Visitors to Nathan Phillip Square take photos of the large Toronto sign set up as part of Panamania Live @ Nathan Phillips Square on July 9, 2015.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
What should we do with the Toronto sign?
The bold, spectacular sign, created for the Pan Am and Parapan Am games, currently sits at Nathan Phillips Square, where it is brightening up the drab grey monoscape. It will stay there until the end of the year.
And then, well, who knows? It could go anywhere.
On Thursday, Toronto Mayor John Tory launched a social-media campaign asking people where the three-metre tall, 22-metre long sign should go next.
"We have to figure out where it's going to go on tour. And we want to hear from you," Mr. Tory said in a video.
Considering the sign's price tag – just under $100,000 – there's a solid argument to be made that we'd get our money's worth by moving it to different locations.
Hefting it around, however, can't be easy, or cheap. Each letter weighs 136 kilograms (300 pounds), and the base weighs 1,179 kilograms (2,600 pounds).
But with 400 metres in LED lights that can create 228-million colours, shouldn't the sign be used to shine a light on different locations?
Mr. Tory offered a few possibilities in his video: High Park, Yonge-Dundas Square and, in a very un-Tory moment of cheekiness, outside the Canadian Tire Centre, "the home of those awful Ottawa Senators."
Mr. Tory asked, and the answers came in a deluge.
Many people said the sign is fine right where it is.
Others suggested moving the sign to various landmarks – on top of the CN Tower, overlooking the Scarborough Bluffs or out by the airport, where people flying into the city won't be able to miss it.
All fine suggestions, but a big, bold sign demands big, bold thinking. And if we are going to install a giant Toronto sign somewhere, we should do so in a way that signals all this great city represents.
Toronto the arrogant
The city has a reputation for thinking it's better than anywhere else in the country, and many despise Toronto for it. In response to Mr. Tory's idea of putting the sign in front of the Canadian Tire Centre, Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson fired back, "Can we have #deadraccoonTO instead? It would be better for tourism – it's more widely loved by the rest of Canada!"
We could use the sign to embrace that reputation.
If a proposal to build a Mother Canada monument along the shores of Cape Breton Highlands National Park goes ahead, we could balance the sign across the statue's outstretched arms.
Our inferiority complex
Tina Fey once joked that Toronto is just like New York, "but without all the stuff." It stung, because the city wants so desperately to be as cool and cosmopolitan and self-confident as the Big Apple.
We should use the upcoming tour of the sign to reflect on our inferiority complex. How? Build an even bigger New York sign that ours will sit in the shadow of.
City of neighbourhoods
Toronto boasts 140 officially recognized neighbourhoods, from Agincourt North to Yorkdale-Glen Park. Why not use the sign to highlight a different one?
Couldn't Kennedy Park use some love? Imagine the sign lit up in Moss Park or Scarborough Village. Two of Mr. Tory's three suggestions were downtown locations that already attract large numbers of visitors and have their fair share of public recognition. Moving the sign to each neighbourhood would highlight the rich diversity of the city and help foster a sense of connection.
Give it to Kanye
We like to think of ourselves as a generous city. Besides, giving it to Kanye West, the superstar who is performing at the closing ceremony for the Pan Am Games, would generate plenty of press. One promotionally minded Twitter user told Mr. Tory it should go atop Mr. West's tour bus.
Mr. Tory mistakenly called the artist a "proud product" of Toronto's music industry earlier this week, so the rapper is pretty much an honourary Torontonian at this point.
Dave McGinn