Harry Shannon
Background: We are hearing a lot from political leaders urging us to follow social (physical) distancing guidelines. On Thursday morning (April 2) I heard Toronto mayor John Tory on CBC radio’s morning show doing just that. Unfortunately, his style of talking is to speak very fast, barely pausing for breath, so interviewers have a hard time getting a word in edgeways. That is very useful when he doesn’t want to have to answer difficult questions, but not useful when he is asking people to change their behaviour. Tory also tends to include extraneous information. For example, in the interview, he suddenly stated that there had been a lot of condo building in an area of the city, and that he wasn’t too happy about it. So, the letter:
I listened to John Tory on the radio this morning. At least, I started to listen to him, but realized my mind was drifting. It was his talk-a-mile-a-minute style, with some irrelevant asides, that did it. That may work in regular politics, but it’s not the way to communicate in our current crisis.
Mayor Tory: Thank you for all you are doing to limit the impact of the coronavirus. You say you want to get the message about social/physical distancing across to us. So, please, for all our sakes, slow down your speech and limit what you say to the essentials.
Note: in the editing, the Star noticed that I referred to ‘this morning.’ I should have stated the day, so the Star made a change – but got the date wrong. The printed letter read ‘… on the radio (Wednesday) morning …’ They also changed the ‘So’ in the final sentence to ‘But.’