The right fit
In opting out of Olympic bid, Tory has better Toronto in mind,
Why would you hold a news conference on the roof of a snack bar to announce you weren’t going to do something?
That question led many to suspect, when the media invitations were first sent out on Monday, that John Tory was about to launch a Toronto bid for the Olympics. The roof of the snack bar in Nathan Phillips Square, you have to understand, has recently hosted VIP parties for visitors to the Pan Am Games, and offers a beautiful view of the square where all the athletes and visitors and dignitaries of that international sporting congregation recently celebrated. From up on the roof, you can see the multicoloured Pan Am TORONTO sign that came to symbolize the city’s pride in being a host to visitors from abroad. If you were going to launch a bid to host an even bigger sporting spectacle, maybe you’d want everyone to see that in the background, and feel that pride well up again.
But why drag everyone up there just to say, “Nah”?
Of course, by the time the press arrived and John Tory walked to the podium, everyone knew that’s exactly what he was going to announce. The Star and others had heard from reliable sources that no Olympic bid would be made.
“The truth is, I can’t look people in the eye at this point in our city’s development, and tell them that an Olympic bid is the best use of our time, or our energy, or our investment,” Tory said, confirming the reports. He said, though, that he hadn’t given up on the idea of an Olympics at some point, and would appoint an advisory group to look into bidding on such events in the future. “I am not saying no to the Olympics,” he said, “but not this time.” This would be, for many watching, the headline: the set up for some never-ending process to one day bring the games to Toronto.
But he continued talking, about the things Olympic advocates said a bid would bring to the city: investment in transit and social housing and infrastructure. Tory was abandoning a bid, but he turned his speech to emphasize he was not planning to abandon the development and construction that might have come with it. “We need to build a stronger, fairer city, not for an international audience, but for the people who live here.”
He called on the premier, and on the next prime minister, to join him in building the city to suit its needs — for many of us a stronger pitch than building the city to host a sports competition. It’s far from certain that leaders in high places will see it the same way. For a prime minister, an Olympic games is a chance to show off on the global stage, while a home for a Torontonian who was homeless is a good deed mostly invisible to the world. Still, Tory launched a bid. A longshot, half-hearted bid, like our possible Olympic one would have been? Maybe, we’ll see. But a bid all the same. Not for the Olympics. For us.
As the mayor spoke to the television cameras, you couldn’t see the Pan Am TORONTO sign behind him. Instead, he was framed by the building on the other side of Nathan Phillips Square, the distinctive curved towers of City Hall enclosing the circular pod that houses the city council chamber. That building was completed 50 years ago this week. It’s a landmark that says “Toronto” as clearly, and somewhat more eloquently, than any pastel letters spelling out the word.
As Tory answered questions in the amiable, lawyerly ramble that is his trademark as a public speaker, it was possible to let one’s mind drift to noticing how well that City Hall building has stood the test of time. How a half-century after its construction, it still looks contemporary and interesting and even futuristic. It’s a rare piece of dramatic architecture that doesn’t look dated. In that, its function matches its form, as it remains the perfect home for the city’s government, dignified but inviting, indicating ceremony but never seeming imposing. A place for our government to meet, and for us to meet our government.
For a prime minister, a home for a Torontonian who was homeless is a mostly invisible good deed
The square in front of it still serves, 50 years on, as the city’s living room, the place where we gather to celebrate and protest and ring in new years, a place to catch a concert or buy lunch or bring the kids to skate under the lights in winter. And yes, a place to host visitors from abroad when they come.
You could recall that City Hall and Nathan Phillips Square — to which the snack bar was recently added — were the result of our better citybuilding impulses: a design selection process that invited the best in the world to compete, but ensured the people of Toronto won. It was built for the people who live here. The legacy of that process is as magnificent as it is useful, and it endures after decades.
I guess that’s why everyone got called up onto the roof there. If you were just announcing you weren’t going to do something, there would be no reason to find the appropriate backdrop. But if you want to launch a bid to build things to fit the needs of the people of Toronto, and to do it boldly, in a way that leaves an enduring legacy that the city can celebrate for generations . . . well, then, it turns out the top of the City Hall snack bar is a pretty good venue after all. Edward Keenan writes on city issues ekeenan@thestar.ca. Follow: @thekeenanwire