To Talia On Her Second Birthday

Dearest Talia,

The author Gretchen Rubin once wrote, "The days are long, but the years are short." She was discussing parenting and how, despite so many trials and obstacles, watching children grow and mature seems to happen in the blink of an eye. Two years have disappeared in the blink of my eye. Here you are, on the precipice of two, and I honestly can't figure out how that is possible.

You were born right smack dab in the middle of a pandemic that was unlike anything anybody had ever before witnessed. We simply didn't know how our lives would recover or change. So much of what we knew before, like bringing a child into the world and raising an infant, was different. We were all so isolated and scared. Previously simple things, like introducing new people into your world, weren't the slam dunks they were for your sister. It imbued within you a sense of caution and care. And while it wasn't always thrilling to have you cry when I came close, I inherently understood how difficult navigating newness was for you. The side-eye glances and quivering lower lip were my cue to abandon ship, and once I put myself into your onesie, I got it. You were determined to take your time with people, and frankly, I think it is a skill that more of us should learn and adopt. 

We started finding our footing during the family trip to Disney last August. Spending prolonged periods with you alone allowed you to find your comfort zone. Disney can be an assault on the senses but you were down for it. Zaidy and I had a wonderful opportunity to have you on your own while Molly went off to do other things. Catching your cues and understanding who you were becoming, allowed us to unlock the beauty that is you. Watching you dive headlong into sampling new foods or ravaging an ice cream, gave me such a sense of the wonder you were experiencing. I had forgotten that children do things on their own timelines and you reminded me that yours was unique.

The tale of your first steps is a classic example of this. You stubbornly insisted that you simply were not interested in walking. Why walk when you could ride or be carried? As the months dragged on, and all of us saw the strength improving in our arm muscles, you played it oh so coyly. At a doctor's appointment sometime after your eighteen-month milestone, your parents told the doctor of their concerns that you still refused to walk. The doctor asked for a demonstration and they put you down in the middle of the floor. With only a gleam that a toddler could summon, you made every adult in that room look stupid when you walked nonchalantly over to Mommy. And then...you didn't walk again for over a month. A unique timeline, indeed. 

I loathe the word stubborn, especially when applied to girls. It makes us seem negative or nasty. I much prefer dogged, resolute, adamant, or persistent. You definitely are coming into your own in this way. You will not be pushed around by anyone, especially your big sister. You know what you want and are determined to voice your opinion with a loud and definite "NO". It is important to know what you want and how to get it. Tenaciousness will serve you well and soon, you will figure out how to further your goals with the art of debate. (Although, it seems like you are well on your way to that end.) Keep pushing, Talia. This world needs more direct and confident women.

Stay curious. This is the time when everything seems new and shiny. Delight in your accomplishments. I love that you already know all of your letters, colours, and animals. How did that happen? Nobody seems to know exactly, except that you seem to be a quiet sponge, listening and absorbing. It is all so very matter-of-fact. When asked what letter that is, you look at us as if we are from another planet. "Of course, it's a K. Don't you know?" Never let anyone define your intellect. It is ok to be smart and to show it. The only limitations will be those you put on yourself. I want you to know that you can do whatever you want. Girls are good at math. Girls are good at reading. Girls are good at science. Girls can like Barbie and baseball. Girls can rock and girls can argue. There is no such thing as being "ladylike". Get out there and kick ass when warranted and listen when necessary. Everything is in front of you.

And I want to be there to watch it all. I want to sing with you, dance with you, read with you, eat junk food with you, and play with you. I want to be able to answer your questions, calm your nerves, dry your tears, and provide what little wisdom I possess. I want you to know your history, your faith, your family, and your heritage. I want to give you the moon, but I will be satisfied to bequeath the stories. You are my heart, my love, my whole being. 

I rarely do this, but I am going to share with you a song that I love. It is sung by Lee Ann Womack and I hope that when you hear it, sometime in the future, you will know that Bubby was singing it to you.

