July 7, 2003
Even in early July, the summer of 2003 was considered a write-off as far as many Toronto businesses were concerned.
For the second time in a matter of only a few months, World Health Organization (WHO) officials removed the city from its list of SARS-affected areas on July 3. The delisting of Toronto from the WHO blacklist coincided with Vancouver being awarded the 2010 Winter Olympics games.
The news of the Vancouver games came as bittersweet news to the City of Toronto, which lost its own Olympic games bid on July 13, 2001.
Although SARS appears to be under control in Toronto, WHO officials remind us that health care providers must remain on high alert for any potential new cases to avoid another outbreak.
There is a school of thought that believes that SARS was always under control in T.O., and that even so the image of our SARS-stricken city was hyped the further away people lived according to the world map. That image had people in downtown Bogata, or on the outskirts of Honolulu, believing that people were dropping like flies on Yonge Street.
In one of those the-operation-was-a-success-but-the-patient-died routines, WHO spokeswoman Maria Cheng was warning us from faraway Geneva: While Toronto’s removal is "very good news…it’s important to remain vigilant right now because this could be a time when hospitals are letting down their guard."
"Obviously, that’s very dangerous with a disease like SARS, where you could have one new case slip through the cracks and spark a new outbreak."
Without being on or off the WHO SARS blacklist, the damage had already been done. The normally brisk tourist trade Toronto counts on every summer had withered on the vine back in May. Some local business outlets that rely on the tourist trade buckled and went under. Many more are forced to hang tough.
As summer tomato plants ripen in the backyard garden, there is still the specter of West Nile disease, which remains until the first frost.
In the middle of this tough to do business environment, comes this country’s largest newspaper’s attack on the Toronto Blue Jays. Dubbing the home team "The White Jays," because of a lack of culturally diverse faces in their opening day roster, the Toronto Star was singling out its second group of potential racists.
The Star, which smeared our 7,000-member police force, has never given up on its obsession with racial profiling.
What all this does is make Toronto a most difficult place in which to survive--unless you’re the largest newspaper in the country.
What about the little people out there trying to hack out a decent living?
We have almost come to expect the mishandling of the public good at the hands of career politicians, but not from our largest daily newspaper.
The City of Toronto will survive SARS, but can it withstand damage created by the must-sell-newspapers crusades of the everybody’s-a-racist White Star?