How We Changed Toronto: The Inside Story of Twelve Creative, Tumultuous Years in Civic Life, 1969–1980 by John Sewell (review)

'Heritage is rarely a popular issue' (p. 199), John Sewell suggests in the midst of this political memoir, and yet one of the many themes of Sewell's book is how engaging the discussion of a city's heritage can be. The balance of preservation and developing a vision for the future is a constant as Sewell relates his time in Toronto's city politics, beginning with his work organising community groups and culminating in his election as Mayor in 1978.

Sewell's book is a study of Toronto in the 1970s, considering the rapid growth of the city and the pressures that the downtown and surrounding neighbourhoods faced in increasing and encroaching development. Couched as a generational battle between conservative-minded politicians and the growing reform movement, Sewell replays in intimate detail the workings of city council and the decisions that have shaped the city. Whilst Sewell makes clear his role, and his personal feelings towards the key players, be they city aldermen, metro council, or provincial actors, the impulse to reflect allows for some useful reappraisals of both personal and political judgements. Alive to the contradictions in his reform agenda, Sewell also spells out the complexity of city politics. Here, the federal notion of political parties does not bind a councillor, and instead we see how local issues mean bridging cross-spectrum affiliations.

Though ostensibly an urban study and political memoir, this book offers much for academics and contemporary citizens to consider. Significant passages reflect on the opposition to the St Jamestown apartment towers, the work of Jane Jacobs, the city's role in providing affordable housing, negotiations with the police in the wake of the killing of Albert Johnson in 1979, and the city's attitudes towards the Toronto Island community. The trade-offs in achieving dispute resolution are as fascinating as those unrealised projects, with both providing new ways to understand the city. Throughout, there are also accounts of how neighbourhood meetings and targeted action incrementally helped citizens in what Sewell terms 'local fights for a more sensible city' (p. 115). Whilst the sensible city might be a contested term, these local fights highlight the work of many with less public profiles. Insights into the working lives of fellow aldermen, such as Karl Jaffary and Anne Johnston, also the public historian William Kilbourn and former mayors William Dennison and David Crombie, add to what also becomes a cultural history. Photographs from the period enliven this history, and the prompt to further reading in the book's eclectic list of suggested resources provides an acknowledgement of the partiality of any one account.

In the book's conclusion, Sewell briefly evaluates why he lost his role as mayor. Giving short shrift to notions that some of his more radical comments on institutional racism and homophobia were ahead of their time, the weight of the words Sewell uses in his 1980 mayoral campaign seem all the more striking. Sewell's stated advocacy for 'recognizing our diversities for the strength that they can bring' (p. 333) might seem so mainstream in Canada today that it could easily be attributed to current Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.