I hope you never lose your sense of wonder,
You get your fill to eat but always keep that hunger,
May you never take one single breath for granted,
God forbid love ever leave you empty-handed,
I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean,
Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens,
Promise me that you'll give faith a fighting chance,
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance.

I hope you dance... I hope you dance...

I hope you never fear those mountains in the distance,
Never settle for the path of least resistance,
Livin' might mean takin' chances, but they're worth takin',
Lovin' might be a mistake, but it's worth makin',
Don't let some Hellbent heart leave you bitter,
When you come close to sellin' out reconsider,
Give the heavens above more than just a passing glance,
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance.

I hope you dance... I hope you dance.
I hope you dance... I hope you dance.
(Time is a wheel in constant motion always rolling us along,
Tell me who wants to look back on their years
And wonder where those years have gone.)

I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean,
Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens,
Promise me that you'll give faith a fighting chance,
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance.

Dance... I hope you dance.
I hope you dance... I hope you dance.
I hope you dance... I hope you dance.
(Time is a wheel in constant motion always rolling us along,
Tell me who wants to look back on their years
And wonder where those years have gone.)

Happy Birthday, Dearest Talia.

May today and all days be wondrous and special.

Much love, always

Bubby

To Molly As She Celebrates Five

Dearest Molly,

I had a conversation with your mom yesterday when I remarked that not only am I having trouble believing that you are five, but I am also having issues with how quickly five years have passed. The passage of time is a strange thing. For grown-ups, it races by very quickly. We lament how we were stressing about school one day, and in what feels like a blink of an eye, we are waving to our grandchildren as they embark on their scholastic careers. We, adults, are filled with nostalgia, and the future seems like it could very well be an unfulfilled promise. We inherently understand the bargain. We get to revel in our grandchildren and their growth, only to know that time is limited. We won't get to bear witness to the completed product. We get tantalizing glimpses of who you are and who you are becoming, but we can only imagine the entirety. If this sounds slightly maudlin, it isn't meant to be. Over the past three years, I have come to realize that time is among the only treasures that we can't replicate. We can't get back that which we have wasted. As we were all forced to separate for reasons of health, I am not certain that we fully understood the deeper consequences of our sequestration. Not being together challenged our patience, our norms, and our trust. We have seen children who are fearful of new situations and people, and we have seen older folks who still refuse to engage in their social circles for fear of illness. There are no easy answers to regain a modicum of what was lost, but moving forward we need to push ourselves to be with people again. 

You, my darling, don't seem to have any trouble engaging with people. You love being with children and you chat up new folks so easily. We joke that you are so comfortable with people that someday you will probably give some stranger your parents' pin numbers and alarm codes. I think that every single cast member at Disney World had an in-depth conversation with you. I especially loved how you and Merida compared red hair. We are working on teaching you the meaning of the word circumspect. There is an unguardedness to you that is just so pure I wish we could bottle it. There is also your innate strong-willed nature that I am certain your mom would love to see tempered. While it isn't always easy to back down from what you want, the balance between compromise and doggedness will serve you well in the long term, even if Mom doesn't think so right now. And while you are ready and willing to try most things, I am most impressed by your cautiousness. There is an internal understanding that not everything is easy. Some things require work, hard work. At five you seem to get that. I saw it in the pool down in Florida. You want to swim but you know instinctively that it isn't easy. You worked hard to overcome those trepidations and have moved forward in your learning. I am so proud of how you tackled your apprehension. And...now you know just how much fun the water can be.

Molly, as you enter into the second half of your first decade, I want to impart a bit of wisdom that I have learned as I enter into my seventh. It may not be right for everybody, but I think it will serve you well as you become more involved outside of your family unit and in the general community at large. The world is a big and fascinating place and learning to navigate it well is challenging. Let's call these nuggets Bubby's Bites.

