For years I resisted the lure of secession, the arguments that Toronto should go it alone and secede from the province of Ontario.

I am now prepared to flirt with the idea and to listen, seriously, to the cries of the aggrieved.

“They” will never love my city. They live in it, but are not of it. Instinctively they recoil from its urbanity and diversity — mouthing platitudes about “home to the world” but rejecting the world of accommodations and compromises essential to making the experiment work.

I slept with, if not cohabited with, the amalgamators two decades ago — a last desperate stab to save the union. Surely, in time, the good citizens of North York, Scarborough and Etobicoke could see the obvious — that Toronto from the Rouge River to Etobicoke Creek was one city capable of functioning efficiently under one government.

In many ways, the conurbation stretched beyond those boundaries to encompass postal codes and political wards from Burlington to Clarington and up to Barrie. The guys and gals on my touch football teams travel from such municipalities every week for games in Pickering or Mississauga or Markham. We are one functional city region. But, practically speaking, any government entity engulfing such a wide boundary would require too many civic creations to ensure local community participation on the tiny municipal matters that citizens care about.

Share your thoughts

So, one really super GTA city was to be the fight of the next half century. There were enough battles afoot just to get neighbours on the eastern side of Victoria Park amenable to sharing government with those to the west of the traditional city boundary.

Twenty years of amalgamated Toronto has failed to significantly alter the suburban sensibilities. North Yorkers, the most urbanized of the suburbs, are the least conflicted with the megacity. Scarborough behaves like an alien ally constantly hunting out differences where partners would see similarities. Etobicoke? That’s simply a foreign land.

I have argued that by association — East York, Etobicoke, North York, Scarborough, York and Toronto — we would assimilate; and that the urban ethos of the big city would seep into the suburbs and one great metropolis would emerge. After all, the social services network developed across the metropolitan region despite cries against a simple thing like the right to locate group home for our citizens in any municipality. We have one police and fire and transit department.

But progress comes from pulling-teeth effort. Even when the suburbs are being gifted superior service, like the LRT to Etobicoke or Scarborough, craven councillors paint it as inferior and whip up anti-Toronto sentiment. Bike lanes are too often greeted with contempt.

It’s no coincidence that it is Etobicoke that has produced the Fords — a chaotic family that tramples on every remnant of decency and convention even as they profess to act on behalf of the people. Etobicoke, based on the political representatives it has sent to city hall, is all about limited government, rugged individualism and “no taxes.” They are allergic to spending tax dollars. And this means if you need community support or a hand up, better to move east to Toronto.

It is so easy to lap up the slop offered by the premier. Who doesn’t want to believe that politicians — not just yours, but everyone’s — are scoundrels to be trundled out of town?

So he disparages Toronto city council as “the most dysfunctional government in the country” — this from a man who was sidekick to his brother as Rob Ford made Toronto the laughingstock of the world and a staple on the American late night talk show circuit. Who are the clowns — the city councillors, who held the government together, or the Fords, who brought it to its knees?

Now, one of the architects of that four years of hell and disruption and lost transit opportunity looks us in the eye, Trumpian as ever, and tells us the opposite of what exists at city council.

And we eat it up.

And accept his dismissal of half our city council as a “bunch of downtown Toronto councillors.”

Read more:

Opinion | Shawn Micallef: Strong local democracy is worth fighting for

Opinion | Edward Keenan: ‘Affordability’ is the key issue in this election

Megacity fight against province left legal lessons for city of Toronto

To his base — the city haters, the Toronto abusers, the Ontario residents who watch with jealousy every advance or progress or accolade or achievement from Toronto and smirk with every report of gun violence — Toronto is best served when it is cut down to size.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

To the self-loathing citizens, nothing is sweeter than a fake advocate taking the belt to the enemy within.

And to media — too often more concerned about filing their stories by deadline — it is detestable that you propagate the nonsense about nothing being done at city hall. I have argued with media colleagues for decades. What’s it to you — or anyone — that it takes four or eight days to debate an issue? There is not a single decision waiting today — no transit line or pressing infrastructure project — that is waiting because the 44 councillors took too much time or ran out of time to debate it.

We are lucky if we get 11 council meetings a year. Each meeting, hundreds — hundreds — of items are approved.

Besides, Toronto councillors did not attend a special school. They are just like the ones in Mississauga or Brockville; graduates of the same class as those in Ford’s cabinet and the provincial legislature. So, if they need to be cut down to size, then the Municipal Affairs Minister Steve Clark may want to look at his own town of Brockville. He is the lone MPP. The town has 22,000 people — and eight city councillors. That’s one MPP per 22,000 people. And one councillor per less than 3,000.

Toronto has one councillor per 60,000 people — a ratio 20 times greater than Brockville. Ford will increase Toronto’s ratio to one for every 100,000 people while he leaves Brockville and every other municipality intact.

Explanation? Brockville is not the hated city Ford wants to target in a vindictive swipe, payback for Toronto councillors holding his late brother to account.

Whenever someone behaves badly — like Ford has with this loathsome action against Toronto — you learn more from watching the people who bend themselves out of shape to explain away the abomination, especially if those apologists are supposed to be your friends and defenders.

You also learn much from the less-than-stellar defence proffered by those who oppose with meek words and weak actions.

In that vein, former chief planner Jennifer Keesmaat’s 11th-hour candidacy for mayor is sign that Toronto has a pulse.

In 1997, the city sustained a long and vigorous fight against amalgamation — and lost. It would not be long before amalgamation supporters realized that the Progressive Conservative government had no interest in improving the city. The goal was to break it, and bring Toronto to its knees.

It has taken 20 years to recover from the downloading of services, a debilitating companion piece to the amalgamation that sealed the city’s fate and removed all pretence that the Ontario government had any intention of creating a nimble, prosperous city equipped to lead in the world.

In spite of that evil design, Toronto has thrived. If Toronto survived amalgamation and downloading — the twin devils of deception — it can survive anything.

The road to secession is long and bloody, especially for a city that can’t even decide how many representatives it should have in its municipal government. But it may be time to start playing that tune. Decades hence, maybe 50 years, historians may look back and conclude this was the time Torontonians started fighting back.

I have always thought our best future rested with a strong Toronto-centred region. The best way to ensure that may be a strong separatist counterforce that cannot be ignored.

Royson James is a former Star reporter and freelance columnist based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @roysonjames

Read more about: