::tuesday, november the eleventh, two thousand and three

AFTER ELEVEN EXCITING DAYS, I'M RINGING DOWN THE CURTAIN on this blog, as promised. When I started this little forum, with nothing more than a list of blogger e-mails and a few links, I knew the lifespan of Last Chance City would be strictly limited to the final days of the 2003 municipal election.

I've gotten e-mails and blogged requests to keep the site going, but I have to be frank - it would be an exercise in diminishing enthusiasm. It's no rebuke to my conviction that, on a purely practical level, municipal politics is the most important politics of all, despite the inevitable and disappointing voter turnout. It's more an admission of weakness and, perhaps, of vanity; there are already parts of this site that I've neglected for too long, and then there's the motivational wet blanket that will come with the undeniable drop-off in traffic, once the iron cools and enthusiasm for municipal debate wanes.

It would be nice if someone would do a blog devoted to city affairs, but I know that, with a baby daughter and stress at work and the holidays and an unfinished novel and a couple of careers (journalist, photographer) seemingly on hold, I won't have the time to devote to such a noble task. If someone else has the bottle for it, I'll be your most regular reader, you can rely on that. But I'm not that guy.

I think, however, that there's a lot to be said for short-term blogs, that spring up in the fertile ground of an issue or event in full flower, and pack up when the sun sets and the cold wind starts to blow. I've had an awful lot of fun playing Toronto's own Glenn Reynolds for a week and half, and I'd consider doing it again. The federal election, perhaps? If I can summon the enthusiasm, I'm up for it.

I'd like to thank the participants who rose so eagerly to my e-mail challenge to blog and contribute content. To Marc and Adam especially for their "exclusives", and to Kathy, David, Brett, Joey, Anthony, Andrew, Nicholas, Mark, Kate, Angua, David, Lena, Ryan, Joe, Warren, single girl and the armchair garbageman for posting and linking and debating online. Maybe if I do this again, I'll figure out how to put in comments and really stoke the fires.

And thank you all for reading. Good night.

- Rick McGinnis - 12:00pm - link

DAVID JANES OF RANTING AND ROARING looks back on the election, and takes a charitable view of Miller. The glass, at least for now, is half full:

- Rick McGinnis - 11:57pm - link

ON THE FRINGE: THE WRAP UP

THE SIXTH PLACE FINISHER was Douglas Campbell - who had no web presence to speak of, but would you expect any different from a 73-year-old former sea captain? Campbell is an old-school NDP type who also finished just behind the high-profile top three in 2000 - of course, that group included Enza Supermodel, who failed to unseat Kyle Rae in his/her more modest council bid this year (yet still got half the one-third of the Ward 27 vote Rae didn't). As for Campbell, he scored 8,591 mayoral votes in 2000 vs. 2,196 this year.

Ahmad Shehab came in seventh place. The 39-year-old Kuwait-born printer claims he is a special advisor to the U.N. on Islamic affairs and was looking to have meditation and worship centers in government offices. His copy store on Charles St. was raided immediately post-9/11 (read that story here) and his own campaign website was still a work-in-progress by election day. (It also wasn't showing up on Google before.) Shehab was quoted by the Humber Collge student newspaper for showing up at the full-slate mayoral debate a couple weeks ago: "Some of the candidates here, they are good cooks, but they are not good pilots. Don't make them fly your airplane, they will crash." He also charmed Barbara Hall after handing her a leaf, just for being female.

As for the other candidates with perennial aspirations, Ben Kerr's votecount went from 3,115 in 2000 to 433 this year. (As good a gauge of thedecline of the hopeless intersection of Yonge and Bloor as any.) Kevin Clarke, professional homeless guy, went from 4,147 to 804, Duri Naimji from 1,640 to 568. Gary Benner claimed just 802 votes, in spite of a website that almost looked like it was from a non-fringe candidate, and was even slipping mini-campaign brochures into my apartment building mailboxes at the end of election day. Last out of the 44 in the mayoral race? 110 votes for Barry Pletch.

- Marc Weisblott - 11:46pm - link

(HERE'S ADAM SOBOLAK'S WRAP-UP OF THE ELECTION, with some number-crunching, and notes on Jane Jacobs Jacobin revolution. "Jacobin". Damn, that's clever. Wish I'd thought of that. - R.McG.)

NOW THAT HE'S MAYOR, I have some opportunistic, self-aggrandizing anecdotes about David Miller: first, the first political campaign I worked on on my own volition was his unsuccessful bid for Bob Rae's provincial seat in 1996 (basically, as a fly on the wall watching the luminaries roll by). Second, around the summer of '01, already mindful of his mayoral potential, I ran into him on the subway and drew him in some conversation about a Toronto-wide, meta-Jane Jacobs vision, something like that - can't remember what exactly, but he certainly seemed engaged, and for all I know whatever I said made an impact (maybe as early as an op-ed piece he had published in one of the papers a month or two later, which in hindsight was one of his critical stepping stones toward the mayoralty). Perhaps, at some future moment when Mayor Miller pens his autobiography, he will indeed cite that conversation; I don't know...