Be Kind-Not everybody is and it is my feeling that many people have forgotten how to interact with others. Treat people with respect, dignity, and kindness and they will return the favour. This includes the person who might be holding up the line at the grocery store, the harried clerk, or your sister. Impart kindness and you will be rewarded tenfold.

Be Cautious-Always be aware of your surroundings. 

Be Prepared-Do your homework and always be ready with the answers when asked. Never go into a situation without knowing all of the permutations, and try not to "wing it". If you are prepared for what is coming, you won't be caught or embarrassed.

Be Organized-Make sure that you know where things are and can find them when asked. Somewhere down the road, you will be asked to organize your time as well. Learn how to balance things now. The lessons are much harder later.

Be On Time-Punctuality is a sign of respect. It is important to show other people that their time matters as much as yours.

Be Adventurous-Try new things and never stop learning. Do you want to learn music or an instrument? Make it happen. Do you want to rock-climb? Go for it. The whole world is out there. Do whatever interests you. 

Be Lazy-Laziness is highly underrated. Spend a day in your pyjamas without guilt. Watch tv and eat some junk food. Just don't let laziness become your norm.

Be Healthy-Some of this is obviously out of our control but learn the habits early. I wish that I started exercising long before I actually did. It is much easier to learn to take care of our bodies when we are young. That said, don't obsess over any of it. Just do what is fun. Go for a walk or a scooter ride, or get outside in the fresh air at the playground. Get enough sleep and don't stress too much. Take care of you.

Be Interested-Listening is a difficult skill to learn, but if you do it right other people will know that you care about them. Being interested in what other people like is a way of telling them that you enjoy them and want to be around them. Being interested and curious is how we learn.

Be Tolerant-Not everybody is just like you. People are different and that is what makes them interesting. Just because they don't like what you like, doesn't make them less than you. Accept people for who they are and what they are. 

Be Good To Family-Family is an odd creature. We love them with all of our hearts and souls and yet, sometimes, we really want to stick a fork in some of their eyes. The thing is, they love you unconditionally. Don't forget that when the chips are down, family is what will hold you together.

Be Happy-Sometimes, it is really easy to fall into the trap of staying miserable. We can't be happy all the time and sadness is a part of life. But, striving for happiness makes our journey a whole lot easier. Try and find the joy in whatever you are doing and if it doesn't bring you satisfaction, move on. Life is far too short to be weighed down by toxicity or ugliness.

That's enough for any five-year-old to get a good headstart. If the Divine Spirit is willing, there will be a whole lot more of these Bubby Bites. I can't wait to walk hand in hand with you as you discover all that your life has to offer. In the meantime, I will content myself with your giggles, silliness, seriousness, a few games of Candy Land, some more Paw Patrol builds, a few more challah bakes, a lot more songs, tons more family time, and an infinite amount of hugs and kisses. 

Happy Birthday, my darling girl. Enjoy it all and may you stay as fiery as your hair.

I love you forever and day,

Love,

Bubby

Our Sarah Polley Connection

Back in September, when we were choosing films to see at TIFF, I remarked to The Husband how much I wanted to see Sarah Polley's adaptation of Women Talking. I have been a fan of Ms. Polley's work for many years, and I was excited to see how she interpreted a Miriam Toews novel. Her compassionate direction and scriptwriting in the film Away From Her furthered my belief that she is one of the most gifted filmmakers of this generation. Unfortunately, I wasn't the only TIFF-goer with that idea. Women Talking was a hot ticket in Toronto, and we were forced to wait for a wider release. 

In the interim, Women Talking has been a favourite on the movie awards circuit this season. While Ms. Polley was ignored for her direction and her stellar cast has been shut out from acting honours/nominations, the film is still being talked about with awe and admiration. When it was finally released for streaming this week on International Women's Day (coincidence?), we jumped at the opportunity to view it. We absolutely loved it. It is a fabulous film.

