Wreck-It Doug

The march of the fifty-story towers: each new one taller than the last.
The view from the Allan Gardens of the corner of Jarvis and Dundas.

Luck put me in the immediate vicinity of the massive Raptor celebration in Toronto on June 17. I was at something called the Electricity Summit at the Sheraton hotel on Queen Street, right across the street from Nathan Phillips Square. I had to quit the conference early to get back to the office and wondered exactly how I was going to do that.

When I got to Queen and Bay at 8:30 that morning, the crowd was already huge. I could barely get into the hotel. While speakers droned on at the conference about the grid of the future, I watched a live feed of the crowds on my phone like I was checking the weather for updates on a monster storm. The party was supposed to be over by 2:30, when I had to leave, but the NBA champs weren't going to get to Nathan Phillips Square until well past then.  

I gave myself an extra half hour and left at 2:00. I took underground paths leading from the hotel to Queen and Yonge and was forced above ground when I couldn't get past the guards at the Queen subway station. On the surface, on Yonge Street, a full block away from the main madness, there were so many people, I thought I might just have to stay there for the rest of my life.

Fixed as my attention was on getting past the mass of humanity and back to work (which I did finally manage to do), I missed the reports of the shooting and the tales of how the Premier was booed.

It was hard to miss, however, what came mere days later - Doug's Big Shuffle, where half of the provincial cabinet got a new job. 

Loyal supporters in the press accept the Premier's assertion that the problem is he hasn't been getting his message out, and he's moving fresh talent into key files at a critical juncture. Those less loyal, or even those just paying attention, aren't buying that. The unprecedented, panicky move by the Premier is just further proof that Ford has no idea what he is doing.

But then, why would he? He's a former drug dealer who ran a sticker factory. He has managed to fool himself into believing that because he ran a business he knows how to run everything. 

Clearly that ain't the case.

Thanks for reading!

Happy Pride!

Karen