Toronto: Difference between revisions

|Torontonian joke<ref>Also told elsewhere in Ontario and the Great Lakes region.</ref>}}

 

 

In addition to its many charms, the Greater Toronto Area (nobody who lives there thinks of games first when they hear "GTA") is also one of the great [[California Doubling|stand-in cities]] of movie and television fame as filming in Canada is quite a bit cheaper than in the US.<ref>(See [http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/the_hollywood_economist/2006/02/northern_expenditure.html this article] for why.)</ref> The [[City with No Name]] is often Toronto. Several times, they've forgotten to remove Toronto landmarks in the movies, leaving Canadians watching what's obviously Toronto when it's supposed to be set in the United States. In Canada, it's often (derisively) nicknamed "[[Small Name, Big Ego|the centre of the universe]]", partially because it's [[Small Reference Pools|the first city anyone outside of Canada will think of]]. Oh, and everybody in Canada who lives outside of the Greater Toronto Area hates Toronto - [[Acceptable Targets|and sometimes the people who live inside it]]. This is largely because of a perception, true or false, that Torontonians are oblivious to the country outside of their city.<ref>Similar to the American concept of [[Flyover Country]], but where that has the ''two'' largest and most diverse population centres hogging the spotlight of national culture, here's it's just Toronto.</ref>

One can easily detect outsiders in Toronto by hearing them pronounce it "Tow-Rawn-Tow". City natives, or those from closely neighbouring regions who talk with city natives constantly, typically drop the last T, and sometimes the first O, so it's "Toronno", "T'ronno", or even "Ch'ronno" (with the first consonant being the "ch" in "chair").<ref>This fact trips up quite a few actors portraying Canadians, e.g. in ''[[The Proposal]]'', where [[Sandra Bullock]]'s character is supposed to be a native Torontonian but immediately spoils the fact by pronouncing the city name as it is spelled</ref> Nicknames include T.O. (an acronym of '''''T'''oronto, '''O'''ntario''), the T-dot (a shortening of the former), Hogtown or The Big Smoke (names arising from historic industries associated at different times with the town), and "Toronto the Good". Peter Ustinov famously described it as "New York run by the Swiss", though the appellation isn't quite as accurate as it once was.

 

 

Not all of Toronto's suburbs are part of the mega-city; cities like Vaughan, Richmond Hill, Mississauga and Brampton are sizable cities in their own right. The whole giant monster is known as the Greater Toronto Area (GTA for short). In general the core is known as the 416 area and the surrounding GTA as the 905 (these being the dominant phone area codes in the two segments). The term "Golden Horseshoe" is also used for a larger area surrounding Toronto, containing the GTA and nearby towns and cities wrapped around the north-western shore of Lake Ontario. Particularly expansive definitions of the Golden Horseshoe include most of Southern Ontario as well as [[Perpetual Poverty|Buffalo]], New York. The question about which cities or suburbs are part of Toronto or not has led to some confusion and general mockery among Canadians. The consensus has become the farther away one is from Toronto, the larger the city becomes. For example, while in southern Ontario, a citizen of Mississauga is ''not'' from Toronto and will be insulted if you declare them as such. However that same Mississaugan will claim to be from Toronto while traveling overseas (or more than two provinces away) just to keep things simpler. And, as mentioned, if you happen to live ''in'' the amalgamated megacity, some of your neighbours may well be [[Serious Business|willing to fight you to the death]] over whether you're both residents of Toronto or not.