It was late afternoon. I was sitting on a bench in a small park when a man approached me. He talked, bent with an incessant fervor and gripping charisma, clad in a tan sports coat and a red bow tie. I was an impressionable 15-year-old then, and though my parents had taught me not to talk to strangers, I found myself captivated. The man talked about youth and purpose, his words pulsing with importance as he monologued in the park, pacing in front of picnicking families and lunching shop-girls. He started talking about invention. He wanted to create cities in the ocean, perfect cities that were created from nothing. The idea was fantastic. The man spoke with such conviction that the impossible, to him, seemed to be the only step towards the future. He was a leader without followers, a man going for a walk—but he had a vision. And to him, that vision was worth confronting strangers in the park and it was worth sounding a bit unhinged.

For the first time in the past seven years the Toronto mayoral race is without an incumbent, and a staggering 24 candidates are registered and rallying to replace the regime of David Miller. I spoke with nine candidates, who ran the gamut of the fringe to respected Toronto politicians. Though some of their campaigns seem redundant (why is science fiction writer Andrew Barton, who works for a communications firm with 15 fans on Facebook, bothering to run a campaign?) and some of their platforms seem downright cracked (truck-driver John Letonja wants to build the city using the city’s trash and to plant literal “money trees” downtown), they all speak with the same fervor as the man in the park did of his cities in the ocean.

alt text

So what do Don Andrews, a neo-Nazi and member of the unofficial white supremacist Canadian Nationalist Party; computer geek and software designer Mark Cidade; data-analyst Stephen Feek; science fiction writer Andrew Barton; truck driver and self-professed “hobbyist” John Letonja; Women’s Post founder, Sarah Thompson; ex-SAC president and young lawyer Rocco Achampong; councillor Giorgio Mammoliti; and Liberal entrepreneur Rocco Rossi all have in common? Well, they all want to be your mayor, and they all have a vision for Toronto. And they all think it’s worth fighting for.

“People don’t vote municipally, because they don’t see that they have options beyond the frontrunners,” says 40-year-old Stephen Feek as he emphatically explains why he’s decided to leave his “very quiet life” and register as a mayoral candidate. “If you only know of two or three candidates and you don’t like what you see, you’re not going to vote.”

“We, as a city, have tried the politicians,” he continues. “So maybe not all of my solutions to our problems are great and not all of them will work—but an idea will spawn other ideas. The city is doing the same thing it’s been doing for years and decades. It’s like we’re stuck in the ‘90s and we’re stuck in debt. It’s time for a new vision.”

Software designer Mark Cidade perks up when I ask him about his vision of the ideal Toronto, going from blasé to impassioned. “Toronto would be a circle: it would be clean, it would be healthy,” he explains. “There would be magnetic levitation trains to get you anywhere you want to go quickly. There would be high-speed planes to get you in and out of the city. There would be psycho-education in schools to teach you how to be happy—and Toronto would be a happy and productive city which would create and produce, not consume.”

“Rome: it would be Rome to the power of 10,” says U of T grad and lawyer Rocco Achampong with a penetrating stare and intoxicating excitement. He looks up from a black leather folio filled with notes and an ever-buzzing BlackBerry in the lobby cafe of City Hall. “There would be gold-leaf statues and art everywhere. Even the least-fortunate person would be educated. Because why do people continue to visit Rome? It isn’t because it’s still the most powerful city in the world; it’s because of the art and because of the culture. A city can be an empire and we are one of the most multicultural cities in the world; we have a story to tell; we are a city to be reckoned with.”

“It would be Luminato, it would be TIFF,” Sarah Thomson, a business owner of 24 years and the publisher of The Women’s Post for the last eight years, adds in an almost sickly-sweet tone. “It would have cultural events that are constantly bringing the world to Toronto.”

