Chris Selley: Toronto loses its cool — if it ever had any — over Taylor Swift

Remember when Taylor Swift hadn’t booked any Canadian tour dates, and politicians began a contest to make us cringe the hardest? “It’s me, hi. I know places in Canada would love to have you. So, don’t make it another cruel summer. We hope to see you soon,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted. I could almost hear his kids groaning.

“MPs join chorus of snubbed Swifties,” was the Toronto Star headline when Conservative MP Matt Jeneroux tabled an “official grievance” on the matter in the House of Commons.

In Toronto, a city councillor moved a motion to rename a street “Taylor Swift Way” for the duration of her six-night stand. The motion also directed city staff “to provide a briefing note to councillors on local Swiftonomics.” Only one councillor voted against it. (The city isn’t paying for the signage, at least.)

And since Swift finally added six dates at Rogers Centre, née SkyDome, the cringing hasn’t stopped amidst the jubilant anticipation.

The Star offered us an “inside look at how Toronto was finally added to (the) megastar’s tour.” Apparently Tim Leiweke, formerly president and CEO of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, “helped broker the deal between (Rogers Centre) and Swift’s management team.” That’s plausible enough.

But surely the reason this “brokering” process succeeded is because Toronto is the fourth-largest city in North America, and Swift’s management knew she could sell 300,000 tickets there, at a minimum of $175, in about 90 seconds. (Why Swift is content to let scalpers effectively steal money from her is beyond me, but lord knows I’m not questioning her business sense.)

Swift has booked three nights in Tampa, Atlanta, Nashville and Indianapolis; two nights in Tampa, Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, Cincinnati and Kansas City. One way or another, she was obviously going to play Toronto. (The only even slightly sticky wicket is that Rogers Centre’s 50,000 capacity is, if you can believe it, a relatively small show by Swift’s standards.)

The politicians celebrating and supplicating to Swift could be seen as harmless cringe. But I also think it evinces a classic Canadian inferiority complex.

In Toronto specifically, as I have argued before, I think Swift-mania speaks to a deep and abiding unease among the city’s ruling classes with being an important, rich and overall very successful place that no longer needs to beg for notice from foreigners.

This success what we Torontonians have always said we want, but now that it has come with all the usual trappings of big-city success — intractable congestion, expensive parking, $2,250 for a one-bedroom apartment — a fair few of us want to turn back the clock. I think some of us almost want to be pleasantly surprised Taylor Swift would pay our little burg a visit.

And I think the city’s actions have borne that out. Nowadays, celebrities asked what they think Toronto often mention the hellacious traffic. Well, none of that for Swift! She got a gigantic police motorcade, and rolling closures on the Gardiner Expressway, at taxpayer expense.

https://x.com/CarymaRules/status/1857144586725888293

“Taylor Swift attracts a large following that are (sic) very actively engaged, and for public safety reasons, we are facilitating her movements in the city,” a Toronto Police spokesperson told the Toronto Sun.

That’s it, eh? It’s not even just a tiny bit that you wanted to get in on the fun? Swift’s homes include a $50 million “compound” in Lower Manhattan. It does not come with motorcade or fan-avoidance privileges from New York’s finest.

Hilariously, considering the blood-curdling traffic situation downtown, the city has designated “drop-off and pickup zones” for parents sending their kids off to Swift. The only thing the city should be saying is “do not, under any circumstances, drive downtown on the nights of these performances — or better yet, ever.”

But as I say, dreams of a much more livable Toronto die hard. When I was a kid we would drive downtown to Blue Jays games, especially on school nights. Now the semi-detached house we drove from is worth about $2 million and parking costs about $75 and it would take absolutely forever.

Most offensively by far: the city announced it would be clearing out homeless people from the area of Rogers Centre “for their own safety.”

To follow Canadian politics at all levels is to wonder, repeatedly, “How dumb do these people think we are?” This is a gold-standard example. I know little of the Swifties, but they sure don’t seem like the types to attack homeless people. They seem more like types who would toss a homeless people a few bucks after a great night out. The idea that there’s relative danger rather than safety in numbers for homeless Torotnonians is especially galling considering how many die — or are murdered — alone.

Everyone knows what this is: It’s the city magically finding a place to house homeless people so they’ll hopefully be out of sight for the tour dates, and then they’ll get cut loose again. It’s the sort of thing I would have expected our famous progressive mayor, Olivia Chow, to object to strenuously. But she was nowhere to help asylum seekers sleeping in the rain on Toronto streets last year. She was at the unveiling ceremony for Taylor Swift Way.

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