Merry Christmas to all

Dalton warned us about this

Is this what Dalton McGuinty warned us about in the last election?

The hands of students in Fareena Masood's Grade 3 class fly into the air when the teacher asks for the number of syllables in "communication."

The question stumps a few of the young students at the Islamic Foundation School -- "Is it four?" one asks -- before another student correctly answers five.

As Masood -- called Sister Fareena by her students -- writes the answer on the blackboard, one boy whispers an excited "yes" as he checks his own page.

Next on the teacher's list, written in chalk on the blackboard, are the words "wonderful" and "school."

They're fitting words for a vocabulary lesson at the Scarborough private school which is one of 25 schools ranked first in the province by the 2008 Fraser Institute report card on elementary education. The school, which has 497 male and female students from JK to Grade 12, earned a perfect 10 score, according to the report.

It seems to me they are doing something right.

Ode to the (multicultural) mall

We do have something in common after all. We like to go to the mall.

We might not want to admit it but the best place to see Toronto is at the mall. Where else does a nearly complete cross-section of the city exist in one spot? On those rainy, overcast Sundays, when melancholy blankets the city, I like to ride the Spadina line out to Yorkdale Mall and walk in circles with some of the up to 70,000 people who head there on weekends. Apart from being anonymous in the only crowd available, I see all sorts of Torontonians I don't run into on Queen West, the Annex or even Harbourfront – all those places we might prefer to see them. Women in hijabs parade past shellacked Holt Renfew-bound ladies, who brush by the guys who wear the baggy shirts that go to their knees, who follow the teenage girls with impossibly visible thongs, who are dragged away by weary moms into the Gap to “buy something nice.”

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With its recreated streetscapes and multicultural and class mix, Yorkdale's hyperreality may be where the reality of Toronto's celebrated diversity actually exists in one place.

Model of diversity?

Apparently not.

He's a tall white guy and I'm a short brown girl, but our experience of diversity at Woburn Collegiate and Toronto as a whole is similar: in his words, “There's an idea of a multicultural paradise, but it's unenforced.” Or, as I'd put it, this city is home to a lot of people who look different and speak different languages, but don't intermingle in a meaningful way.

[...]

Geographic diversity is crucial in sprawling Toronto. More and more, the outer suburbs are increasingly marginalized, home to the newest Canadians. Whole groups of Torontonians never bump up against each other – and so have no understanding of each other's basic needs.

[...]

It's time for diversity to become a real goal, and that means talking about things that can make us feel icky.

[...]

My Toronto can include you, white guy – if yours can include Etobicoke, strip malls and events where you stand in an audience that looks nothing like you, cheering for a stranger with whom you have nothing in common.