A Tale of Two Cities

Although Canadian political stories frankly seem rather boring to me compared to what is going on with our neighbour to the south, occasionally a Canadian political happening catches my eye. That happened this past week when cowtown elected Naheed Nenshi as its new mayor, while Torontonians were busy electing Rob Ford as their new guy. Now I know very little of either man aside from what I have been reading about them in the past few days. In fact, before this week I had never even heard of either of them. But this seems to be newsworthy. And when was the last time one could say that about a Canadian municipal election?

Nenshi is reportedly "young, funny, educated, a visible minority" and apparently the first Muslim mayor of a major Canadian city. The "Muslim" part is apparently no big deal to Calgarians. I think this is typical of Western Canadian attitudes to diversity and multiculturalism. As I have noted before in a letter which I wrote years ago to the Edmonton Journal, since moving to Edmonton in 1973, my family and I have experienced nothing but an open and tolerant society in Alberta, one which welcomes diversity. Unlike my experience with anti-Semitism as I was growing up in Montreal, my children never faced any anti-Semitic taunts while attending public schools in Edmonton. Being Jewish, Muslim, gay, a woman, or whatever, has not stopped anybody in Alberta from rising to the top. All one has to do is look at Alberta's highest court judges, Presidents of universities, mayors of cities, Lieutenant-Governors of the Province, to see that being a member of a minority group has not been a disadvantage.

What might be more surprising in the election of Nenshi as mayor of Calgary is not that he is a Muslim, but that he apparently is a liberal thinker, a university professor, a person interested in assisting non-profit companies and so on, - not your typical stereotype of the super conservative, corporate obsessed, wild west, gun toting, Calgarian.

While Calgary was electing Mayor Nenshi, Torontonians were electing Mayor Rob Ford. Now again I do not know much about the man, other than what I have been able to glean about him from recent newspaper reports. He seems to be fiscally very conservative, frequently irreverent, and certainly controversial. His election has the good people of Toronto buzzing.

So there it is. An interesting Canadian political story. Now back to the U.S. mid-terms next week.