Preville on Politics

Hate Toronto? Why stop there?

Posted on April 16, 2007 by Philip Preville

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The publicity machine for Albert Nerenberg’s new film Let’s All Hate Toronto is firing on all cylinders right now, in advance of its world premiere at Hot Docs this Friday. Not that Nerenberg needs my help generating hype, but let me point everybody in the direction of a must-see YouTube video on the subject anyway. I haven’t seen Nerenberg’s film, but this ought to be part of its soundtrack.

It’s called "The Toronto Song," originally performed in 1991 by the Edmonton-based comedy troupe known as Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie. I lived in Edmonton back then and saw the song’s inaugural live performance. At the time I got a real kick out of its twist conclusion (it’s worth the listen right through to the end). But now that I’m older and wiser I see a deeper moral behind the joke: it’s part of the human condition for people to take tremendous pride of place in where they’re from, no matter how picayune that place may be, and to disparage everywhere else in the world just for sport.

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Philip Preville

Veteran freelance writer Philip Preville lived much of his life in Montreal and Edmonton before he was lured, like so many Torontonians before him, by the promise of more work and a better living. A National Magazine Award winner and former Canadian Journalism Fellow at the University of Toronto’s Massey College, Preville writes Toronto Life’s politics column. He lives with his wife and one-year-old son in Riverdale, just close enough to the Don Valley Parkway that he can hear it when he steps outside his house—but just far enough away that it doesn’t keep him awake at night. On his office wall hangs a 1938–39 press pass belonging to his grandfather, Elias Gannon, who wrote for the Montreal Star.


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