When I told The Husband that the movie was finally within our grasp, he told me something I had never heard him say before. He told me how much he liked Sarah Polley's work and how much he would like to meet her in person. Now, you need to understand just how unusual it is for The Husband to say something like this. He is a very private and quiet person who has zero interest in celebrities. This is the same man who sat next to Eugene Levy on a plane and didn't say more than "hello." How is that even possible? When I dug a bit deeper, he explained. 

In the fall of 2012, we saw Ms. Polley's very personal and brilliant documentary Stories We Tell. If you haven't seen it, you really should. It looks at the relationship between Polley's parents, including the revelation that the filmmaker is the product of her mother's extramarital affair with another man. The movie is interspersed with interviews with her siblings, other relatives, and family friends. She reads from Michael Polley's memoir (the father who raised her), and she includes recreations of life events with a gauzy lens and actors playing the crucial roles. It is a fantastic movie, and we both walked out of it in tears.

The Husband failed to tell me at the time that this film was a catalyst for him. The fall of 2012 was also a hugely important time in his life. His father had just been diagnosed with a catastrophic illness that would ultimately claim his life. It was during that difficult time, my husband decided to dig into long-buried family secrets of his own that he had long suspected but could never confront. Sarah Polley's film prompted him to make a phone call that would change many lives. Without judgment, The Husband went on his own journey to learn about the secrets his dad had been keeping for decades. He desperately wanted answers to questions that had been eating at him for years, and, most of all, he wanted to know if this new-found sister and her mother wanted anything to do with him. It was a complicated unwinding of stories, familial relationships, interviews, phone calls, lunches, and confrontations. These aren't my stories to tell, and unfortunately, all of the principles are gone now, but I will say that it does have a happy ending in that The Husband is so excited to have his sister in his life and is anxious to continue building the relationship. I never knew that Sarah Polley pushed him to make that happen.

Ms. Polley does live in Toronto and is active in the community both artistically and politically. We don't want to stalk her online, it simply isn't who we are, but if anybody knows how to get a message to her, The Husband would like to say thank you. Me? I am really rooting for her on Sunday at the Oscars.

Mel and Carl's Chairs

I recently watched an interview with the children of the great comedy writer Carl Reiner. Carl's kids, including the accomplished actor/director Rob Reiner, were speaking publicly about a donation they made to the National Comedy Centre, which is opening a multimedia wing named for their famous father. Along with seventy-five boxes of scripts, articles, and blog posts, the family donated two chairs from Carl's family room. These were the chairs in which Carl and his lifelong best friend Mel Brooks sat. Carl and Mel first met in 1950, when the legendary Sid Caesar brought them together in the writer's room of Your Show of Shows. The two men collaborated for years on various projects before striking out on their own paths to comedy immortality. Even while pursuing solo projects, their friendship never wavered. After their respective spouses died, Mel would make the short walk to Carl's house every evening, and the two men would have dinner together. Sitting in those very chairs, the two comedy legends would eat, chat, exchange ideas, nap a lot, and critique movies and new comedy talent. They would share memories and bring each other up to date on the family. They repeated this routine every day for years until Covid kept them housebound for some time, ultimately ending with Carl's death in June 2020.

After Carl died, Mel did something that brought tears to my eyes when I heard about it during the interview. Every single day for the entire year after Carl's death, Mel continued his practice of walking over to Carl's home, sitting in those same chairs, and eating dinner. An entire year. It was Mel's way of honouring his friend.

There is no doubt in my mind that Mel, knowingly or not, was engaging in the ritual Jewish mourning practices. Jews have a very specific timeline for grieving. The first seven days of shiva are often very intense and observed by the deceased's immediate family. The family receives visitors so they may be comforted and encircled with care and love. The thirty days following the burial, known as shloshim, will see the family return to daily activities but refrain from parties or other joyous gatherings. Here's where it gets interesting. The twelve months after the death are known as avelut. It is traditional for mourners to attend synagogue daily so that they might say kaddish for their loved one. Avelut ends on the first yahrzeit, or anniversary of the death. I believe that Mel's beautiful ritual of continuing his trek to Carl's home for dinner was in the spirit of Avelut. I have no way of knowing what Mr. Brooks' involvement in or adherence to Jewish ritual is. Still, there is no doubt that he needed to find a way to not only honour his friend, whom he called his brother, but to also move through a process whereby his personal grief was recognized and validated. Dinner at Carl's was his approach to mourning.