THE JANE JACOBS CANDIDATE: Don't make too much of Miller's victory - it was more moral than numerical, and his percentage was still lower than Barbara Hall's in 1997, and there are any number of what-if "united fronts" that can be concocted either way to Miller's favour or disfavour. Big deal; that's spin, and anyway, he's in. And a few years ago, doomsayers despaired that in Megacity, it couldn't be done ... a "Jane Jacobs" candidate against the suburb-dominant machine...

Well, the archetype and prototype of the Jane Jacobs mayoralty was David Crombie in the 70s; and the archetype of Jane-Jacobs-to-a-fault was his successor, John Sewell. Yet for all the godlike stature Jacobs earned, her hinterland was effectively confined to the FCOT (Former City Of Toronto); to the political cultures in Etobicoke, North York, Scarborough, not to mention almost all Ontario municipalities beyond Metro bounds, she and her beliefs could have been from Mars. And in all too many cases still could be, 30 years later.

And unfortunately, the vast bulk of Toronto Jacobites are plagued by a consequent enlightened-yet-circumscribed vision, to the degree where they confront "outside forces" as a threat, rather than an opportunity. Even in the FCOT, Jacobism was fragile; it was shut out of the mayoralty for 14 years, and its 1994 reinstatement under Barbara Hall came across more as a fluke than as nature reasserting itself.

Consequently, once Megacity reared its ugly head, it looked like Taps - at least, mayoral Taps - for this brave Jacobite experiment in enlightened urbanity. Except that the fight and controversy over Megacity awakened a little something - and with the 1997 Barbara Hall campaign, threat did indeed become opportunity. Maybe a bit prematurely for us all to digest; but her team (and, for that matter, the candidate she was up against) did turn what should have been a whomping defeat into a close race indeed.

And David Miller picked up from that, and ran away with the prize. Remember that a decade ago, such a feat - a Jacobite-Socialist leader for what was then called Metro - was absolutely unimaginable; they had enough problems gaining the FCOT mayoralty as it was.

And you know something? I feel that even through their giddy excitement, the hardcore Jacobites still don't "get it". (Like the hardcore provincial NDPers in 1990.) But David Miller gets it. Heck, so does Jane Jacobs, I'll betcha. That's why a Bob Rae-style "Clampett" disaster isn't likely forthcoming from the Miller mayoralty. Still, comparing the results of various provincial mayor's races, many of which involved upsets, may I give, in advance of 2006, the generic Toronto Sun editorial warning to Miller: they'll be watching you, every breath you take. Remember: they're b*****ds.

COUNCIL: 1/3 changed. And re my almost-as-much-as-half allowance, the following councillors won reelection with either less than 50% or less than 5% margins: Suzan Hall, Luby, McConnell, Altobello, Li Preti.

What's the shift? Of 4 defeated incumbents, 2 (Moeser-Cowbourne, Tziretas-Davis) shifted leftward, one moderately, one radically; the others (Shaw-Del Grande, and of course Johnston-Stintz) shifted rightward (though it can be argued that Karen Stintz might be to the left of the defeated Sherene Shaw).

Re "open" seats, for Millerites, the scariest thing might be what's happened in the West; not so much Miller's own Ward 13 (which has only shifted to "moderate" under Bill Saundercook), but Irene Jones' Ward 6, where the last elected vestige of the NDP in Etobicoke has fallen to Mark Grimes - watch him, he might make for a nasty hard-right Etobi-hat-trick w/Holyday and Ford, and Etobicoke's looking more than ever like a scary rogue-conservative municipal stronghold, our very own Orange County. Mitigated a bit by community council changes--but not by much; in fact, not only has Ward 14 shifted leftward from K-K to Sylvia Watson, she may be the only progressive-esque voice (leaving aside Hizzoner-Elect) remaining in the West.

Otherwise, Ward 17 (Palacio) has stood put, but Ward 18 (Giambrone) has moved left; Ward 30 is status quo or has even (given Paula Fletcher's Communist past) shifted further left; Ward 25 (Jenkins) looked like it was shifting left but is standing pat; Ward 37 (Thompson) is status quo yet Ward 38 (De Baeremaeker) has moved left. Net gain leftward: two. Hardly a major shift in Council. (But I'd love to crunch the full polling figures, esp. for the mayoralty, when they come out...)

MINTOGATE: Well, this is regarding Karen Stintz's defeat of Anne Johnston, and the issue which led up to it, which may be the sleeper of all issues facing the Miller mayoralty: is so-called "architectural quality" enough? Or has there been a hubrissy pattern of using it as a trojan horse for the egregious?

