From this vantage point, the breakthrough in the 2006 municipal election involved the first signs of genuine civic engagement among those born after Toronto finished being ruled by the Orange Order -- that’d be 1972, give or take, when a retired William Dennison was replaced at the helm of New City Hall by David Crombie. The campaign trail return of one maverick thinker from that era, 66-year-old former mayor John Sewell, put a face to the disenchantment with the faulty aspects of the post-amalgamation system overall, although it’s safe to say that Boynton Beach Club ended up being eclipsed by Broken Social Scene as the evolution's best cultural reference point. But this kind of generational transition takes time to reach the top, and the mass media attention lavished upon the activities of younger brains trying to frame Toronto in a more imaginative light than the unspectacular sprawl they grew up in, risks making it look like a fleeting novelty (see also: handmade zines, tongue piercings, swing revival) instead of the building blocks for something grander. A couple of mayoral showdowns downtown might’ve drawn a healthy crowd of young bike-riding voters less likely to follow their parents into the car-dependent conventions of suburbia, but election events held in other corners of Toronto have remained mostly geriatric affairs. With an aging population overall, one would expect more candidates influenced by Mayor David Miller, who has managed to reinforce his connection across every demographic. The hard-fought Trinity-Spadina victory by Adam Vaughan -- who went from opinionated political reporter to having to navigate his way through an NDP-controlled spin cycle over the past month -- does plant an advocate of the finer points of independent creative expression in the thick of the system, along with his staunch determination to make urban Toronto a place where people won’t be intimidated to raise their kids. Gord Perks, who cut through a field of 14 to fill the vacancy in Parkdale-High Park, has followed a similar road from media protest to municipal power, although time will tell if he asserts himself as more than an environmentalist -- even if that’s what the mayoral challengers obsessed with the subject of trash seemed to desire most. The runner-up status of mayoral aspirant Alex Munter in Ottawa apparently reveals what kind of Generation X career politician type doesn’t rouse passions at the voting booth -- after spending his entire adult life grooming himself for the job, and being repeatedly told that he represented the future, it seems he was blind to his own blandness. But it’s kind of a drag that it will be another four years, rather than three, before another opportunity to witness how wired dynamics can impact a local campaign.

Thanks for reading this attempt to hold the municipal election up to a funhouse mirror. Just as interesting was the chance to be part of a Toronto mini-blogosphere that involved the seminal Spacing, surprise (and surprisingly even-handed) entrant the Toronto Sun, and my long-lost alma mater Eye Weekly. Being part of a national news organization also meant casting the Campaign Bubble net as wide as possible across Ontario, something that was easier said than done from a 416 base -- most of those pajama-clad "citizen journalists" went into hibernation this fall, not that they ever really existed in the first place. Yet, working the circuit in tandem with the reporters who cover the beat was a breakthrough for this often sloppy blog genre. The archives can be perused below, and you can always write.