Jay Currie

It seems to me a very modern, very contemporary city, very connected for its size. There’s a lot of coming and going in Vancouver, which is a very contemporary phenomenon. One thing I’m always struck by—and if this comes off as a dis to Toronto, well, so be it—is how Torontonians know hugely less about what is going on outside of Toronto. They know a ton about what’s going on inside Toronto—this is a broad and unfair generalization—but people in Vancouver, it seems to me, know roughly what’s going on in their city, but the attention is largely outward. In my experience, anyway.

The people that I meet in Vancouver seem to be residents of Vancouver but citizens of a broader world. Torontonians are really incredibly Torontonian. There’s a lot going on in that city and I guess it occupies a lot of their attention. So in that sense, Vancouver seems like a more contemporary city. It seems much more connected, much more international. Its visible and audible cues are international. And that’s all very much to my taste.
the tyee

Tayor wrote the surprisingly successful Stanley Park a few years ago. Matt Mallon interviews him in the Tyee’s new books section.

I think he has it about right in his remarks about Vancouver and Toronto. When I lived in TO I was always struck by how little the denizens actually knew about the rest of Canada or the world. While they were often pretty sophisticated urban types their event horizon petered out at about Kingston to the East and Hamilton to the West.

Likely because Vancouver is too small to be that self-contained, Vancouverites tended to see themselves as part of a world conversation – even before the net.

It’s an interesting interview.