This is a loaded issue, because for all the worthy "neighbourhood preservation" sentiment; it also carries echoes of Mayor Phil Givens being scuttled in 1966 over the Archer controversy; i.e. the philistines telling the elites to stick it up their whoozis. But because it's a matter of architecture and, even more so, urbanism, rather than art per se, it carries a less contemptable and very serious message; that is, building a great city is about more than arbitrarily hiring starchitects. As Deyan Sudjic noted with circumspection in the Guardian on October 25 (mentioning, among other people, Will Alsop--and ironically coinciding with the street party/ceremony for Alsop's OCAD), "Everybody wants an icon now". And it's a little desperate, just like all those verbalized bids to be "world-class". And who cares if Frank Gehry's a native son or Daniel Libeskind's a native son-in-law; the chasing is sillier than the end result.

I still feel the argument against Minto (and Johnston, for that matter) is trumped-up - at least, the spot argument on grounds of height and scale. But the fact that, already, other 500-footers are reportedly being mooted for less appropriate places in the neighbourhood (including the site of North Toronto Collegiate) shows how dangerous and abuse-prone a trojan horse can be...

Okay. That's my weary day after talk. Awaiting the full figures; maybe someone can later give me the polling numbers to crunch...

- Adam Sobolak - 11:37pm - link

WARREN KINSELLA SEES ROUGH ROAD AHEAD; needless to say, he's not a Miller supporter:

"Liberal pals at the John Tory party..." I'd just like to repeat that phrase to anyone who thinks that Canadian politics are stricly bipolar.

And in no time at all, Andrew Spicer responds to Kinsella:

- Rick McGinnis - 4:42pm - link

MARK WICKENS POINTS OUT "AN EMBARASSINGLY FAWNING ODE" to Miller by the Globe's John Barber. For the second day running, someone took my morning paper, but I've just gotten a new one, and he's right: it's pretty embarassing.

Barely twenty-four hours into his term of office, and Barber already has him twice an incumbent. This is where journalistic "objectivity" wakes up to find itself locked in the trunk of a sedan, heading out to a secluded spot.

- Rick McGinnis - 10:37am - link

ANTHONY OF THE MEATRIARCHY does a post-mortem on the election, in response to my own post on why I voted for Miller

The former tenants of the Parkdale apartment where my wife and I live - a lawyer and an academic, both adamantly of the left - moved just across the street into a lovely Romanesque Victorian when we moved in here. After living in Parkdale for years, and buying a house a couple of dozen yards away from where they rented, they put themselves on the forefront of a movement to re-route the Lansdowne bus off of our street to make its turn on some other Parkdale street. Classic NIMBY politics: "We knew the bus was here, but we still want it moved. For the children." So I know the sort of people Anthony is talking about. I call them "the communists".

I also know that they've had far less influence at City Hall than Anthony suspects, even in the dark days of the 70s, to which Anthony fears we're returning. Sure, they get thrown a bone every now and then, and even manage to commandeer a debate. Sometimes they actually do the right thing, like stopping high rise development near High Park or killing the Spadina Expressway, way back in the stygian 70s. (Though I'd venture to say that the latter had less to do with "dewy eyed utopians" than upper-middle class homeowners in the Forest Hill area, the NIMBY version of the 500 lb. gorilla.)

I don't want to get drawn into debates about green space or public transit - these terms are like "God" or "quality of life"; they mean something different to everyone who uses them, and there's no space here, not today, to bother with definitions. I've come to realize that high rises on the waterfront are inevitable: they're called a skyline, and every city has one. But I also know that managing their construction and placement can be done well (Chicago - that oft-cited paragon), or it can be done badly (Harbourfront). And I know that it's a stretch to blame our development eyesores on "dewy-eyed utopians".

I don't think public transit is a vision of heaven on earth, though I take it every day, and I think that "being crammed onto subway cars with drunks, druggies and violent perverts" is more an expression of misanthropy than anything else. I support public transit because I take it, and because cities need it, especially cities with rising population density downtown and scant opportunities to create new roads or widen existing ones. (Any way you look at it, downtown Toronto is a 19th century city built for buggies and carts, its "garden suburbs" now transformed into "urban neighbourhoods".)

Anthony writes that "smaller cities in Europe have much more than we do but Europe had way more railway tracks already built". Toronto actually has miles of railroad lines - the old CP, CN and Grand Trunk lines that radiate out from Union Station and cut across midtown. We already blew one chance to turn the disused Belt Line into transit; I've been suggesting for years the the right-of-way afforded by the rail lines can be turned into transit. Do I think Miller's the man to do this? Hell, I don't care if Doug Holyday or Olivia Chow does it, as long as it gets done. It's easy enough to blame the utopians on the left for the city's failings, but the ideology-free developers and the politicans who love them deserve as much blame.

