Just as the waves of Lawrencetown beat against the Nova Scotia coastline, so the elitist Toronto snobbery clashes with Maritime values in Halifax.
The Torontonian’s strange lingo can be forgiven – sometimes parties are best described in terms of how “live” they are. It’s OK that they’re unaware most people don’t know how hip Roncesvalles isn’t. It’s neither their uncontrollable Starbucks infatuation nor their commitment to button-downs, longer shopping hours and pea coats that gets to us.
Their disinterest in stepping outside exclusive high-school cliques doesn’t bother Maritimers either. We think it’s probably for the best. And the exotic vacations they take over the breaks are really fun to hear about too. Who knew they had resorts in Muskoka?
All such aspects of the Toronto elite character are right on. It’s really just the false sense of entitlement and their taking themselves so seriously that doesn’t sit well.
During time spent in a Toronto private school, I became well aware of the spitefully superficial elements of the Toronto elitist attitude. Now, given the chance to observe such attitudes within Halifax, the appeal of Maritime amicability is all the more apparent and the Toronto elitism, incongruous.
Toronto elitism is often anything but subtle. However, for those who haven’t left the house in years, it can be best understood when juxtaposed with the essence of Maritime spirit.
At the core of what distinguishes Maritime character is the humor. The blend of playful offensives and severe self-deprecation are qualities less present in some of those central folk than is optimism in Hobbes.
The ineptitude toward things like jolly Maritime banter often inhibits a friendship from the start.
For Maritimers, nothing starts conversation like an oral Charley Horse and a clever one in return is something we value dearly. But the mind of the Toronto elitist has become intolerant of the informal: automatically aggravated by anything but the aloof.
So the playful pitch to a couple of privileged Torontonians, lurking in a friend group’s periphery at some party, doesn’t go so well. For Maritimers, we presume the atmosphere is friendly until we’ve been convinced otherwise. However, such encounters prove the inverse true for this select group.
Friendship for these farcical aristocrats demands some prior approval, some willingness of the inferiors to groom the high-horse from which they dare not descend. It’s difficult for us to understand how dire is the need to assert their bourgeoisie status, for we’re of a hardier culture which demands no pedestal.
Maritimers enjoy being wrong. We ask so many questions about the weather because we’re in a constant state of doubt on all matters, open at all times to the input of others. Thus, we can’t help but be skeptical of the uncanny ability of Toronto elitists to always be so dreadfully composed.
There is a certain paradox in the Toronto elite to be at once well-educated and soft-mannered while simultaneously presumptuous and crude. At a recent Kingsian party, a few of the affiliates were parading about branding anyone who wasn’t in their “crew” as “unfortunate”. Their surrender to dogma could not have been more blatant.
Of course not all of the Toronto elite are so disagreeable. There is considerable variability in their degrees of delusion. However, to silence discussion on this matter would be an assumption of infallibility, an unspoken pacifism on the part of a majority. Indeed, the false pretensions among the Toronto elite may well only need to grow accustomed to Maritime norms. Perhaps, it’s all just a bit of culture shock for everybody. If this is the case, let’s hope that one day soon, we’ll invite them to kitchen parties.