alienation. Finally, there would be hostility – cultures clashing in the streets.

But it’s not that monocultural enclaves impede integration. That’s not at the root of this trouble. No. It’s that we’ve gone too far maintaining the culture as merely shared experience fiction. We’ve culturally impoverished ourselves too much in Toronto, Canada. We’ve starved ourselves to the point where there’s no culture remaining to integrate with, other than the kind of multiculturalism we encounter at food festivals, festivals that leave us hungry because their sustenance only a shadow of a meal. In Toronto, Canada we’ve lost all clue who we are and what we stand for. Thus, it’s only natural for those who retain some however residual identity in former cultural principles to seek each other out. Yes, they have come here searching better lives. Yes, they have materially improved their lives coming here. But not culturally. Much as 'they' might wish to join with 'us' culturally – there’s nothing here for them to join. So why should they impoverish themselves as we have?

We must figure out who we are and what we stand for. Not so that our cultural principles preclude or even occlude those of newer arrivals. Precisely not that. To the contrary. It’s about finding such mortar as will preserve our cultural mosaic from fragmenting entirely. We must figure out what it means to be Canadian – and Torontonian. We must so that those arriving will at least have something declarable to integrate with – beyond recipe sharing.