- Rick McGinnis - 10:28am - link

THANKS TO MARC WEISBLOTT'S TIRELESS ADVOCACY, this blog gets mentioned in Antonia Zerbisias' Toronto Star column:

I'm grateful for the shout-out, but it's sort of a shame that it comes on the blog's last day. It's also depressing to hear that voter turnout was, once again, less than 40%. A word to the 60%: You've given up your right to complain, you pathetic goldbricks. Not a word from you on municipal politics till next election.

- Rick McGinnis - 9:50am - link

KATHY SHAIDLE ON OUR NEW MAYOR:

- Rick McGinnis - 9:43am - link

I VOTED FOR MILLER. I knew I would vote for Miller the moment he declared he was running, and probably about two and a half years ago when I followed him around council for a day, writing a piece for a local alt weekly. He's not a perfect candidate by any means - my distrust of the left only deepens with every passing day, but my grandfather was a CCF organizer, so I have time for a man with a Tommy Douglas poster (two, actually) on his office wall.

Sentiment aside, the one thing I want to see Miller do - the thing that, if he fails, I'll never forgive him for failing - is clean out City Hall. It's a banner headline, populist sort of mandate, but it's exactly what he's promised to do, and what he told me he thought had to be done, two and a half years ago, when the MFP scandal was just breaking, before Union Station, in the age of the f**king Municipal Moose.

If Miller sets a bunch of fibreglass moose, or wicker dingoes, or plaster marmosets loose on the city, I swear to God I'll be voting for the dourest, meanest, anti-"progressive" right-wing tax-cutter in the next election. Just watch me, cheese - my wrath is simmering, and it'll only take one more public explosion of "world class" clown show theatrics to set it to boil.

I don't think Miller will do that. I don't think John Tory would have, either, but that wasn't enough to make me vote for him. I was actually wavering, considering the Darth Vader-esque call to "come over to the dark side", about halfway through the race, around the time the whole road toll "scandal" hit the airwaves. Miller, called upon to think of ways he'd raise money if promised federal and provincial money wasn't forthcoming, suggested tolls on major commuter routes like the Don Valley Parkway and the Gardiner. John Tory, aided by talk radio show hosts, exploded in outrage, ramping up the volume every time Miller repeated that he would only look into tolls if the feds and McGuinty's Liberals zipped their purses shut, the equivalent of "Canada to Toronto: Drop Dead".

Frankly, Tory would have been forced to do the same thing himself, were he mayor, but Tory's campaign fell back on "never mind what I'd do - it's what HE'D do" rhetoric. Both candidates daily flooded my work e-mail with campaign spam, but it was Tory's - sent by someone named Brendan Howe or, less frequently, one Catherine Pringle, the "good cop" to Howe's "bad cop" - that had the most hectoring tone, and spent more time attacking Miller than articulating his policy by contrast. It was dreary stuff, written in all-caps subject lines and thick with wholesale outrage.

Road tolls were, and are, a red herring. So, as far as I'm concerned, is the island airport. The real issue - the elephant in the living room that was barely addressed in any meaningful way during the whole election, is that municipal corruption has reached critical mass in our city, and it's only a long tradition of discretion and civic polity that's kept it from turning the place into the filthy, crime-ridden, Detroit manque that the worst election rhetoric - issued by all of the candidates - painted so vividly.

Toronto is - probably always has been - a city run by developers. Denying or ignoring this fact is as ridiculous as acknowledging it but declaring that a better world is just around the corner: weasel talk versus bonehead idealism. The dismal fact is that a city with a tax base as rich as Toronto's, even after amalgamation, is incapable of realistically entertaining the necessity for building more subway lines. Most cities of comparable or smaller size have more subway lines than we do (Montreal, Barcelona), and the fact that we killed the one we needed (Eglinton) to build the one we didn't (Sheppard) is proof that something - something as big as a stadium and as pungent as a bag of octopus sitting in the sun - truly, utterly stinks. The now-obvious fact that city employees supervised the hemhorrage of millions of dollars into cooked contracts, and oversaw rigged bids for public projects is only the embarrased face of this rot.

For some reason, no one with any power in this city has been able to convince our developing class that they'd do just as well to help build subways as white elephant sport facilities, or endless variations on the same condo towers or stingy townhomes. A subway line, once built, changes the real estate potential of everything it passes beneath. A stadium, once completed, only bides its time until its inevitable obsolescence. But the simple truths of urban mechanics seem to have been left to be elaborated into baroque fairy stories by weekend broadsheet columnists, and the sort of people who mark their summer weekends by neighbourhood walking tours and open houses. I do think Jane Jacobs is an important writer, but she's become a beloved, well-pawed dolly for these people, and seeing her onstage with Miller at Trampoline Hall's love-in made my blood run cold.

