The blog at the center of the universe

Toronto's vague and pointless ambition to be important took a serious hit this month when the Burj Dubai, a towering and majestic eyesore in the United Arab Emirates reached 1,822 feet, eclipsing the equally unattractive CN Tower to officially become the tallest free-standing structure on the planet.

Aside from having to rewrite a lot of Toronto's tourism pamphlets, this will have little impact on the world in general, at least until somebody realizes that building the world's tallest skyscraper in the Middle East might not be such a clever idea. Existing artist's conceptions don't actually show a giant bullseye painted on the building, but it might as well be there.

Also irrelevant is any talk of Freudian phallocentrism and how cities build huge phallic towers. Calling skyscrapers (or just about anything) a phallic symbol is really just the most pathetic and clichéd refuge of the stunted pseudo-intellectual.

Personally, my favorite impact of the CN Tower story was that it once again brought out the childlike jealousy of Canadians who live in other cities, who are obsessed with why Toronto sucks.

In watching and reading a couple of news stories about the CN Tower's now second-place status, the reporters talked to people from other major cities in Canada, who generally had not terribly clever comments about how Toronto, "the center of the universe" will just have to stop crying about it. Most of this comes from western Canada, for reasons I'll delve into shortly.

I love to listen to these rants from non-Torontonians the way a schoolyard bully likes to hold a shorter kid at arms length while they throw punches with arms to short to reach the target. They get really hotted up and angry, but the bully just stands there and laughs.

Or maybe it's more like an angry retarded kid trying to break a brick wall with his face. The wall didn't do anything, it's just sitting there, but the kid gets angry anyway and throws himself against it in an impotent rage that doesn't harm the well but makes the kid look stupid. Toronto is that wall and many residents of B.C., Alberta, and to a lesser extent the other provinces, are the retarded kid.

Why?

I've now lived in Toronto for nearly 3 years and I've met many many people from Toronto. And never once have I heard a Toronto resident or a native Torontonian call the city the center of the universe or anything similar, unless it was completely, obviously tongue in cheek.

Yet people from many other parts of the country have this obsession with how Toronto is so vain and overblown, it thinks it's so important and that it's the most important place in the country. It's the equivalent of putting words in someone else's mouth, then getting angry at them for what they "said." Lots of non-Torontonians tell each other we think this place is the center of the universe and they laugh and froth and rage at how pompous and self-absorbed we are.

As to motives, there be many (and all those who rage at the concept of a Toronto-centric universe will interpret this as exactly the smug attitude they believe we have), but it's mostly size, since that's a big part of Toronto's importance. By virtue of its size and location, it's arguably the best-known city in the country. It's the only one that has sustained teams from all major pro sports, has the most high-profile hockey team (even though it sucks) and is the biggest draw for concerts, events and tourists. Simply put, Toronto is very popular and very important and boy, does that piss a lot of people off. Sure, Vancouver, Calgary, Banff, Winnipeg, Regina, et al are fine cities, not without their charms, but they're not as well-known or significant on an international scale. But the non-Torontonians don't want to admit that they're feeling inadequate. No, it's way easier to accuse us of being smug assholes.

Of course, some folks out east feel the same way, but it's no so pronounced. Why? They're not trying to compete on the same level. Places like PEI and Newfoundland are more about provincial charm and natural beauty than about big cities with lots of attractions. People from Charlottetown don't care as much about Toronto's size or status because they're not trying to be like Toronto. A lot of Quebecers don't care either because they know that Montreal is plenty cool, as is Quebec City. But places like Vancouver want to compete on that scale; the problem Vancouverites have is that they're not winning.

But take heed, you anti-Toronto-ites: all the complaints only have ironic effect: your rants about Toronto's vanity only expose your pitiful attitude, not ours. Neutral people don't believe that everyone in Toronto is of some smug hive-mind. When you bitch to them about us, it just makes you look stupid.

So if we want to outdo Dubai and get back on the map, I have a suggestion: the city should build the world's tallest free-standing rotating hand with extended middle finger so all the petty pukes who bitch about this city will know how we feel about their stupid attitude.