Toronto Life: Preville on Politics

Preville on Politics

Posts with category ‘Media’

The secret lives of elevators

Posted on April 17, 2008 by Philip Preville

Attention all urban planning geeks and infrastructure fetishists: you must read this fabulous New Yorker piece about elevators by Nick Paumgarten right now. The story begins by pointing out one of the great secrets-beneath-our-noses of urban living: the modern city owes its existence not to cars or computers, but to elevators. The story will also make you cry. Might sound improbable to some of you, but those of us with a passion for bricks and mortar always knew infrastructure could do that. Continue...


Enough from Bob Kinnear. It’s time for the TTC to speak up

Posted on April 16, 2008 by Philip Preville

Is it just me, or is anyone else being driven batty by the progress of negotiations between the Toronto Transit Commission and its union? It’s not so much the anxiety of a looming strike—any day now, apparently—that gets under my skin as the entire public relations battle surrounding it. In this, the TTC is being totally owned by union head Bob Kinnear, who nonchalantly drops bombs every time he saunters up to the microphone. Among them, the TTC is playing hardball; the TTC doesn’t want to pay workers their full salary when they take time off due to on-the-job injuries; the presence of provincial mediators won’t solve anything; the TTC wants newly hired maintenance workers to take a 25 per cent pay cut; the negotiations are being undermined by the intransigence of TTC general manager Gary Webster. Clearly, the TTC is an evil empire. And what does the TTC have to say for itself in all this? Nothing. Continue...


Memo to John Tory: Unleash the asshole within

Posted on March 3, 2008 by Philip Preville

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I recently got turned on to a blog called Ottawa Watch and found this enjoyable little post about the “asshole factor” in politics. It mentions just about everyone except John Tory, who, judging by my discussions with him and every public display of behaviour, is a really nice guy. Maybe that’s the problem.

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A message from our political leaders: Don’t pay attention to politics

Posted on March 3, 2008 by Philip Preville

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I was away last week, but before I left, the big story was a WWE-style war of words between “Pencil Neck” McGuinty and Jimmy “Hell’s Elf” Flaherty. Upon my return I find the war has “escalated.” Continue...


House poor indeed

Posted on February 20, 2008 by Philip Preville

Anyone who feels trapped by their mortgage will want to read the cover story in the March edition of Toronto Life (which, alas, is not available on-line, but is on newsstands now). It’s worth the cover price. I mention this partly to plug my employer, but mostly because, between the magazine’s cover story and the articles in my morning newspaper, I feel like everything I read these days has been lifted from The Journal of Shrinking Living Standards. It’s hard to name a household staple whose costs aren’t rising.

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The moral and political trappings of pet ownership

Posted on February 12, 2008 by Philip Preville

Church organizations have spoken out against bottled water. One city councillor has proposed a tax on the bottles. It’s bad for the environment, the common weal and your soul. But buy it for your pup.

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Transportopia! (or, For whom the road tolls)

Posted on January 21, 2008 by Philip Preville

You can skip tomorrow’s Toronto Star, because here’s what will surely be its front page story: a report recommending every possible road and vehicle tax you can think of—an additional fuel tax of six cents a litre, a vehicle registration fee (which Toronto already has, but which the report says other municipalities should charge too), a $25 annual tax on non-residential parking spaces, and tolls of seven cents per kilometre on all the 400-series highways, as well as the Gardiner, the DVP, and the Red Hill Creek and Lincoln Alexander Parkways.

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Dr. Positive responds again

Posted on January 17, 2008 by Philip Preville

His is the last word.

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Scarlem Scarlem nyah nyah nyah

Posted on January 17, 2008 by Philip Preville

I missed Tuesday’s meeting of the Scarborough Community Council, which means I also missed the tongue lashing they gave Toronto Life over this. Thankfully, the Star was there to cover it for me, though they neglected to mention that the article’s author, Don Gillmor, was in attendance to take his licks. Anyway, Norm Kelly can give me a shin-kicking ‘til my legs turn blue, for all the good it’ll do for his home town. The media is hardly his borough’s biggest problem.

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Dr. Florida and me

Posted on January 16, 2008 by Philip Preville

Have a look at Richard Florida’s take on my Monday post. He provides some context that was sorely missing from Saturday’s Globe article. Note also the discord between his quote of my bio and the real version. If it’s not a typo but a shot from the hip, it’s a clever one. Zing.

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Toronto’s shit smells of roses, says Dr. Florida

Posted on January 14, 2008 by Philip Preville

In case you missed it, the weekend Globe featured the latest in its series titled “Richard Florida Ingratiates Himself.” In each installment, Florida heaps his brainy-sounding flattery upon a different area of Toronto while appearing photographed in its midst with a shit-eating grin.

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The top five political miscalculations of 2007

Posted on December 27, 2007 by Philip Preville

A look back at the year that was, through the lens of failure:

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Toilet trouble

Posted on December 21, 2007 by Philip Preville

It suddenly occurs to me that, since I previously linked readers to Shirley Hoy’s memo on the toilet-bowl story, I should also link to the city’s official list of everything they say I got wrong. I could deconstruct it just as I did with Hoy’s memo, but this has gone on long enough. Besides, not one but two press gallery wags have waded in as arbiters anyway. Wouldn’t want to pile on. Continue...


That stupid map again

Posted on December 20, 2007 by Philip Preville

So I pick up my morning Globe and there on the front page lies the same colour-coded map of Toronto that I saw not long ago in the Star: soft pastel hues downtown, harshly saturated reds in the northwest and northeast extremities. What excuse, I wonder, has John Barber found to write last month’s story yet again? Diabetes? Heart disease? Single parenthood? Weekly hours of TV viewing? Drug use? Transit inaccessibility? Murders?

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Dwight Duncan: the Santa of Queen's Park

Posted on December 14, 2007 by Philip Preville

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Someone had to bring Christmas to city hall this year, and, since it sure wasn’t going to be me, thank heaven for jolly Dwight Duncan. His transit funding announcement has lifted everyone’s spirits, including the press gallery staff at the Globe and Mail, who’ve written an unprecedentedly sunny story. Continue...


Where’d that Star headline go?

Posted on November 9, 2007 by Philip Preville

Sorry for going AWOL on the blog. Long story. Anyway, the front-page headline in this morning’s Star—“PM to cities: Drop dead”—is one for the ages. Kinda makes you feel like you’re living in a parallel universe in which no one is passive aggressive, no one minces words and The Onion is the newspaper of record. But you’ll have to buy the print edition: by 11 a.m. the snarky headline had been erased from the on-line edition. Whatever words it chooses, the Star can crow all it wants: Stephen Harper will never collect a cent of sales tax and then hand it over to municipal governments because it’s bad policy. One Ottawa scribe I spoke to called it “appalling federalism.” Cities may yet succeed in wringing money from Ottawa, but it will not come—it was never going to come—in the form of a GST transfer.

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Balance-sheet junkie alert!

Posted on October 18, 2007 by Philip Preville

Nerd cage match: The Toronto Sun’s Sue-Ann Levy proposes an alternative city budget which she claims could save the city $440 million. Spacing Wire’s Adam Chaleff-Freudenthaler, clearly peeved, tries to take her down line item by line item. None of it is all that enlightening, but the snippiness sure is fun. Continue...


Author Bio Pic

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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