In Toronto, for a generation or more, and long before amalgamation and the lamentable reign of Mel Lastman, we've been treated to an endless slide show of architect's drawings that delight in showcasing euro-evocative boulevard street scenes and tidy, generic parkettes in order to distract us from yet another clump of high rises. It reached a point of farce with the grand plans for the Olympic Village, and the endless muttering embarassment that is Robert Fung's Waterfront Commission. If we stand a chance of getting anything done, or regaining our self-respect as a city, we should just euthanize these municipal farragoes and start again.

Not that I imagine Miller can manage to muscle the rudder toward this sort of radical change of course. But I think the city stands a better chance of being shocked into confronting its long legacy of failure with him as mayor, even if it means only one, frustrating term for Miller. Unless I read him utterly wrong - like I mostly misread George W. Bush, I suppose - I didn't see John Tory as that sort of mayor.

I know one thing: if I see Miller preside over the opening of one more precious parkette, like the Yo-Yo Ma musical shrub farm at Harbourfront, carved out of a bit of public space in front of a wall of condos, I'll utterly regret my vote.

- Rick McGinnis - 2:30am - link

THE RESULTS ARE IN, and here's the breakdown, taken from the city's official election website. At work tonight, a winner was declared fifteen minutes after the polls closed - the electronic polling machines have certainly made the process instant, but am I alone in thinking that a lot of the drama is gone?

Here's the results of the mayoral contest, broken down by the top five candidates:

In the end, the advance poll results very neatly predicted the Miller and Tory returns. It's fair to say that Barbara Hall had her ass handed to her; her slip from front-runner to distant third will be remembered for years to come. Tom Jakobek's returns are more like fringe candidate numbers, and it makes you almost admire him for both sticking it out, and managing to sell a perception of himself as a viable, big-ticket contender. Best website of the campaign, though.

No news on voter turnout, at least not yet. I can only hope it's better than the usual, apathetic 35%.

Anne Johnston's loss of Ward 16 after 12 consecutive terms is the big news in the council races, and considered proof of how the Minto development project engendered a grudge in her constituents. It's a lesson most councillors, new and returned, should probably ponder, even in this developer-run town. Here are the results of the council races:

A few new "progressive" candidates were returned, so Miller might have a decent chance of running council his way at least one time out of three, but he's been sitting in City Hall long enough to know not to underestimate old foes like Doug Holyday, or loose cannons like Rob Ford, or to assume that "progressives", be they old hands like Olivia Chow or new ones like Sylvia Watson or Paula Fletcher, will stand by his side, a year, a month, or even a week from now.

I've watched Miller in action - he's a subtle but effective "whip" on council floor and in committee, but as mayor he'll have to rely much more on allies, and as of yet, I'm not sure where his support is strongest in council. In any case, it's to be hoped that we'll be seeing a City Hall run on issues, and without the spectacle of a gibbering hysteric reducing municipal politics to a punch-and-judy show performed by the unmedicated. I'd have said that if Tory had won, as well. Regardless of your political leanings, I think the one consensus we can all reach is simple: Good riddance.

- Rick McGinnis - 1:03am - link

THE ARMCHAIR GARBAGEMAN IS HAPPY, but he wants us to move fast to begin bookeeping on the new mayor's record:

- Rick McGinnis - 12:28am - link

SINGLE GIRL SYNDROME, just out of the hospital and on the mend, reacts to the election results:

- Rick McGinnis - 12:24am - link

RYAN BIGGE SUMS UP THE VOTING EXPERIENCE:

- Rick McGinnis - 12:21am - link

JOE CLARK (FINALLY) BLOGS IN WITH THIS BIT OF REPORTAGE, outside the Tory "party headquarters" at Yonge and Eglinton, after the fat lady did her bit:

- Rick McGinnis - 12:13am - link

::monday, november the tenth, two thousand and three

THE ARMCHAIR GARBAGEMAN DECLARES HIS CHOICES for city councillor (Ward 30 - Chris Phibbs) and for mayor, where he explains his choice with sentiments I'm sure many people share:

- Rick McGinnis - 11:05am - link

DAVID JANES OF RANTING AND ROARING PREDICTS A NARROW MILLER VICTORY, but paints a dark picture of the main plank issue in Miller's platform:

- Rick McGinnis - 10:59am - link

I'M GOING TO ABANDON MY PUTATIVELY "OBJECTIVE" TONE as the compere of this blog - a tone that has irritated Marc Weisblott, I know, but won the admiration of the National Post - and come out on election day with my choices for mayor and councillor, and the rationale behind them. One was essentially made months, if not a year or two ago, the other would be plain enough to anyone who walked by the house where I live, and chanced to look up at our bedroom window.

