The Value Of HIstory

"Anonymous" said...

Now cut that out you knuckleheads. What exactly does anything you wrote here have to do with taking a commodity (like water) and remove one layer of the supply chain? I believe, I am sure to stir up s**t with is this, that amalgamation in Toronto was a good thing. The failure has been in completing the process - no one has the balls to reduce the overlap until Ford.To those that find my namesake "cheap Saturday afternoon trash".... knock it off you numbskull!

Moe Howard

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It's hardly worth observing but I will anyway. Seen often enough,a style of thinking and attitude expressed in writing becomes familiar. The monicker has changed but I believe the author is no stranger to this blog.

Reference to Toronto's amalgamation is worth a response.

Success of the Toronto experiment awaits. But there is no turning back. The most significant aspect was dissolution of Metro. Yet it was barely noted.

When Metro was created, Toronto and York Roads Commission remained.I was Reeve in the last term of York County Council. The late Jack Rettie was the Commissioner.He became First C.A.O. of the Region.


1969, was the year County Boards of Education were formed.

First solicitor appointed to the Region of York, two years later, was Ted Oakes, former Assistant solicitor at Metro Toronto. History was at his fingertips. He shared generously. I was eager to learn.

Metro was created in 1954 for the purpose of managing growth and development.

Several boroughs, previously part of York County, were taken into its boundary

Former Reeves, the late Marie Curtis of Long Branch and True Davidson of East York were legendary figures. Women have always been prominent in Municipal government. Both were warmly received at County Council meetings on different occasions.

Their boroughs subsequently disappeared in a succession of amalgamations. As areas developed, boundaries disappeared and political boundaries no longer served a purpose.

I remember the epic battle between True Davidson and Beth Neilson for Mayor of the single borough created out of York and East York.True Davidson was the victor. She was hospitalized with exhaustion before the campaign endedand held a press conference in her hospital room to prove that "rumours of her demise had been vastly exaggerated"

Finally, in the late nineties, Metro's purpose also ended and the monolith itself vanished along with political boundaries between remaining boroughs.

York Region was created forty-one years ago. In haste. Metro was the model.

Plans are afoot to use Lake Simcoe to service the fields of the Northern half of the region. Urbanization of the entire region moves forward like a juggernaut. Separation between Toronto and York had already disappeared at the time the Region was created.

Currently, unbeknownst until now to Aurora, we are taking seventy- five per cent of our water from Lake Ontario on the west. A trunk sewer carries waste to Lake Ontario in the east. We have a linked transit system.

To reduce financial impact when Toronto was created, the burden of cost for housing and social services were transferred to the surrounding regions. York's share was $75 million each year.

Toronto's property taxes had been hundreds of dollars LESS than surrounding boroughs and Regional municipalities since market value assessment was introduced. The city refused to adopt it and no provincial government of any stripe ever had the intestinal fortitude to force the issue.

Market value assessment was supposed to be the tool that would even the playing field throughout the Province.

Toronto has been the tail that wagged hound Ontario for more than half a century.

Rob Ford, as true a Torontonian as the city has had as Mayor in the last half century,may,in his own lack of sophistication, be the only Mayorto attempt to create order and control costs in essentially a sprawling ungovernable mass. As was anticipated, when plans were made by John Robart's government in the sixties to prevent it from happening.

Plans no doubt mouldering lost and forgotten on a shelf in a basement at Queen's Park.

If Toronto is ungovernable,think how much greater the problems, when the Regions around Toronto fill every nook and cranny with urbanization.

Does anyone think of Bill Fisch in terms of leadership?

Is there a sense in Aurora, we have a strong hand on the rudder of our small boat?

Only a Stooge would believe Toronto's amalgamation lacks only "balls" to succeed.

Megalopolis history the world over would indicate otherwise.

What we have in Aurora is precious.

Remnants of a simpler time.

We should treasure and enjoy it.

While it lasts.