JAIMIE VERNON – Toronto the Good?

I am a Torontonian. I was born in East York at East General Hospital 50 years ago this coming Tuesday and raised in Scarborough – both originally neighbouring boroughs of Toronto. I’ve always considered these places suburbs of Toronto anyway and it was made official when they were amalgamated into the new City of Toronto in 1998. I worked for the City of Scarborough for 12 years leading up to the annexing of all the Metropolitan Toronto territories (which also included North York, York, and Etobicoke). 44 out of my 50 years have been spent living here. I’ve lived in the shadows both Yorkdale and Cedarbrae malls, on the eastern leg of The Danforth, and in the belly of Malvern when it was still radioactive but before it became a hideout for drug gangs and a haven for grow-ops. I’ve communed at the wolf den on the outskirts of the Metro Toronto Zoo and gone swimming in Lake Ontario at the foot of the Rouge River.

Segarini: The Stockton/Toronto Connection – Food, Radio, and Music, PLUS Blackberry Smoke, and Brower’s Book

I have been caught up for almost 2 months writing about my hometown, (the sadly on the ropes, Stockton, California), which these days can be compared to the once mighty Muhammad Ali, and like him, still loved by those who knew him, but now not quite himself and well past his glory days. Those of us who grew up there can still revel in the halcyon days of the ‘40s, ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s, and early ‘80s, and even though I was born in San Francisco, Stockton will forever and always be my hometown, my foundation, and the place where my dreams were born; the launching pad of my long, strange trip.

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