[Christien]

DC? Really? I mean, it's a nice city, with some important buildings and a lot of history, but world class? I don't know. Not like NYC. I guess similar to Vancouver, the word gets tossed around here a lot with respect to Toronto. I think it's a real inferiority complex, personally, but what the talking heads feel puts Toronto in the "world class" rankings is its theatre (3rd in the world behind Broadway and London). They point to a number of other things like orchestras, galleries, stuff like that, but it's all talk - all 3 levels of gov't keep cutting funding to those things. They're excellent, no doubt, but not on the scale of the Berlin Phil, or the Met Opera, or the Smithsonian.

Based on that kind of criteria, I think only NYC and LA would make the cut as "world class".