When I came across her name in the obituary column, I wondered if there would be anyone to say a few kind words about her, but somehow I doubted it. She and I had lived in the same apartment building for a time, where our paths first crossed at a tenants' meeting. The tenant gathering had an almost festive air about it, with everyone enjoying coffee and cookies, until she showed up with the chill of the November evening on her pinched, angry face. The young woman I was chatting with asked me if I knew her. When I answered no, she whispered: "She's an awful bigot, and so vile tempered that we call her the Dragon Lady".
Taking off her baggy coat, to reveal an equally baggy dress, she started in right off the bat, without even getting herself a coffee, to lecture us in a loud, whiny voice on how Toronto had declined from the civilized city she had grown up in to the dangerous place it had become. "Why, a decent woman is no longer safe on the streets, or even in her own home for that matter." She had been warning everyone for years, she said, that Toronto was fast becoming another New York, but no one ever listened to her. Her baleful look seemed to hold us all responsible for the "savage teens" and "degenerate adults " who were plaguing the streets of this city which, was once known far and wide as Toronto the Good.
She went on to lecture us about how wonderful life used to be in the old days. There were the picnics on Centre Island, the amusements at Sunnyside, waffles in the Eaton Annex and peace and quiet on the Lord’s Day. She continued to preach about good manners and the hard work-ethic that were instilled in people in those good old days. Things started to fall apart in Toronto, according to the Dragon Lady, when it became flooded with foreigners. There were a few aliens in the old Toronto, to be sure, but they knew how to behave, and they kept to themselves. The visible minorities however who are slowly but surely becoming a majority in Toronto, made people like herself feel like foreigners in their own city. As for today's kids, they were totally out of control. Why, in this very building, which used to be spotless, some cretins had left their empty pop cans in the hall, and thrown their filthy cigarette butts on the front lawn. The only remedy for the city's problems, she said, was to bring back flogging and capital punishment.
When the she finally ran out of steam, and sat down, a young man stood up and, after introducing himself as Dave, said, that from the stories his Grandpa had told him about the old Toronto, it was nowhere near as good as she so fondly recalled. According to his Grandpa, Dave continued, the old Toronto was a mean city where minorities couldn't get a job in the public sector, and were insulted at every turn, even physically attacked from time to time. Once, his grandpa had told him, a baseball game in Christie Pits had ended in a major brawl between a gang of teens flaunting Nazi symbols and Italian and Jewish players and fans. Enjoying yourself in old Toronto, as Dave's grandpa told it, was practically outlawed. Every place of amusement was closed on Sundays, so it was considered fun to stroll up and down Yonge Street gazing in the store windows. Eaton's didn't even approve of this simple pleasure, so it closed its drapes on the Sabbath. And, unlike the cozy pubs we have now, Old Toronto had beer parlors, where men and women were segregated.
Dave conceded that, from all accounts, the Old Toronto was a much safer place than it is now, but then, so was everywhere else. Dave felt that most people would agree that Toronto today is a much more tolerant city than it used to be, even though, here he looked the Dragon Lady straight in the eye- “there are still bigots around.” Jumping to her feet, the Dragon Lady hissed: "Old Toronto was strict because people were civilized enough to know that if you gave the lower classes an inch they would take a mile, and any fool could see that is exactly what’s happened." "Toronto today,” she went on, “is nothing more than a painted harlot and like Sodom and Gomorrah it is doomed unless we change our wicked, sinful ways." "Speaking of harlots" said Dave, "what's your position on legalizing #-houses?". For the first time since she arrived at the meeting the Dragon Lady was speechless. But if looks could kill, Dave would have dropped stone cold dead on the spot.
