On being a suburban Torontonian who did not vote for Ford
The City of Toronto released official election results for this week’s Mayoral and Council elections today. Ever since their release, news stories and blogs have been popping up with colourful maps showing the breakdown of the Mayoral vote. It is pretty impressive. Pretty scary looking. I’m happy to admit that.
Here is the thing, though. Ever since these maps started popping up, there are facebook statuses, tweets, comments on news stories, commentary in blogs, you name it, making really snide comments about how downtown Toronto would have been much better off without amalgamation. The Toronto Star ran the story with the subtitle “It’s a tale of two cities — within a city.” People on Twitter, BlogTo, and other places are saying things like this (and I’m quoting the ones that don’t use crass language): “I knew it. All the smart people live downtown.” and “This is why megacity was a mistake”.
That’s fine. People are upset. They have a right to be upset. The prospect of Rob Ford as the mayor of anything, let alone the 5th largest city in North America and the 3rd largest economy in Canada, is truly terrifying.
However, as a resident of Etobicoke, who most certainly did not vote for Ford, I feel the need to point out that Mr. Ford did not get 100% of the vote in the suburbs. In fact, in my riding, Ward 4, Etobicoke Centre, 58.8% of the population voted, and of those, 32% of us voted for someone else, of which 22% of votes were for Smitherman. Yes, 68% of the population did vote for Ford, but it wasn’t unanimous. Looking at that 68%, it might also be interesting to look at some of the downtown wards. For instance, in Ward 30, Toronto-Danforth, Mr. Smitherman was the winner, but he was the winner with only 53% of the vote. Of those who voted for someone else, 25% of the people voted for Mr. Ford. In Ward 20, Trinity-Spadina, Mr. Smitherman won by 55% of the vote, but Mr. Ford got 23% of the vote. Looking at that, almost a quarter of the population in each of those two downtown ridings voted for Mr. Ford, while in my Etobicoke riding, almost a third of us did not. Another very interesting place for those trying to play up this dichotomy to look is Ward 42, Scarborough-Rouge River. Ward 42 is as far north, and as far east as Toronto gets. It is the extreme outer edge of the City of Toronto suburbs. In Ward 42, Mr. Ford won by only 49.2% of the vote. Mr. Smitherman received a full 33% of the vote. That is a full third of the people in this outer suburban ward who voted for the man who won in the downtown ridings, and more importantly, a full 50.8% of the voters – more than half – who did not vote for the supposed favourite of the suburbs.
Yes, this map of a city divided is stark and exciting, but it lacks nuance and subtlety. There are Ford supporters everywhere in Toronto, and all of them helped to get him elected. Those of us who do not like his politics may wish that they hadn’t, but we have no right to say that they did so because they were stupid, or because they live in a particular part of the city. For those of us who live in Etobicoke, but also believe in public transit, bike lanes, running and cultural events that shut down city streets for a few hours, a vibrant arts community that receives public support, public services that will likely be cut under this Mayor, and all those other things that make a metropolitan city great, this is just as devastating an outcome to the election as it ever could be for those who live downtown.
Rather than settling into our geographic camps, beating our war drums, and talking about how the people further down the road are ruining life for the rest of us, let’s perhaps think about why 383,501 Torontonians voted for this guy, and about how those of us who disagree with his platform will work to ensure that the things we care about are protected for the next four years.
