A Toronto Lampoon

Joan McGrath is a Toronto Board of Education library consultant.

It used to be that everybody who was anybody hated poor old Trawna. Now it’s fairly safe, and does not instantly brand the speaker as a low-brow Hogtowner, to admire Toronto the no-longer-all-that-good. It is still, however, quite the done thing to take swipes at The Queen City. A Toronto Lampoon, a left-handed birthday tribute celebrating the city’s Sesquicentennial Year, includes contributions from 32 satirists and jokesters, several of whom probably meant exactly what they have written.

Nothing and nobody is safe or sacred, whether on Bay Street, in Queen’s Park, the Gardens, or the Tower. The In Crowd, the Yuppies (young urban professionals), the Ethnics, the WASPS, none are neglected; there is a barbed sting for everyone in this generally genial spoof. Rather a lot of it at one time, but nobody said you had to read it at one sitting, wherever you happen to be sitting.