Crime & Scarboro Not A Dead Issue

Norm Kelly wants the media to turn down the heat a little when a crime happens in Scarborough and it has found it's way on to City of Toronto's council agenda. You would think the council might have more important things on it's plate but this is becoming a cause celebre. I wonder how many people know anything about the history of Scarborough.

A cheeky look at the rump of Toronto
Shhh on the S-word, coupled with crime, councillors say
January 15, 2007
Rosie DiManno

Scarborough is in a pout. Scarborough is sore. Scarborough does not want its name taken in vain anymore.

Scarborough needs therapy.

The city, nee borough, latterly eastern rump of amalgamated Toronto, is perhaps most famous (birthplace of Mike Myers aside) for giving us the term "Scarberia", a generic descriptor for urban blandness verging on blight. "That's a subject for an MA thesis on its own,'' notes Councillor Norm Kelly, disapprovingly.

It is, phonetically, not the prettiest sounding name, that "Scar'' an unfortunate syllable to segue into "borough'', harsh to the ear and evoking nose-wrinkling images, scabs and lesions and pustules.

Not that I'm suggesting Scarborough is one big zit on the face of the city. It has lovely parks and creeks and bluffs, as well as million dollar mansions, tucked away in cul-de-sacs. But for those of us who don't live there, who just pass through, it does present as esthetically bleak, with its pasty residential neighbourhoods, dreary apartment complexes, ubiquitous strip malls, no-tell motels, rigid thoroughfares and a used car lot on every corner.

It's no Scarborough fair.

A honking big sub-burg, though – some 600,000 people live there. Ours is not to wonder why.

But Scarborites – Scarberians? Scarbs? – are reportedly in a snit over this image profiling thing that is allegedly being perpetrated by the media, relentlessly and indiscriminately yoking their entire suburban flank with crime.

Come on Rosie..get serious. That also goes for Kelly.