Grief is an odd thing. No two people grieve in the same manner and there isn't a cookie-cutter process for acceptance. In all my years of synagogue work, I never saw any two situations that were identical. Judaism offers a roadmap and while it works for many, it doesn't work for all. We attempt to find ways to slog a path through grief. It can be long and arduous or it can be brief and compartmentalized. For some, it never ends.

Carl's children were so moved by Mel's gesture during his year of avelut, that they recognized the public importance of those chairs and knew that they needed to be part of their donation to the museum. When friends become family and family are friends, we needn't separate by DNA. Mel was immediate family to Carl. The rest as they say, is comedy history.

 

Some Jewish Thoughts for the Secular New Year

I hate the word resolution. Resolutions, by their nature, involve us in remediating a personal shortcoming. When we inevitably break those promises to ourselves, it is very difficult to go back. It is why so many resolutions are broken by the second week of January. We tend to see resolutions as a straight line. I resolve to lose 20 pounds this year.  When we inevitably fail, we have to start at the beginning. 

Judaism teaches us about teshuvah. Teshuvah means to return. We are invited into the process of redressing a deficiency. We reflect, we learn, we desire change, and we do the work necessary to hit the mark. If we miss it the first time, we can circle back and find it again.

With that in mind, here are some very Jewish things I'd like to do better for the secular New Year. Some are silly, and some are less so. 

1. Return to a synagogue in person. Three years is a long time to be withdrawn from a Kehillah Kedosha with only a virtual presence. It's time.

2. Eat some latkes when it isn't Chanukah. Fried foods and carbs be damned.

3. Make more challah.

4. Host a Shabbat dinner for friends.

5. Care more about the trees. (The 800 or so that Premier DoFo wants to remove at Ontario Place for a ridiculous spa is a good start.)

6. Be more consciously aware of my neighbours and neighbourhood. 

7. Participate in small acts of Tikkun Olam, the restoration of the world, either with my presence or my donations.

8. Be kinder. Kindness costs nothing and means everything.

9. Bubby the hell out of my granddaughters.

10. Find and enable my patience gene.

11. Attend the GUCI camp reunion in August. Camp friends are forever friends.

Happy 2023. Find your joy and make it work for you.

Turning Sixty In The Technology Age

I must stress at the outset of this post that I am not dissing my parents. They are capable seniors living in a digital age that is not fully designed for their needs. The stories I am about to tell you in this missive are true, but I am not ridiculing them. I am simply stating their truth.

I am about to turn the page on another decade, and I must say that I am very stressed at the prospect. Sixty. It is a really big-sounding number. SIXTY! I often roll it around in my mouth and try it on for size, but it isn't fitting. It is like a bra that is two cup sizes too small. SIXTY F***ING YEARS OLD!

Yes, I am aware that the alternative sucks. Yes, I am aware that I don't look sixty. (Yesterday, I was told by someone not that much older than that throat-catching number that she thought I was forty-five. She is my new best friend.) Yes, I am aware that age is simply a number on the calendar and that you are only as old as you feel. (Whoever said that probably only lived to fifty-nine.) Let's be frank. Sixty is a big freaking number. 60!

Nobody can claim that you have half of your life in front of you at sixty. When scientists talk about things that will occur by 2050, I do the math and realize that my odds of seeing those things happen are slim. The Divine Spirit willing, Younger Son will be sixty in 2050. Holy Shit. None of this is meant to depress you, dear reader, but I am simply being realistic. Sixty is a big freaking number.

