In the median on the south side of Queen St. and University Ave. is Toronto’s Sir Adam Beck Memorial, complete with a little waterfall. The large 1934 monument is by Emanuel Hahn, the German-Canadian sculptor who also created the familiar caribou on the Canadian quarter. It harkens back to a time when electricity was something that was celebrated in Ontario rather than a source of grief.

As kids we learned of Beck, the province’s great advocate for a publicly controlled power network, one who set up a hydroelectric system that harnessed the energy of Niagara Falls, among other waterways. “Hydro” is a great euphemism that this province clings to even though only 26 per cent of Ontario’s electricity comes from hydroelectric sources today. Hydro, so goes our mythology, is plentiful but perhaps you’ve heard it’s suddenly quite expensive.

Across the province a sustained hue and cry has been heard for many months now directed at the rise in hydro prices. It’s fuel, as it were, to both opposition politicians and the Kathleen Wynne hate that’s become a self-sustaining industry now. To be sure, the increased cost in energy hurts a lot of low- and even medium-income people, but what’s curious is the amount of political traction and frenzy of hate this issue gets while the high cost of other things doesn’t seem to resonate, like rental housing prices.

“The rent is too damn high” was a motto used by New York City’s Jimmy McMillan, a flamboyant candidate who ran for various offices including mayor and governor. His fringe candidate status aside, it was a phrase that still resonates among renters in expensive cities everywhere, but doesn’t have the same kind of political currency that electricity does. If it did, we’d have strict rent controls back tomorrow.

It’s enough to think there’s a bias favouring those who buy their homes rather than those who rent. Even the Home Hardware corporate jingle sings, “Home owners helping home owners,” but renters need hammers too, and affordable housing is as much an issue as high electricity prices. In Toronto there are 177,000 people on the waiting list for subsidized housing yet repair funding is so low Toronto Community Housing may close 425 deteriorated units this year.

There are other curious things about the amount of attention paid to electricity rates versus other expensive necessities. Many of those complaining about electricity must not have travelled outside the province, to places where high prices for energy are the norm. Indeed, in adjacent markets like Manitoba or Quebec, places that are truly run on abundant hydro, electricity is cheaper, but further afield Ontario rates seem quite normal. What isn’t normal is the deeply comfortable lifestyle we’ve grown accustomed to here. Ontario gets very cold and very hot, but it’s always very comfortable. It isn’t like this elsewhere.

In many European countries winter is a time when you bundle up indoors and out. It’s counter-intuitive but Malta, a Mediterranean country I visit often, is much less comfortable than Ontario in winter. People huddle near space heaters when the temperature dips to single digits or the low teens, heating just one room at a time. In the sweltering summer people will turn the air conditioning on only in the rooms they are in, and switch it off when they leave.

Here we keep entire rooms warm or cold constantly, even if we rarely go into them. In Europe you’ll find timed light switches in public hallways and stairwells where you press a button and have to scoot along before the lights go out. Low energy fluorescents have been the norm for years, and people dry their clothes on racks indoors, even if it takes two days in the dampness. Energy is never taken for granted as it has been here and kids are taught it’s precious from the beginning.

Lifestyle is the hardest thing for us to change; it’s part of our identity. Electricity rates may be too damn high, but our lifestyle is too and no politician wants to touch that when it’s easier to blame, say, green energy programs. I’m as complicit as anyone: if they came to take away my air conditioner in the summer, there would be blood.

Nobody likes the true cost of the things we want. In Toronto, it’s subways we don’t want to pay for with increased taxes. Road tolls are “robbery,” but somehow paying ever-increasing fares for a subway ride isn’t. And as long as Niagara Falls keeps pouring, Adam Beck’s beautiful hydro myth will live on in Ontario.

Shawn Micallef writes every Saturday about where and how we live in the GTA. Wander the streets with him on Twitter @shawnmicallef

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