When incumbent Chris Korwin-Kuczinski pulled out of the race at very near the last moment, what looked like yet another dispirited, inevitable contest for Ward 14 suddenly got interesting. K-K - who, rumour has it, decided to step down to take a plum patronage appointment - has endorsed Ed Zielinski, a rather predictable extension of K-K's tactic of courting of the Roncesvalles Polish vote. What remains to be seen is how many ballots that will carry in the first municipal election of the 21st century. In fact, this might be the election that sees the end of wooing ethnic constituencies as a surefire vote magnet. If I'm right, and it's a viable trend, it'll be the start of a seismic shift that will shift the foundations of next year's federal election, and the fortunes of the Liberal party, who have assiduously courted "ethnic" votes for a generation or more. It's a trend I'd like to see, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

The front runner, according to popular wisdom, is Sylvia Watson, a municipal lawyer and former city solicitor who has the backing of David Miller and John Sewell. Her signs are everywhere, usually side by side with Miller's, but I'm frankly dismayed at her endorsement by the "progressive" camp. Watson, it's widely known, is the candidate of the bachelorette owners, an unloved interest group in the poorer areas of the riding near King and Queen street. Miller's endorsement of someone so apparently entwined with landlord interests, and so obviously a member of the unelected City Hall bureacracy that he's promised to fumigate, seems a suspicious lapse in judgement.

She's also a non-resident, who only admits to owning property in the riding, which is a double disqualification. Watson and Zielinski have left behind most of the rest of the race, including Walt Jarsky - a more clearly "progressive" candidate, but sadly the choice of craven idealists at this point - and Steven Aspiotis, an accountant whose well-funded campaign has barely made a mark a block or two away from the Queen and Lansdowne intersection where he has his offices.

I have to mention Ed Veri, a dark horse whose campaign literature has been notable for its undeniable sincerity, and a desperate need for proofreading. His five-point plan includes the promise "To keep you informed about any major development are to happen. In the ward." A list of goals on the back of one flyer is admirably honest about the inevitable failure of good intentions: "Freeze or try to freeze taxes ... How do all partys feel about contracting out ... And to meet with the public or try to once a month." He states that "A city like Toronto can and should have the six basics:"

Since Ed, if elected, would be pleasantly surprised to arrive at City Hall and find all of these things long established, I imagine he'd have plenty of time to try and have those monthly meetings.

My choice for councillor, advertised by the first candidate's sign I've ever displayed in my enfranchised life, is Neil Webster - until last year the funeral director at Ross Craig Funeral Home, down Queen Street between the Blockbuster and the Dollarama. I was undecided until I learned that Neil, a Parkdale resident for 28 years, was running. He's a Tory whose campaign manager is a well-known NDP supporter; a founder of the Parkdale-High Park Rotary Club and the Redwood Shelter for Victims of Family Violence, and the only candidate in the riding to support the Front Street Extension, probably the only halfway workable solution for Parkdale's brutal traffic congestion, the product of a railway line that cuts diagonally through the south of the riding, forcing dogleg intersections and one-way streets along its path.

It's an unpopular stance to take - he joins the unanimous opposition to the Island Airport expansion, however - and I admire him for it. His platform is a cross-pollination of Miller and Tory, calling for increased police presence as well as support for social services, a curb on rooming houses and better bike lanes. He'd have an uphill battle at City Hall no matter who was mayor, but he fits the bill for Ward 14 better than any other candidate on offer.

Later today: my choice for mayor.

- Rick McGinnis - 5:05am - link

DAVID ARTEMIW HAS MADE HIS CHOICE FOR MAYOR, after a good long think:

- Rick McGinnis - 4:01am - link

NICHOLAS PACKWOOD OF GHOST OF A FLEA declares his choice for councillor: Jeff Brown in Ward 19. He remains uncertain, though, about where he'll mark the ballot for mayor, at least at the moment I write this:

- Rick McGinnis - 3:56am - link

WARREN KINSELLA PULLS BACK THE CURTAIN on some of the machinery behind the David Miller campaign, and reprints a mass e-mail to Miller workers on where to go to phone canvas on election day: OPSEU and CUPE's main offices. Now, this is hardly a revelation for Miller supporters or Tory-aligned detractors, but if you needed proof of Miller's union connections, here they are: vote accordingly.

(Keep in mind, though, that Bob Rae had exactly the same support, which evaporated into an acid cloud near the end of his tenure in office, when he dared suggest voluntary pay freezes for public employees. Miller, like Rae, is calling in favours in a crunch; how those favours are repayed is anyone's guess right now.)

