When Mel Lastman was the mayor of Toronto, he once made a controversial suggestion. He mused a loud that perhaps it was time for the City Of Toronto to secede from the Province of Ontario. The City of Toronto could then become a new Canadian Province. Personally, I didn’t think it was such a bad idea. However, I thought he should have gone a bit further, and met with all the mayors of the GTA to induce them to form the Province of the GTA. And while we’re at it, we may as well throw in the urban parts of the Golden Horseshoe as well – most of that area being on the Queen Elizabeth Way artery into Toronto.
And why not? The fact of the matter is this area of the Province probably holds more control over every other part of the Province even though the culture, needs, and lifestyle of Northern Ontario, South Western Ontario, Central, and most of Eastern Ontario are completely different than that of the GTA and the urban horseshoe area.
Randy Hillier, Presdent of the Lanark Landowners Association seems to agree. However, he is not suggesting any boundaries at this point in time when he calls for a new Province for rural Ontario. Nevertheless, he has written an interesting article which argues for a new Province which will more fully represent the culture and needs of rural Ontario – a culture which for so long has been under attack by the academic elite, the beurocrats, and the urbanites. Urbanites, while well-meaning, have no clear idea of the rural lifestyle, and as Hillier notes, that at the same rate at present of ridiculous notions and regulations, it won’t be long before rural Ontario suffers the same fate of the East Coast fisheries. Whatever that is left of the lifestyle will perhaps be charming and interesting, but it won’t be viable.
My own comments include the fact that the population of the majority of the land mass within the present boundaries of Ontario have very little in common with the much larger and concentrated populations of metropolitan Ontario. Metropolitan Ontario simply has no clue about the rural life, other than from a few weekend jaunts to cottage country, if they ever even get that far.
When I worked in Toronto for 15 years, I met countless numbers of people who had never even beyond Steeles Avenue to the north, Oshawa to the East, and Missisauga to the west. South of course is Lake Ontario – which is too dirty to swim in most of the time. It certainly wasn’t rural folks that polluted Lake Ontario, yet this urban concentration of population thinks they know how to protect the rest of Ontario.
I think Randy is onto something here. As he points out,
” Rural Ontario can fight back issue by issue, problem by problem, but with every victory a new battle will begin. A just and fair society will recognize that unlike people, lifestyles and cultures cannot be governed by one set of laws without injustice. There is only one real solution when two cultures collide and one has an overwhelming majority willing to subject the minority. It is the creation of new and separate jurisdictions that has the support and approval of their respective constituents and protects their heritage. New political jurisdictions for both urban and rural people is the solution, not the gallows.”
And then perhaps we can live in peace as well.
Read Randy’s article here: http://www.quebecoislibre.org/04/041215-11.htm