“I think the enormous opportunity comes from the fact that we have a city filled with city-builders, and people who are passionate about making a difference,” Rocco Rossi says, seated next to his PR representative, clad in a pink cardigan and pearls, in a Timothy’s Coffee at Yonge and St. Clair. The Liberal candidate has the incredible knack of making perfectly bottled answers sound genuine—if a bit trite. “We’ve got a tremendous arts community, we have what we did with Luminato, and we have what was done with the AGO, with the ROM, with the Opera House. In all of these cases, you never hear ‘we did this because City Hall made this possible,’ instead ‘we did it despite City Hall.’ My ideal Toronto is a Toronto that isn’t about stopping bridges, it’s about building bridges to the enormous pool of talent and passion that we have here to help solve problems.”
alt text

“Toronto needs a stubborn mule like me to make sure that we reverse some of the decisions we’ve made, and isn’t really going to care about political correctness in order to do that,” councillor Giorgio Mammoliti says matter-of-factly. He’s a formidable man with a thick build who sits next to his magnanimous desk in an office busily nestled in the upper levels of City Hall. “I think that how we run this city and how our policies shape us have to be changed. We have to think differently on how we collect money and how we spend money. I mean a complete reversal of what we’re used to in this society. The first year of my term has to be a very autocratic, not a democratic one. And I think it has to be autocratic in the sense that we have to say no to a lot of people. We have to say that we are starting over again, and you have to prove to us why your expense is truly needed in the city.”

“We need to fix our transit system, and we need to fix our budget,” Sarah Thomson explains more simply, before elaborating on her plan to form citizen boards to analyze City Hall’s spending.

“My ideal city is a city in the black,” says Stephen Feek.

“The horse is out of control,” adds Rocco Achampong, “We need to limit redundancies—how many people does the mayor really need to fetch him coffee? I plan to take a hard line against wages and services.”

While some of the candidates’ proposals may sound outlandish, it’s nothing compared to the deplorable platforms of some of their contenders. In the case of an outspoken racist fringe-runner, there’s apparently nothing keeping him from running. The only rejection he faces in the mayoral race is the one continually offered him by Torontonians at the ballot box.

Don Andrews, the perennial mayoral candidate who hopes to represent the “white man’s viewpoint at City Hall” says, “I run to bring an important message to the city regarding race relations and the saving of the white race and civilization. The first major issue is black crime. The second is the graffiti from the gangs. The third is the wild spending. And the fourth is the lack of help from the federal government, who have thrown all of these people from the third world into the city. I’m asking for $20 billion for three years of no taxes and no fees for Toronto tax-payers.”

John Letonja, a hobbyist and truck driver, speaks authoritatively and urgently on subjects from bridge building to sports: his lack of engineering training would not stop him from designing and building a bridge from Toronto Island to the mainland, and he invented a new sport called “Wacky Ball,” played by hitting a ball back and forth across a field and seeing how far it goes, which he wants to make the new Torontonian pastime.

He also has the most creative solutions to Toronto’s fiscal crisis. Where other candidates bemoan redundant bureaucracy and suggest cutting services, funding projects with help from corporate sponsors, and even opening a casino or a circus in the GTA, Letonja suggests that we rebuild the city using our trash and utilize our prisoners to work on public projects, throwing them a pittance salary to avoid the stigma of slave labour.

“We ought to run this city as a business, not as a collection of people,” Letonja says as he jumps into his plan for Toronto before I’ve had a chance to ask a question. “For all the recycling we have, you can make sidings, shingles, boats out of these plastic bags and sandpaper out of cardboard. I could say, as mayor, I’m going to be cheaper than a Jew. We need to be a city of Jews.” He reminds you of your hopelessly ignorant rambling uncle who has more ideas than words to express them.

“Realistically, I know that I’m not going to win,” says Barton, putting things into perspective, “But I have a lot of ideas and desires, just things I’d like to see in this city. I just want to get my ideas out there, and then maybe someone else will look at them.”

“We need youth,” Achampong asserts. “We need energy, vitality, a breath of fresh air. It’s about language. We need somebody who speaks our language.”

“What distinguishes me from the other candidates?” echoes Mammoliti. “Well, for one, I have hair.”

“Well, my mother loves me,” Rocco Rossi retorts, running a hand over his bald head. “If Mammoliti can have hair, I can have the fact that my mother loves me more than all of the other candidates.”

“The fact is that Miller is stepping down,” concludes Mark Cidade. “It’s time to see what the rest of the candidates have to say. Toronto needs a fresh start.”

Second illustration by Cristina Diaz Borda.