In the context of financial support for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra,
John Grant wrote:

>...the TSO is compelled to bottom feed, as it were, for purely monetary
>reasons.  With all the money in this Town there is no political or
>corporate will to properly fund our orchestra.  Toronto, with all its
>culture--and arguably there's more of it here than anywhere else in the
>world--is still run by a bunch of tight-fisted and closely connected
>corporate creeps who haven't got the stuffing to really promote our
>orchestra.  We're not really a provincial town anymore; so our corporate
>elite should stop sitting on its big corporate butt.

I'd be curious to know just what such arguments would look like.

Might "more of it [i.e., culture] here than anywhere else in the world"
relate to Toronto's status as the world's most multicultural city?  With
31% of Torontonians belonging to 'visible minorities,' I guess there's
an odd sense in which it's true to say there's *more culture there than
elsewhere* -- however peculiar that claim may be.  Canada as a whole, and
Toronto as its largest urban area, may indeed stand as examples to those
richer countries with low birthrates which seem to so fear the ethnic
implications of replenishing their numbers through immigration.

That said, I'm not sure that there's much to be construed regarding the
financial support of symphony orchestras from this demographic fact.  On
the contrary: those 1-of-every-3 Torontonians are still at the lower end
of the spectrum of income and influence, and supporters of Toronto's CM
orchestras, dance troupes, etc., most likely still come from its upper
echelons: traditional elites such as White Anglo-Saxon Protestants and
others of longer standing.  Tight-fisted or not, I don't see how their
living in a multicultural milieu would swing them to behave any
differently.

If, on the unlikelier other hand, there are significant numbers of minority
corporate citizens in Toronto who could be financially supporting their
orchestra, perhaps someone should coax them to do so.  But that's always a
difficult case to make to _any_ individuals or groups, isn't it?

In short, I'm not sure how Toronto's "corporate creeps" compare with those
in other cities, nor have I any idea of the magnitude of their corporate
buttocks.  Maybe you or others do, and I'd be interested to hear any such
insights.

For that matter, I'd be interested in any statistical or other gauges of
*any* city's moneyed elites' largesse in cultural areas like CM.

Bert Bailey, in Ottawa