Why I'm Glad Toronto Isn't Like Chicago

Of course Canadian cities have few bragging rights when it comes to our own homeless problem and to the presence of street people. So it’s not Chicago’s down-and-out who unnerve you. No, the real shocker is this: the presence on those lush streets of actual families slumped on a piece of cardboard, in the course of a few chic blocks three adults – two women and one man, two black and one white – each surrounded by several kids, hoping for street charity and getting precious little of it. It’s a sight only too common on the streets of Addis Ababa and Delhi, as I can sadly attest. But Chicago, Sinatra’s toddling town? It’s a spectacle I’ve never seen anywhere else in the entire rich world, certainly not in Toronto or elsewhere in Canada. We could hardly believe our eyes.