The circus came to town Wednesday.
With memories of another eyebrow-raising inaugural ceremony of 13 years back long forgotten, the city’s socialists gathered at Toronto City Hall to dance, sing, chant loudly and beat drums in honour of new NDP mayor Olivia Chow.
The same leftists, who got themselves into a lather for days after former colourful commentator (and pink jacketed) Don Cherry called out the city’s “pinkos” at the inaugural of Rob Ford, sat through an over-the-top often cringeworthy ceremony befitting a mayor who has already decidedly made virtue signalling a priority over actually tackling the decrepit city’s many issues.
The MC of the hour-long event CBC actress Jean Yoon – who recently swooned over PM Justin Trudeau on her Instagram page – kept tripping over her prepared script sounding completely unprepared.
When it was time for Chow’s official swearing-in, Yoon claimed she’d been waiting her whole life for “Olivia Chow to become mayor of Toronto.”
One has to wonder if she was paid the going ACTRA [Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists] rate for her services.
Chow was led into the Council chamber by a series of loud Indigenous drummers.
Those viewing the spectacle were also forced to sit through three land acknowledgements and an Indigenous water ceremony.
I’m not sure what that has to do with running the city of Toronto, but I guess we’re all in for three years of near-obsessive efforts to drum into our heads that the lands we live on really don’t belong to us.
An Indigenous welcome came from the Elder of the Urban Indigenous Centre of the Toronto District School board – Dr. Duke Redbird – who said Chow has been a friend of the Indigenous community since 1985 when she became trustee.
He talked about Chow’s mastery of canoeing – together with that of her late husband NDP leader Jack Layton – noting that politics is like a journey by canoe where one can find challenges like waterfalls and other obstacles.
“I’m confident the same skill that Olivia has demonstrated on the lakes and waters of Canada will serve her well as mayor of Toronto,” he sermonized. “Olivia Chow has honed her skills and demonstrated her ability to trek the most difficult of terrain.”
Sandra Whiting from the African Ancestral Acknowledgement Center – a woman who proudly proclaimed her Jamaican ancestry – offered her own land acknowledgement in conjunction with the Indigenous people of Turtle Island, indicating this too was an effort towards “decolonization.”
Poet laureate and professor of creative writing at OCAD University Lillian Allen performed her latest offering, “My Toronto-Poetic Justice” in which she repeated the word “Toronto” eight times at the outset and used the words social justice and injustice several times.
She got a standing ovation.
The new mayor claimed Torontonians voted loudly and clearly for change. Like her platform, she gave us thin gruel as to the changes she envisions.
With a delivery more resembling an Oscar acceptance speech, Chow kept repeating that we all need to “work together” (on what we’re not sure) and build a city together.
“People need to feel safe,” she added, not elaborating how she intends to make people feel safer except for adding more social workers and improving 911 wait times.
“Let’s build a Toronto that is affordable and safe and where everyone belongs,” she said.
Her speech was long on hollow hopey changey buzz words so loved by socialists and remarkably short on details.
But the crowd didn’t care.
Toronto’s champagne socialists and their union/activist/drug and poverty industry hangers-on are back in charge.
Singer Lorraine Segato entered stage right at this point, looking like she came straight from the gym in her stretchy black capris, as she sang Rise Up in honour of the new mayor and supposed change to come.
It didn’t escape my attention that Rise Up first debuted in 1983. But I guess everything old is new again.
Still, I couldn’t believe my eyes when the entire council chamber of socialists and assorted hangers-on stood up and started clapping, singing and shrieking like they were at a rock concert.
For someone who covered City Hall for 20 years and many inaugural — and who has seen everything — it was indeed over-the-top, bizarre and cringeworthy.
Yet I guarantee not one socialist in that council chamber Wednesday had any idea how foolish and unprofessional they looked.
Yes, indeed change is in the wind. But that change I’m predicting will have nothing to do with solving Toronto’s many woes.
At this point, I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry at the absurdity of it all.
