Toronto Life writer reamed for giving Scarborough a bad rap

It took them about a month to come to the boil, but municipal councillors from the eastern end of Toronto are bubbling now about a story on Scarborough by writer Don Gillmor in the December issue of Toronto Life.

"The notion that's written by reporters and so on that Scarborough's a bad place, it's a place infested with crime, is inaccurate, and it has to stop," said an irked Councillor Michael Thompson, his voice rising in anger.

The Toronto Sun reported that Thompson and other councillors are cheesed off not only at Gillmor and Toronto Life but at the general run of media attitudes and the lampooning of "Scarberia".

Gillmor's piece was headlined The Scarborough Curse. The deck was "How did boring, white-bred Scarberia become Scarlem—a mess of street gangs, firebombings and stabbings? Portrait of Toronto’s unluckiest suburb" The article said that, for years, Scarborough had been a foil to downtown Toronto, comparing it to the difference between New Jersey and Manhattan.

Courageously, I think, Gillmor appeared before the Scarborough Community Council, a caucus of Toronto City Council, to discuss and, ultimately, to defend his piece. He told the councillors the piece was "done out of a level of concern" and that magazines examining urban issues have a "mandate to criticize" and not just publish the feel-good stories.

Councillor Glen De Baeremaeker took issue with a passage that referred to the "hint of menace rather than complacency" and the "spectre of ethnic gangs" and "sectarian tension" that forms part of today's Scarborough.

At one point, he said to Gillmor, "Anyone who is from Scarborough and who read this would just laugh because it's so ridiculous."

The Sun didn't seem to have much problem finding Scarborough residents who would back up the less savoury side of the suburb's reputation.

At the Kennedy Subway station, Scarborough resident Pradeesh Sriharan, 19, who was picking up his mom, Sureka Sriharan, 44, didn't agree with the councillors.

"I think it's a violent place," Sriharan said. "I don't find it safe at all because of the things I see. Just yesterday there was a fight at Markham and Lawrence. It was fists. I was kinda amazed. It was girls."