New federal ridings: Do you know where U-R?

It’s official name is University-Rosedale but we’re going to call it  U-R for short.  It is the proposed political home that stretches from the corner of Bayview and Moore in the northeast to the corner of Ossington and Dundas in the southwest. It contains Bennington Heights, Moore Park, Rosedale,  Yorkville, the Annex, Queen’s Park, U of T, University Avenue, Chinatown, Toronto Western Hospital and the well-cared for homes and businesses along Shaw, Ossington and other routes. Oh yes, there’s also the Royal Ontario Museum, Honest Ed’s, Little Italy and Christie Pits. What riches you have U-R! And all these places hardly begin to cover it. It’s too bad University-Rosedale is so strung out across the centre of the Toronto. Nonetheless, this is what the electoral boundaries commissioners have decided in their final report. The package of maps and street descriptions has gone to Members of Parliament and there is no further public input scheduled. So it seems likely that U-R will live both in the present and in history. University- Rosedale has an odd shape, but that is not unusual for downtown ridings. Still, with all its magical parts, it bucks the tradition of the north-south “fingers” that we have come to know.  So from where did U-R spring?  It is almost as if it were an after thought.  The original plan for the South Bayview neighborhoods of Bennington and Moore Park (and Rosedale) was to make them part of a riding called Mt Pleasant. But this would have cannibalized the riding of St. Paul’s and there was withering resistance to that from various quarters. There also seemed to be a need to liberate the central parts of Toronto (known traditionally as Uptown) from Downtown districts that ran to the lake. As an after thought, if that’s what it is, U-R seems to be a pretty good one. Whether cunning voters in Rosedale will find themselves making common cause with the Lords of the Peking Duck on Spadina is an open question. But a delicious one. Mr. and Mrs. Bennington Heights and Moore Park, this is where U-R.