Allan Levine calls his history of Toronto a biography—a chronicle of the city as a personality—and, to underscore his intention, he places a quote from Robertson Davies just behind the title page that reads: “I think of Toronto as a big fat rich girl.” Well, that’s RD for you, reminding me of a focus group The Globe and Mail conducted 25 years ago, when I was its deputy managing editor, which inquired into why its readers were overwhelmingly men. We asked a group of women to personify the paper and one responded, “I think of The Globe as an older man you marry for his money.” In other words, nothing to inspire passion.
So who is Toronto-the-person that Levine distills from 220 years of multicultural occupation since the 17th-century visit of French bad boy Étienne Brûlé and the Seneca village of Teiaiagon on the Carrying Place trail and the arrival in 1793 of John...
Michael Valpy is a journalist and author. Through a long career at The Globe and Mail, he served as foreign correspondent, national political columnist, member of the editorial board, and deputy managing editor before leaving to teach in 2010.
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