" ... why people hate Toronto"

BINGO!!

[...] Imagine, then, this spectacle: Like Big Brother in George Orwell's 1984, the face of William Thorsell, director of the ROM [Royal Ontario Museum], suddenly loomed several stories high over Bloor Street, projected onto the museum's new cladding. It was realistic enough to be terrifying. And it spoke! It said, of course, that this was a great moment, but the disembodied god-like presence left us trembling.

Thorsell and several others, magically revealed by celestial technology, turned out to be the show's highlight. Most of the evening was dead ordinary, but the Big Brother imagery at least delivered an element of primitive horror. And its spiritual implications fit the evening's theme.We were there to celebrate Toronto's devotion to a quasi-religious belief in art, progress and imagination.

First, though, it was a festival of thanking. At openings of cultural buildings, we give ritual thanks to donors, from whom all blessings flow. We do it as often as religious people thank the deity. Managers of these buildings must believe that donors suffer from a terrible thirst for gratitude, and they could be right. In any case, the thanking at the ROM reached previously unimagined levels of unction.

The performances filling most of the evening were also worked into the religious theme: In between acts, Paul Gross, our host, conducted an argument with a booming voice (Gordon Pinsent's) that claimed to belong to Time. We all realized that Time represented God, who would have come Himself if He hadn't been made illegal.

Time turned out to be just as pushy as the God of Genesis, though less interesting. He said all civilizations die and our time had come. He was "pulling the plug" this very night because we were growing less creative and polluting the earth.

In our defence, Gross offered the show we were watching (rap singers, Celtic dancers, an opera star, native drummers, whatever) as proof of our creativity. Time seemed unimpressed (and nobody would blame him). Besides, that still left Earth-despoiling. What could we say about that?

At this point the producers wheeled out David Suzuki, that national menace, to declare that the world is reforming itself by going green. As an example he cited some young girls who saved some old horses. He mentioned "my friend Al Gore."

[...]

Now ... that's funny.