City Hall and Mrs. God
Cary Fagan
Imprint: Mercury Press | Format: Paperback | Pub Date: 1990 | 142 pages |
ISBN: 0-920544-73-8
City Hall and Mrs. God is an exploration of a city in upheaval. Cary Fagan paints a personal and far-ranging portrait of the city he was born in, but to which he seems more and more a stranger. Combining new journalist techniques with the narrative form, Fagan creates a true and disturbing roller coaster ride through the polarized social strata which characterize the new Toronto. He brings the people of that urban landscape to life: from world-renowned artist to food bank worker, from upwardly mobile accountant to anti-drug and anti-poverty activists.
Cary Fagan spent several months discovering, interviewing, watching, and getting involved with Toronto, seeing the city as he'd never seen it before, and writing about it as it has never been written about before: from the inside, and from the heart. This book crosses the boundaries of politics, social theory, and literature, and portrays a vision of an urban future which has relevance to every growing city across Canada.
"The truth, as City Hall and Mrs. God so compellingly portrays, is that Toronto really has become a divided city: the powerful and the powerless, the outrageous and the outraged, the potent and the impotent. But — and the book captures this, too — both sides surely have the energy and imagination to make it one again." — John Sewell
"A passionate exercise in citizenship." — Rick Salutin