Eleven Out of Ten by Helen Burstyn

Author:Helen Burstyn [Burstyn, Helen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Personal Memoirs, Political, Social Science, Philanthropy & Charity
ISBN: 9781459707924
Google: TIoZp7BSvDEC
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2012-10-20T02:37:43+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

SARS ’03: The Stones Take Downsview

For David, Anne Golden’s 1996 GTA Task Force had been a one-time pro bono act of goodwill in support of his chosen community. At the same time, it had spotlighted him to civic leaders as someone with a deep understanding of how Toronto functioned. The chain of events that would transform David into a passionate around-the-clock civic booster started in the spring of 2002.

Efforts were underway to organize a City Summit at the request of Mel Lastman, the first mayor of the newly amalgamated City of Toronto. The 1990s had ushered in a recession, deepened by the impact of 9/11 on tourism and the downloading of social services onto Ontario cities by Mike Harris’s provincial Conservatives. Anxiety was building among civic leaders that Toronto — so dynamic in the 1980s — was now losing ground. A new urban agenda was needed to deal with the deterioration of the city’s infrastructure and with the hangover of mutual distrust between downtown Toronto (the 416 area code) and its satellite communities (the 905). Mayor Lastman had been impressed by Montreal’s recent City Summit and wanted his own summit that would bring together a brain trust of civic leaders to chart a plan for Toronto.

I received a call from the Board of Trade asking if David might be willing to speak at Toronto’s June 2002 City Summit. David was very much in demand, but I thought he would be interested, especially if Summit co-chair John Tory asked him. John is the kind of guy who hears a suggestion and is immediately off and running. I wasn’t surprised when David told me that evening, bursting with enthusiasm, “You’ll never guess who came to see me today — John Tory. He asked me to be the keynote speaker for the June City Summit.”

The first City Summit, entirely financed by the private sector, was held at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. Its four chairs, appointed by Mel Lastman, were in the forefront of the Toronto urban movement: John Tory, CEO of Rogers Cable; Elyse Allan, CEO of the Toronto Board of Trade; David Crombie, former Toronto mayor and CEO of the Canadian Urban Institute; and Frances Lankin, CEO of the United Way of Greater Toronto.

John introduced David’s keynote speech in the most flattering of terms — “a world-renowned visionary, strategist, and practical business architect” — and David rose to the occasion.

He endeared himself to the audience by describing what he, as an American, had found so lovable and livable about Toronto — his old-style Italian barber, Danny, with his tiny two-chair shop in Yorkville; his Metro-Central Y basketball games with pickup teams that were “a cornucopia of Toronto’s ethnic heritage”; his daughters’ fledgling steel pan band at Rosedale Public School that had competed, and won, against established school orchestras in the Kiwanis Music Festival.

Having been well primed by his BCG team with facts and statistics, David laid out the GTA’s strengths and weaknesses, comparing it both favourably and unfavourably to American cities like Boston and Washington.

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