Of Toronto the good, 127 years later

The theme for the first batch of the 1RG incubator is Toronto the Good. I LOVE a good call back to history so here's a tiny digression. I've been vaguely aware of the nickname Toronto The Good for some time, but I didn't know where it came from until recently. Maybe you don't either.

Prior to researching this, I had heard that Toronto The Good referred to the city's Victorian past, and assumed that it had once been held up as a model of virtue. I was wrong.

Back in the late 1800s Toronto was far from any ideal of respectability, and was in fact known for its slums, filthy streets, foul water supply, and problems with prostitution, gambling, and alcohol.

Around this time, William Howland, who was president of the Board of Trade and loved the Bible, thought that the city was an absolute disgrace, and decided to run for Mayor on a platform of morality and reform. His campaign adopted the slogan Toronto The Good as a call to make the city respectable (nominally by prohibiting alcohol and sex). Good branding, if you ask me.

Howland got himself elected in 1886 but was in and out of office due to financial scandals. His crowning achievement was instituting a new police squad to root out corruption, close dens of gambling, drugs and prostitution, and stop the “desecration” of the Sabbath (source). He also passed the Fleming by-law, which reduced the number of liquor licences from 223 to 150 (source).

Not much changed in the immediate aftermath and Toronto The Good was used sarcastically in a book about the city published in 1898 Of Toronto the Good: A Social Study, which I did not read in full, but has chapters about Street Walkers, Detectives, Pawnbrokers, Social Evil, Street Boys, Gambling Houses, Drunkenness, Imposters, Pickpockets, Crooks, Thieves, The Bar, Quack Doctors, and Swindlers. You get the gist.

Long story short, Toronto did not have a virtuous reputation. 'round about this time, it was also called Hogtown by, apparently, everyone outside the city.

I'm not sure if I am more disappointed by Toronto The Good's connection to prohibitionism, or by the fact that the city's real reputation was actually pretty bad. I was kind of hoping to emerge from this rabbit hole with something a bit more positive - evidence from the past of something that I sense in the city. Alas.

Toronto today is far from perfect, but it has the diversity you'd expect from a much larger city, and while she's^[1] no NYC or SF (wink wink Misha) it is the place I've chosen to call home, and it feels full of possibilities.

It is very possible that my perception of Toronto is biased by the kinds of events I host and go to, and the people that I interact with as I pursue my own world building ambitions, but I can think of at least a couple of examples of what I sometimes refer to as the simmering energy of the city.

Last summer, my friends Naryan and Meghan launched a social experiment to map the emergent Toronto scene. They threw a small-ish party (at 1RG!) where they asked everyone to participate in a network representation of their social connections and share it with people they met at other events in the city. A few months later the map was much bigger and showed an intricate web of connections across different communities. You can read Naryan's reflections about the final here, but my personal take away is that many of us are engaged in weaving the cultural fabric of the city by gathering and exploring whatever weird interests together.

More recently, last week, I and a bunch of other Torontonians braved the snow to attend the last lecture of the Viaduct series, which was on Agency in politics. Ben did a marvellous job at bringing together people from all kinds of backgrounds and with sometimes wildly different visions for what the city could be like. When the speaker asked who in the audience would be interested in learning the ins and outs of city politics, most raised their hands. Sure, a lecture on agency in politics is bound to attract a specific kind of person, but it's still a strong signal for intellectual curiosity and a bias towards action.

Where am I going with this? These are only two examples, but I think they point to something very true in my experience of Toronto: it's filled with caring, ambitious, agentic people that are invested in making the city better, whatever that means to them. To me, that energy is the soul of our shared city, and what makes Toronto The Good.

It seems only fitting to channel that energy and focus in our incubator. Applications for the first cohort are now closed, and I spent the long weekend reviewing submissions – it brought me so much joy to read through all of them. There is so much potential, I can’t wait to see what we build together!