- Rick McGinnis - 3:50am - link

BRETT LAMB'S GRAPHIC TAKE on the island airport issue, in response to the late-breaking Air Canada Jazz revelations of last week:

- Rick McGinnis - 3:43am - link

(ADAM SOBOLAK OF OMNITECTURAL FORUM CONTRIBUTES some last thoughts on the race, hours before the polls open and the headlong rush into democracy begins. Well, perhaps not headlong. Urgent. Okay, impatient. Well, sort of distracted, then. Oh, hell, just vote, dammit.)

1) MIRED IN THE VANILLA FUDGE: THE BARBARA HALL MELTDOWN - Well, it's a shock to see it actually pan out in the polls as it did. But something struck me as very strange the first weekend after the official election-sign "start date" of October 16, when I first had the chance to really go beyond my neighbourhood/work turf for leisurely sign-spotting. At that point, the "official" polls still showed Barbara Hall at or near the top; yet when I drove around the immediate W Toronto/S Etobicoke area, I was seeing Miller signs on lawns, and Tory signs, a couple of token Nunziata - yet, where was the Hall?!?

Other than emblazoning the far-from-invisible west-end Hall campaign office at Bloor & Royal York, they were almost nowhere. Either the Hall team had some peculiar delayed-action sign strategy going on; or else something was terribly, terribly, catastrophically wrong in her camp.

Or maybe, I thought, because this was David Miller's home geography; hence he claimed the vast bulk of the centre-left vote here for himself - yet the farther afield I ventured that weekend, north, east, even into Hall's own Rosedale/Cabbagetown home turf, I was faced with a shocking paucity of Hall signage, anywhere, least of all on front lawns.

It was already clear. Her lead was not only "soft"; it was illusory. A mirage. Not only was Hall being outflanked by her supposed second-third-place competitors, she was being pummelled by them. Already it was looking like a two-man race, and she wasn't in the picture, at all.

But I tried to convince myself otherwise; because for a supposed frontrunner, this was absolutely surreal. Here she was as the "one to beat"; yet her sign presence was more like single-digit provincial NDP cannon fodder. But signs don't tell the whole story...do they?

Yet things scarcely changed for Hall. Her Starburst-fruit-chew-coloured livery continued to be more of a fixture in medians and at street intersections than on front lawns.

What are we seeing now? It's what I sensed in those first days of electoral signage. I could have told you all along--heck, I could have told myself all along, yet the eternal benefit of the doubt within me refused to believe it...

But re Brett Lamb on the 90s Hall mayoralty, I still wouldn't be so harsh - at least because at that particular moment (after the failed Jack Layton mayoralty bid, and in the middle of the NDP's late-Rae/post-Audrey nadir), it probably could only have been a mushy Barbara Hall sort who'd have pulled that left-mayoral feat off in 1994; and also, in hindsight, Toronto-at-large might not have been "ready" for a harder-core anti-megacity campaign, let alone a "postmodern" megacity campaign a la Miller, in 1997. (If it were either Sewell or Layton instead of Hall vs Lastman, I suspect Lastman would have won even bigger.) Credit goes to Hall for, at a critical moment in city history, "loosening up" a hitherto skeptical left-leaning/left-amenable demo; without her team's advance work, Miller wouldn't be in the effortless position he's in today...

2) FURTHER ON THE AIRPORT/ANTI-AIRPORT FALLACY--I've already noted the sort of "heritage philistinism" that affects both extremes on the Island Airport question; that is, it blots out the fact that the it's a fascinating place with a fascinating history, and to simply disfigure it on behalf of "improved" facilities or obliterate it wholesale on behalf of parkland is myopic. And indeed, David Miller seems to acknowledge it; he's on record as being not opposed to the airport's mere existence per se (which I take as more than just a pat excuse for Robert Kennedy Jr's using the joint).

Let's take this a little further, won't we? Y'know all the rhetoric about Toronto having sold its shoreline out to ugly awful industry when it could have had something grand and magnificent like Chicago's Grant Park, Lake Shore Drive etc? Well, those of us who've known Harbourfront throughout its 30-year-history would probably agree that it was by far most exciting - urbanistically, culturally, etc - way back in the 1970s, when it was nothing more than a Ninjalicious-wet-dream line of "obsolete" industrial facilities in various states of disuse and/or reuse, with funny asphalt paths snaking their way through and plinths telling the history along the way, with all the excitement of a city getting in touch with and making the most of its most godforsaken nooks and crannies - truly a magical, extemporaneous creation from the post-hippie anything-goes urbanistic golden age of David Crombie and Jane Jacobs.

And it was nothing more than Toronto's creative immediate-contingency solution to a controversial parkland "gift" from the Feds - maybe a lesson in how we could more recently have approached (and could, under Miller, still approach) the Megacity imposition? The boldest lemonade from a lemon? Sadly, the 70s Harbourfront experiment, next to which more recent schemes like the Distillery District appear contrived and self-conscious, is not only unsung (although the ghost remains in York Quay's cultural facilities), but all-but-decimated by condo/parkland gentrification - proof that maybe the closer we get to Chicago-style waterfront "beauty", the worse off we are.

