As a multilingual, allophone businessman living in Montreal, I oftentimes blame the Separatist movement for making Montreal take a back seat to Toronto as the economic hub of Canada. Mind you, Montreal’s joie de vivre and artistic prowess might be the flip side to letting Hogtown take the business crown. But the fact remains, I always look at the skyline here, and wonder, what would have been.
Of course, with the supremacy in economy, comes social problems. You can’t have your cake and eat it too, after all.
For the past few years, Toronto’s crime rate has been spiraling out of control. Maybe it’s not the crime rate, but the types of crime. Critics would say that Toronto is really no different than the worst of American cities when it comes to crime.
Maybe. Maybe not.
But last week’s shooting of a 16 year old in a high school - at gunpoint - made one thing clear for me, let Toronto be Canada’s answer to an American city, and god bless the separatists for letting Toronto have that crown.
And seeing how separatists simply don’t have enough kids to ever win a majority, combined with the fact that Canada remains pound for pound the best nation to live in in the world and the influx of immigrants will make a Yes vote an unlikely outcome, maybe Rene Levesque and the PQ’s ultimate legacy won’t be a separate Quebec, but a distinctly safe Montreal.