The Gift that Keeps Taking

Brantford’s most cherished myth. The “rebirth” of the core brought by the University complex seems to have taken on the status of a legend. It’s one of those things you have to convince yourself of, through a desperate ritual. The ritual has to do with confusing causes with effects. You pour money into a big whole, so a crowd of people come and scoop it up. So you dig deeper and throw more money in it. More people dive in, and soon after, you think the party you’ve thrown now has it’s own momentum. The problem is, people are being forced to dig this whole deeper and repeatedly, with the proviso that in exchange for this, the recipients promise to devour it quickly and in as large quantities. An investor who does with his own money is called a fool. A politician who does this with your money is called a “wise city planner”.

Anyone who believes that government stimulus spending is the engine of economic growth will laud the expansion of the tax funded University complex, and naturally the more tax money and real estate siphoned from residents to hand over to it’s new privileged class represents “progress”, no matter how many downtown shops close, and no matter how many low income families line up at the queue for public housing and drop off the EI rolls. The University complex just needs “one more” grant here, just “one more” expropriated building there. The revitalization is a 'raging success', but it stands to be derailed by any interruption in the conveyor belt that delivers the resources of this city into the hands of the University system . There’s that Orwellian refrain that the revitalization, the “rebirth” needs to be completed.

There’s another possibility. It never happened.