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Remember when Taylor Swift didn’t have any Canadian tour dates booked, and politicians started a contest to make us cringe the hardest? “It’s me, hi. I know places in Canada would love to have you. So don’t make it another horrible summer. We hope to see you soon,” tweeted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. I could almost hear his children moaning.

“MPs join chorus of delighted Swifties,” was the Toronto Star headline when Conservative MP Matt Jeneroux tabled an “official complaint” on the issue in the House of Commons.

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In Toronto, a city councilor tabled a motion to rename a street “Taylor Swift Way” during her six-night stand. The motion also directed city staff “to provide a briefing note to the City Council on local Swiftonomics.” Only one councilor voted against. (At least the city isn’t paying for the signage.)

And since Swift finally added six dates at the Rogers Centre, nee SkyDome, the crawling hasn’t stopped amid the jubilant anticipation.

The Star offered us an “insight into how Toronto was finally added to (the megastar’s) tour.” Apparently, Tim Leiweke, former president and CEO of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, “helped broker the deal between (Rogers Center) and Swift’s management team.” That’s reasonable enough.

But the reason this “brokerage” process worked is because Toronto is the fourth largest city in North America, and Swift’s management knew she could sell 300,000 tickets there, at a minimum of $175, in about 90 seconds. (Why Swift is content to let scalpers effectively steal money from her is beyond me, but lord knows I don’t question her business acumen.)

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Swift has booked three nights in Tampa, Atlanta, Nashville and Indianapolis; two nights in Tampa, Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, Cincinnati and Kansas City. One way or another she was obviously going to play Toronto. (The only slightly sticky wicket is that the Rogers Centre’s 50,000 capacity is, if you can believe it, a relatively small display according to Swift’s standards.)

The politicians celebrate and plead with Swift could be seen as harmless creep. But I also think it shows a classic Canadian inferiority complex.

In Toronto specifically, as I have argued beforeI think the Swift mania speaks to a deep and abiding unease among the city’s ruling classes with being an important, rich and generally very successful place that no longer needs to beg for notice from outsiders.

This success, what we Torontonians have always said we want, but now that it has come with all the usual trappings of big-city success — intractable congestion, expensive parking, $2,250 for a one-bedroom apartment — some of us want to turn back the clock. I think some of us almost lack to be pleasantly surprised, Taylor Swift would visit our little burg.

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And I think the city’s actions have confirmed that. These days, celebrities asked what they think Toronto often calls the damn traffic. Well, none of that for Swift! She got a giant police motorcade and rolling closures on the Gardiner Expressway, at taxpayer expense.

https://x.com/CarymaRules/status/1857144586725888293

“Taylor Swift attracts a large following that is (sic) very actively engaged, and for public safety reasons we are facilitating her movements around the city,” a Toronto police spokesperson told the Toronto Sun.

That’s it, huh? It wasn’t even just a little bit that you wanted in on the fun? Swift’s home includes a $50 million “association” in Lower Manhattan. It doesn’t come with a motorcade or fan-dodging privileges from New York’s finest.

Quietly, given the blood-curdling traffic situation downtown, the city has designated “drop-off and pick-up zones” for parents sending their children to Swift. The only thing the city should say is “under no circumstances drive downtown on the nights of these shows – or better yet, never.”

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But as I say, dreams of a much more livable Toronto die hard. When I was a kid, we would drive downtown to Blue Jays games, especially on school nights. Now the semi-detached house we drove from is worth about $2 million and parking is about $75 and it would take forever.

By far the most offensive: the city announced it would clear the homeless from the Rogers Center area “for their own safety.”

To follow Canadian politics at all levels is to repeatedly wonder, “How stupid do these people think we are?” This is an example of the gold standard. I know a little about Swifties, but they sure don’t seem like the type to attack homeless people. They seem more like the types who would throw a homeless person a few bucks after a great night out. The idea that there is relative danger rather than safety in numbers for homeless Torotnonians is particularly appalling given how many die – or are murdered – alone.

Everyone knows what this is: It’s the city that magically finds a place to house the homeless so they’ll hopefully be out of sight for the tour dates, and then they’ll be off again. This is the kind of thing I would have expected our famously progressive mayor, Olivia Chow, to object to adamantly. But she was nowhere helping asylum seekers sleeping in the rain on the streets of Toronto last year. She where at the Taylor Swift Way unveiling ceremony.

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