Episode Three: City State stretches from WWII to the Mega city at the turn of the Millennium. War transforms Toronto into a training and munitions capital, brings women into the factories and makes Wayne & Shuster stars as they entertain the troops across the sea. War also turns against local Italians suspected of Fascist sympathies. As troops return home, the inner city is crumbling. Toronto erects its first housing project, amalgamates its burroughs into North America's first metropolitan and launches the country's first subway. Fifteen year old Marilyn Bell becomes a national heroine when she swims Lake Ontario. Then Hurricane Hazel rips the place apart.
Post war prosperity brings a new, uptown face to Toronto: a modern city hall, theatres, ballet; and a winning horse called Northern Dancer. A terrible construction tragedy shames the city for its treatment of Italian workers. Toronto becomes a national cultural centre of books, arts, and entertainment, along with a new media guru, Marshall McLuhan. Theatre and sports are finally allowed on Sunday and the city shucks off Orange control when a Jewish mayor is elected in 1955. Toronto becomes emphatically multicultural as Caribbeans, Africans and Asians arrive in the thousands. Young Canadians pour into Yorkville in their summers of love, as do draft dodgers.
By 1976, Toronto finally outshines Montreal as the financial capital. The CN Tower and Skydome are hoisted up, and two World Series are won. The city seems unstoppable until the dastardly snowstorm of 1999 forces the army to dig it out. |
