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Hero and Villain of the Week: Andrew Wiggins and Kathleen Wynne
Every week, Toronto is filled with Heroes and Villains. These are their stories.
Hero of the Week: Andrew Wiggins
Once upon a time, young Canadian basketball players only had a handful of homegrown athletes to look up to. After the glory days of Bill Wennington and Rick Fox in the early ’90s, the remainder of the decade was something of a dud.
With a record number of Canadians in the NBA, including several from the GTA, 2015 is different. And this week, Thornhill’s Andrew Wiggins of the Minnesota Timberwolves became the first Canadian to win the Association’s rookie of the year award.
Wiggins, who just turned 20 in February, is still a bundle of potential. Sure, he led rookies in scoring and had many Vine-worthy dunks, albeit on a truly awful team. But the hope is that there is lots more to come from Wiggins, and Canadian basketball in general.
The Canadian basketball team will give a taste of what they have to offer at this summer’s Pan Am Games in Toronto, but they’re still, like Wiggins, a few years away from making a potentially big impact. In the meantime, marking that progress is part o the fun, and we can’t wait to see what happens next.
Villain of the Week: Kathleen Wynne
When Kathleen Wynne became premier, politics watchers held out hope that the transit file could improve. Wynne was not Dalton McGuinty, who had a knack for capitulating to loud opposition in spite of relatively sound policies, and she seemed determined to forge her own path. She seemed to have urbanist values, and a tenacity to see those principles through that her predecessor lacked. She was different than other politicians, and had the potential to lead the transit debate and transcend the petty politics that have mired the discourse in political gridlock.
This week’s announcement about the delay of the Sheppard LRT suggests that the trust and hope that Wynne could improve Toronto’s beleaguered transit might have been misplaced.
At a re-announcement of the Finch LRT, which is now scheduled to begin operations in 2021, Transportation Minister Steven Del Duca announced that the Sheppard LRT will be delayed again. It will not begin construction, claims Del Duca, until after the Finch LRT is complete. Will the provincial government actually keep that promise and eventually build higher order transit for North Scarborough? We’re skeptical. They, like the other two provincial parties, have precious little credibility when it comes to the transit file–their rhetoric far exceeds their actions.
There are many villains in Toronto’s ongoing transit debacle: The Ford Brothers, McGuinty, Karen Stintz, Glen Murray, Glenn De Baeremaeker (Ward 38, Scarborough Centre), most other Scarborough MPPs and councillors–the list goes on.
Kathleen Wynne has largely avoided the same criticism as some of the more cartoonish players in this transit battle. But at this point, she no longer deserves the benefit of the doubt on transit. She has had plenty of time to put her foot down on this issue or the Scarborough subway, to lead in spite of political backlash, and to make a real difference. She chose not to spend her political capital on the controversial issue; in the end, she might not prove so different after all.