"Move Over, Chum"

At a United Church presbytery meeting in Toronto last week, a committee made a stern report: the city once known far & wide as "Toronto the Good" has become pretty wicked. Said the committee: "Toronto is obsessed with the slippery condition of its streets when it should be concerned with the sliding moral values of its people."

Too many Torontonians, the committee found, go to movies that are not good for them to see. Furthermore, they bet on horse races, read naughty books that are banned in Boston, attend burlesque shows that are banned even in sinful New York, and drink liquor till 2 a.m.

Toronto's Globe & Mail buried the story on an inside page and looked the other way. The rest of Canada, tired of Toronto's holier-than-thou attitude, howled with delight. The Ottawa Citizen whooped to press with an eight-column, Page One chortler: TORONTO THE GOOD 'MOST WIDE OPEN CITY.' The Ottawa Journal clucked like a mother hen: "Toronto is [just] growing up ... taking on the airs and smells and sounds of a big city. We think it will survive." The unkindest smirk of all lit up the Montreal Herald: "We are presently beaver-busy with uplift and the dusting off of our own morals. Sights high, eyes on the target, we are out to blast the canard that Montreal was ever a sinful city. . . . 'Toronto the Good' forsooth. Move over, chum."

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