Many things have impressed this reality upon me over the last eighteen months. Some of them were simply age questions. For example, I couldn't get my fourth Covid vaccination for months because I wasn't sixty. Sixty was that magical age line for the government between protecting older people and those of us not there yet. I wasn't old enough. Sixty is the age when my out-of-country insurance will increase. I was fifty-nine when I left Canada, so the premiums were less. Next year, watch me hit the stratosphere. 

But, nothing has convinced me more of my age issues than dealing with my parents and theirs. My parents are amazing people. They are both in their mid-eighties, live independently, exercise regularly, and handle all of their own banking, shopping, cooking, and medical needs. They both have a decent amount of computer/smartphone literacy in that they have a basic understanding of email, online banking, texting, FaceTime, Zoom, and (God help me) social media. But my octogenarian parents are still trying to learn these skills at an age when the outside world assumes that everyone understands everything and the never-ending technological changes.

Simply put, technology for people of a certain age is a bitch. We laugh at their ineptitude, but it isn't at all funny. When I tried to explain to my dad that he couldn't actually "call" an UBER, he was befuddled. When I tried to explain to my mom that her cellphone wasn't operating correctly down here in the Southern Home because her service provider was a shitty company, she couldn't understand the difference between a service provider and her actual handset. She asked The Husband to look at her phone as if that would change the problem. When I asked my dad to call said shitty service provider and deal with the situation, he kibbitzed with the operator until they lied to him and told him everything was fixed. I have spent hours lately fixing their cable, internet, and cell phones and updating all of their devices. And here's the thing. I AM NOT MUCH BETTER AT ANY OF THIS THAN THEY ARE. I married a techie and birthed one; I am not one. And don't even get me started on lost and forgotten passwords. Is it all caps or lowercase? Did you use numbers or symbols? Did you write it down anywhere? Did you save the password with facial recognition? Do you use facial recognition? The possibilities and computations are endless. (We are beginning the labourious task of documenting all of their passwords in a notebook. It will take a while.)

To make matters worse, my wonderful brother bought them new phones before they came south and set everything up for them. And yet, they are still using their old phones occasionally because some critical apps, like my dad's hearing aides, are only useable in Canada and can't be duplicated in the U.S. app store. And...we need access to the Canadian app store from down here which we don't have. Do better, Apple.

I am in technology hell. 

Last week, The Husband and I spent two hours with a Breezeline technician because the modem in my Other Dad's condo was fried. He has yet to arrive, and we wanted to ensure everything was copacetic before he came. I had spent over an hour on the phone with Breezeline a few days before explaining that the modem was fried. After they disconnected me twice, I insisted on the in-person visit. The technician did indeed replace the modem, but he had to reset all of the network passwords. He wasn't permitted to change the network name or password to something more personal, so he left instructions with The Husband on how to do it. But you can't use an iPhone to do it. He stressed this. It will lock you out of the network. The next day, The Husband and I took his laptop to Other Dad's condo to quickly reset the name and password. 

Um...no!

It wasn't possible to do it over the internet even though we were connected to the WiFi. It locked us out of the system. Thanks to the Divine Spirit for my techie. He hardwired Other Dad's desktop computer directly into the modem so that he could access the network. But...his wireless mouse and keyboard were dead, logical after a hiatus of several months. So, he had to plug them into the wall to charge. Three hours later, we were back in his unit to change the password and network name. Without The Husband's knowledge and skill, we would have been fucked.

My brother sent me an email last month warning me that my parents' email verification would change in December. All that we needed to do was input their passwords for their email. That and update all their devices to the latest iOS and find all those passwords to access them. My dad last updated his iPad 45 weeks ago. I'm fucking serious. 45 weeks. The updates took a while. So far, their email is still working. Pray for me.

