re: Toronto the good - but not good enough

It's no coincidence that the cities where ambitious Torontonians go are all imperial metropoles. Toronto is still deeply infected by the imperial disease.

London, Paris, New York, Washington, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Berlin...all are cities that are or were engines of world conquest.

Are there any non-imperial cities to which the ambitious Torontonian is drawn? I can't think of one.

I'm not talking about those who simply want to see the world and experience other places. I know there are Torontonians scattered all over the world.

I'm talking about those like the woman in the article, who complain that they need to be "at the centre, at the crossroads of thinkers, influencers, decision makers", with access to imperial organs like the World Bank. People like that don't move to Vancouver, because people like that want to rule the world.

I hope we're living through the slow demise of Empire as an organizing concept, with its notions of "centre" and "periphery" and the feelings of inadequecy and shame they cause in those of us cursed to be born at the latter instead of the former.

(P.s. This is why I forver rail against descriptions of Scarborough as "distant" or "far away").