PHOTO: Stephen Lewis waxes poetic about the future of Mississauga. "I learned a long time ago to never allow an absence of knowledge to impede opinion."
I went to the first instalment of the Our Future Mississauga Speaker Series last night.
Stephen Lewis and Glen Murray were the speakers.
There's a lot to cover here, so I'll give you some quick bites of it.
UPDATE - They were supposed to be quick bites, but I lost control. They are whole meals.
***
The event is about big ideas. It is part of the inspiration section of the project, which will eventually lead to an actual plan, which may or may not be ignored by future councils.
Stephen Lewis spoke first. He was full of energy, spoke eloquently, and was dressed really well (more on that later).
His plan was to allow Glen Murray to be specific, thereby giving himself permission to "muse at the periphery around some aspects of the emergence of a new metropolis."
Lewis said we need more universities, that our one branch-plant university is not enough for a population that will reach one million in the near future (We're currently at 704,000, according to the sign that welcomes me here every morning).
He also said we should focus on making students in our public schools engaged global citizens who know about Iraq and Afghanistan, climate change and poverty in Africa.
"It doesn't speak to the architecture of buildings," said Lewis, "but it speaks to the architecture of the mind, the architecture of the heart, and the architecture of the spirit."
Not many people can pull off speaking with genuine passion about the architecture of the spirit. It's so corny it's hard not to laugh. But that's Lewis's charm, that he can say such things without irony.
Whatever it is that gives him that ability is also what makes him look good in a brown suit.
A brown suit is famously difficult to pull off. Lewis did pull it off, and looked great. He had his brown suit, with brown socks and brown loafers, with a robin's egg blue shirt and a navy blue tie. I'm no stylist, but I would steer a friend clear of a brown suit because they are nearly always mistakes, make one look like a UPS messenger, and seem to be never "in style," yet there was Lewis in his brown suit looking sharp and fashionable, even though he turns 70 next month.
Also, he said this: "We spend 10 to 15 billion dollars a month to fight wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and we've never been able to raise that much money in a year to fight a pandemic that has ended 25 million lives and has 15 million people in its grip...I beg you to to recognize the human condition as just as important as the econometrics of the city."
***
Glen Murray, the former mayor of Winnipeg, started, after delivering a spoken word love note to Mayor McCallion, with the Canadian Dream.
"Our dream is not the pursuit of happiness or anything so churlish...but our dream is to be global citizens."
He also invoked Philip Slater, the American writer of The Pursuit of Loneliness, a 37-year-old book about why Americans (and, therefore, Canadians) want to have large houses with large yards and large fences and shrubs that keep the neighbours away. We disengage from our community, wrote Slater.
"We seem to have lost our sense of citizenship," said Murray. "We're disconnected from our community...then we wonder why it all seems meaningless and disconnected."
Murray then showed a photo of a huge intersection, with eight lanes of traffic feeding into and out of it. Beyond a huge parking lot, there was a Wal-Mart and a Wendy's. It was an ugly scene that's seen at nearly every off-ramp between Montreal and Windsor, and well beyond. Murray asked us to name the place. It could have been anywhere.
"When every place starts to look the same, you have no sense of place," said Murray. "This is the kind of place where it takes a litre of gas to get a litre of milk...if you had planned stupid, this is stupid planning."
And it's what most of Mississauga looks like.
Murray went on to say that some places are over-engineered, showing a photo of the lawn outside Mississauga's Central Library.
"Though they intended to have people there, you rarely see people there."
***
VIDEO: Lyle Lanley sells his monorail to Springfield.
Murray's "crazy idea" for Mississauga was to have gondolas travelling on wires across the city. That will be our transportation of the future. It keeps the buses out of traffic, it makes public transportation fun, and it gives Mississauga an iconic image.
It was a good idea, and he sold it like Lyle Lanley sold the monorail to Springfield:
"There's nothing on earth
Like a genuine,
Bona fide,
Electrified,
Six-car monorail!"
All right, so Murray didn't sing his sales pitch, and he isn't actually making any money off of any future deal the City might make with a gondola company, but that's all I could think of as Murray was talking about his gondola idea.
Murray also said this, not specifically of the gondolas, but of the whole vision thing the City's going for: "There's no barrier to this but your own fear."
***
Complaints on the evening.
1. The people who ask questions don't usually ask questions. They pontificate about whatever they think is important. They should not be allowed access to microphones. Find another way to involve the public in the event. Let everybody write down their questions and collect them throughout the night, and the moderator can read the sensible ones and leave the loonies to stew.
2. In my two-and-a-half years working in Mississauga, I have noticed there seems to be a disproportionate number of people in this city who do not turn off their cell phones at public events involving speakers. At least five cell phones went off during the speeches last night, and here's what really drives me crazy - if you happen to forget to turn off your cell phone, when someone else's cell phone goes off, does that not remind you to turn yours off?
3. Two great speakers. The future of the city. Big ideas. A great venue. And still, Hammerson Hall cannot be filled! What has to be done to fill that place? Who has to be there to draw such a crowd? Justin Trudeau? Well, then, we're in luck. The youth advocate heartthrob and future prime minister will be here on Nov. 6. Before that, on Oct. 23, Roberta Bondar will be speaking.