Hate Toronto? Why stop there?

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.