Ok now that my squee has calmed down, and I got verified — some thoughts.
The rest of the world (and quite frankly, the average Torontonian) really does not understand how utterly limiting it is to the Canadian public for artists to play a handful of shows in only Toronto.
Canadian geography is epic. We’re 1.6 percent larger in land mass than the U.S. with a tenth of its population strewn about. We do not have the means for affordable or sustainable transportation throughout our country (or rather, politicians do not prioritize this). There is a failing rail system that takes over a week to traverse the country at quadruple the price of flying. And our bus service? That died a few years back.
So that leaves flights.
Flying in Canada is brutally expensive and mostly unattainable for any working class (or hell at this point, middle class) person or family.
I grew up on the West Coast of Canada, and I never flew within Canada. My family could not afford it. We only ever visited our neighbouring province a handful of times. That drive was nearly 20 (!) hours, and the town we visited was on the border of the neighbouring province (that is, the closest you could get to my home province while still being in another province). Going to Toronto may as well have been the equivalent of going to the moon. As I got older, I went to Asia twice at a fraction of the price it would have cost to go to Toronto. Why? Canada doesn’t have the population to sustain cheap flights within our own country EVEN WITH a heavily government subsidized airline.
On top of all this, flights are long. Toronto is a five hour flight from Vancouver *if* you have no layovers. It can be upwards of 10-12 hours otherwise. Factor in the time difference of going that far west to east and you lose an entire day or more.
Now, I’m not saying Taylor (or other artists in her range) should play every provincial and territorial capital (but oh it would be great if they did!). But at the very least, Montreal, Calgary, and Vancouver definitely have the demand and infrastructure for stadium shows (all are former Olympic host cities — you know who is not? TORONTO). Even then, there are so many folks who are too far from even those places, but it would be a (humble) start.
I know this is a post about Taylor Swift but it really does come down to concepts much bigger than this including the accessibility of art (which lets be real the Eras tour isn’t financially accessible anyways), urban-rural divides, Western alienation, and a sense of identity we cannot have as a country when a “Canadian” leg of a tour is considered a handful of dates in Toronto (but hey, don’t get me started on the problematic concept of national identity in a colonial country on unceded Indigenous territory — or do, but that will be unpacked in another post).
YoU cAn JuSt Go To A bOrDeR cItY sHoW iN tHe U.S. — Sorry no. Our dollar is much lower than the American dollar. Tickets with the exchange rate would be more horrendous than they already are AND not everyone feels comfortable visiting the the U.S. right now.
*end rant*
