“I am not running to help David Miller become a better mayor. I am running to replace him,” Jane Pitfield reminds herself and everyone else at the Wednesday night showdown of main mayoral candidates — the 10th and final such encounter covered in person for this here weblog. But much like The Political Party event earlier in the week, where Pitfield’s vision for the city fell on deaf downtown ears, she was addressing ratepayer types at the Runnymede United Church — in the Parkdale-High Park ward that Miller calls home. The packed church basement is more conducive to bingo games than raucous political debate, but perhaps it’s the only place for a larger meeting in the neighbourhood ever since all the Bloor West Village movie theatres closed down. Armed with copies of their last-ditch Miller attack advert, Team Pitfield seems to have at least earned the respect of supposed spolier Stephen LeDrew, who no longer comes off like he’s auditioning for a remake of Inherit the Wind, apparently having determined that it’s better to respond to his non-existent support by remaining visible for the sake of future job opportunities, rather than the delusion that his endorsement would be worth anything. While there would have been no greater opportunity for LeDrew to spin his bowtie and have it point at Miller, it was just another round of rapid-fire eyebrow-raising, if considerably toned down compared to his initial bluster. The greatest audience indignation surrounded the matter of professional dog walkers making High Park less comfortable for individual dog owners — although it hardly seemed like a topic anyone would rally against David Miller for. Four straight weeks of being told by Pitfield that burying garbage is “medieval” has seemingly softened Miller’s hard line against the alternatives, though, for which his opponents lauded him. The last-ditch voter appeal by Pitfield involves scrubbing the streets of panhandlers through a “quality of life” plan, but Miller repeats how city hall philosophy has evolved from bringing beggars a blanket to figuring out how to get them housed. “I don’t just want this city to survive,” exhales Pitfield, “I want it to soar.” But, because she spent most of the past year projecting anti-Toronto sentiments, her final reward is looking like a paltry 20 per cent of decided voter support.
The last waltz for the mayoral threesome was preceded by a lineup of Ward 13 council candidates, with Miller’s replacement Bill Saundercook looking quite confident that he’ll extend a two-decade municipal politics career. Greg Hamara is needling him on planning matters like letting the redevelopment of the Humber Odeon theatre site get out of hand due to “dithering”. Frances Wdowczyk is playing to the Bloor West Village moms (see her recent blog entry, The Meatloaf concert and other things I love about living in Toronto). David Garrick is a veteran player on the world-class city scheme scene who has repositioned himself as a community maverick: “Every time I see that Capital One commercial with the song that goes ‘Hands in my pocket, hands in my pocket’,” Garrick croaks, “I think of city hall and all of those politicians.”
Grups redux: More takes on The Political Party event, which marked the emergence of aging hipsters as a special interest group, from JB’s Warehouse and Curio Emporium, A Funkaoshi Production, Metroblogging Toronto, CBC Radio reporter David Michael Lamb, and Eye Weekly co-blogger Chris Bilton, all of whom heard things that a pair of ears sulking at the back could not.
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