I have an excellent idea for a business. Tech support that is specifically designed for seniors. Not the Geek Squad, which expects you to understand the basics and employs less than adequate people. I'm talking about a tech support who will come to your home and deal with everything, from password retrieval to how to program your digital TV recorder. Don't tell them how to do it, just do it for them. Don't offer them explanations and instructions; order that UBER for them. The employees' prerequisites need to include Job's patience, a love of people (my dad will make them coffee, and my mom will ply them with chocolate chunk cookies), an aversion to judgement, and an understanding nature. We expect our seniors to be able to navigate new apps and phones every month. It is a loser's game. Let's find a way to make things easy for them. They are twentieth-century people living in a twenty-first-century world. Only some people have access to a techie.

I see myself in my parents. I fear the day when I fear technology. I am scared that there will come a time when it is all just too complicated. I don't want to burden my techies any more than my parents wish to burden theirs. Every time something goes haywire, I hear the exhaustion in my mother's voice. "Two years ago, I could do it all," she says. She's right. But two years is still two years. We don't get younger.

Sixty is a big freaking number. I'm not expecting sympathy. I'm blessed. But I need to acknowledge the fears before I embrace the excitement. That post is coming before the end of the month. The fears are real. This, too, shall I overcome. 

. 

Go Vote

Tomorrow is election day across Ontario. Tomorrow we choose the leaders involved with our most personal municipal decisions over the next four years. Tomorrow, we citizens choose our mayors, councillors, and school board trustees. It is democracy in its purest form, yet it is a right that too many of us take for granted. In 2018, only 41% of Torontonians chose to exercise their franchise. That number was way down from the 2014 vote, which saw almost 55%. (In fairness, that was the year we turned out to turf The Fords.)

By all accounts, this mayoral election is a slam dunk, so says the media, which has pretty much abdicated its responsibility to hold the current office-holder to account for his record. John Tory hasn't held a single news conference during this election cycle, and he has only participated in a paltry two debates, both held on weekday afternoons. He has spent most of his time campaigning for friendly and vulnerable councillors who will continue to support his agenda. (Whatever that might be because he hasn't laid out a single new policy initiative, nor has he pointed to a single accomplishment after eight years in office.) That said, his most involved challenger is Gil Peñalosa, a city planner with zero political experience and a raft of great city-building ideas but no real thoughts on how to implement them. We Torontonians are poorer for the lack of a strong challenger to the mayor and a proper debate about our city, and it has allowed him to probably coast to an easy victory tomorrow.

This ridiculous coronation is our fault. We have allowed ourselves to buy into the idea that the man who saved the city from another disastrous term of Ford is indeed a good mayor and city manager. He is a decent man and was a decent manager during Covid, but his failures are everywhere, from overflowing garbage bins to a white elephant rebuild of the Gardiner. Simply put, John Tory is a terrible politician, but that isn't the point of this post. This post is designed to inform you of what you accept if you choose not to vote.

If you choose not to vote...

* You are saying that you are perfectly fine with the homeless situation in our city.

* You are comfortable with the state of our roads, transit, and parks. 

* You are ok with the lack of a strong Vision Zero plan to address the carnage on our roads that claims the lives of pedestrians and cyclists on a daily basis.

* You are fine with police abdicating their traffic enforcement role and allowing the police budget to balloon out of control.

* You think essential services like garbage bin collections, broken water fountains, shuttered public bathrooms, pothole repair, tree limb collection, and pruning are functioning at a high level.

* You are content with the shuttering of city programs because of staffing shortages and poor compensation.

* You are happy with the province turning the Ontario Place grounds into a luxury spa rather than increasing our downtown greenspace and not having a mayor express his opinion.

* You are perfectly content with a stormwater management plan that doesn't exist. 

* You thought that the clearing of snow from city roads and sidewalks during the mega storms last season was done efficiently.

These are just a few of the things that you are abdicating responsibility for if you skip voting tomorrow. 

I can't make you go out and vote. I can only hope that if this post moves you, you will rethink your apathy. 

Vote in whatever municipality you live tomorrow. Vote for your city. Vote for a better quality of life for everybody.

We are all in this together.