Capitalism and ecology don’t have to be contradictory: the city’s skyline with the CN Tower, seen from Toronto Island Park.
Image: Toronto Tourism
Two-thirds of humanity will soon be living in cities. But it won’t work the way we’re doing now. We need new ideas and concepts. Toronto, Canada’s largest city, is already trying them out.
Joe looks like the ideal cover for a thriving mob business. For fifty years, since he was fifteen, he’s been crouching in his hole-in-the-wall shop in Kensington Market, stacked with sacks of onions and canisters of olive oil, with a washed-out T-shirt and a melancholy air of innocence, as if he were Francis Ford Coppola’s former godfather. But all this is just a facade, because underneath Joe there is an Ali Baba cave full of treasures. We never would have believed it possible – until he led us down a hidden staircase into his labyrinthine cellar, crammed to the ceiling with the finest fruits and vegetables and let us nibble on all his treasures with a gentle smile.
Of course, Joe is not a Mafioso, but righteous to the tips of his hair: This humble multi-millionaire is the last fruit and vegetable wholesaler in downtown Toronto, supplies four hundred places, including emblematic addresses such as the rotating restaurant in the 553-meter-high CN Tower, empties and fills his huge basement every two days and will of course stay in his shop for many more years to come, because everyone here wants it that way and such an anachronism in particular suits the city of Toronto, which is obsessed with progress.