And consider the Island Airport in its present state, as an "extension" of that Harbourfront which we all discovered and loved in the 1970s; indeed as almost the last unmolested and un-sealed-off remnant of that particular accidental-urbanism je ne sais quoi. Replace it by more blaaaand parkland a la Tommy Thompson? Are you kidding?

On the other hand, proof that the proponents of airport expansion "don't get it", either, is in the fact that the proposed bridge is an undistinguished bascule - at the very least, they could have recruited a Calatrava to trojan-horse a theoretically opponent-silencing "signature bridge" through, but noooo, they didn't have the foresight...

3) MILLERITES FOR TORY: No, I'm not recommending a switch of allegiances. On the other hand, in the event that the pundits are proven wrong and John Tory wins, I reiterate to those of you who're constructive in spirit: don't moan about this being oooh, a disaster, Toronto's ruined, etc, etc. STOP CRYING IN YOUR OATMEAL. And look: the ultimate potential Millerite for Tory may be none other than a losing David Miller on election night, should that be the case. An intelligent political operator, rallyer, concession-maker sees beyond the mayoral superficialities. Besides, as John Tory appeared to be, until recent weeks, within the same "mushy moderate" camp as Miller and Hall, here's a chance to hold him at his word. Don't moan about him, because that's like rolling over and playing dead--instead, "Millerize" him, and his council. And do it in such a way that he'll "appreciate it" - if you don't, then your worst nightmares will come true. (Think of what used to happen and sometimes still happens in the parochial political cultures of the outer municipalities, simply because they were terra incognita to urbanites - in the field of heritage, I only need to mention the laughable Thomas Kinkade-ization/destruction of Etobicoke's Old Mill.)

4) COUNCIL: Little's been mentioned in the blog on individual council races, perhaps in part because waaaay too much can be said (and perhaps could still be said by way of result-crunching postmortem, if Rick McG allows the blog some, er, post-coital afterglow for us to absorb it all in). And besides, the subtlety of ward-by-ward is lost on most Miller-besotted Trampoliners, 95% who probably couldn't tell a Sherene Shaw from a Bas Balkisoon from a Gloria Lindsay Luby.

I could be wrong, but my sense is that, perhaps as reflected glory from the high-stakes mayoral race, this could get exciting, maybe with almost half the wards (and not just the open seats) getting new councillors. In recent history, the most exciting "ward-by-ward" years have resulted at least in part from electoral reorganization: 1988 (when the methods of electing Metro and City representatives changed), and 1997 (the first megaelection, where you found slews of incumbents and credible pretenders fighting for two seats per mega-ward). And 1988 was the last year with above-average "throw the bums out" leverage (esp. in Toronto and Etobicoke); in 1991 it was mostly confined to the scandal-plagued York council, while 1994 rather flukily confined it to the mayoralties (3 defeated incumbents; 2 first-time electees; and only Mayor Mel as a re-elected incumbent).

Exciting as 1997 was, it was mainly a matter of musical-chairs culling; and a further reduction in seats led to another stage of culling in 2000. But it was a significant foreshadowing of this year's Miller-vs-Tory dynamic that in 2000's most significant incumbent-on-incumbent races, the left-leaning incumbent (Miller, Mihevc, Johnson) won. (Exceptions were Luby over Giansante - who, rematched this year, could both fall to one Stephen Thiele--and, perhaps, Kelly over Tzekas, although the latter race was affected more by Tzekas' personal behaviour issues.)

This year, it's possible that the two open Davenport wards will shift leftward; yet Miller's own ward as well as Irene Jones' might move to the right - and there's many, many more like this or the other. In my (and Rick McG's) ward, an open seat, it's a microcosm of the 5-but-really-2-way-race for Mayor; while the papers might want to spin a free-for-all, in reality the only candidates with a "presence" beyond store windows are Ed Zielinski on the de facto centre-right (endorsed by predecessor Chris Korwin-Kuczynski, a Hall supporter who's lately followed the Tory wind) and Sylvia Watson on the de facto centre-left (endorsed by Miller, Sewell, et al).

But, bla bla; to prognosticate about the wards is treacherous, but to analyse after the fact (especially with some sign-blitz pre-familiarity) is where the real fun is. In the meantime, I've always contended that it's in the middle of electoral sign blitzes when urbanity (and rurality, for that matter) really sparks to addictive, otherworldly life - to paraphrase Marinetti, a plethora of election signs dotting the Ontario landscape is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace. And all the more beautiful for what it ever-unpredictably leads up to. See y'all on Tuesday.

- Adam Sobolak - 02:07am - link