"I like Toronto a lot, it's a good city. The only thing that really annoys me about Toronto is that you're turning Maple Leaf Gardens into a grocery store, which is absolutely nothing short of disgusting"
About this Quote
Wakeman’s gripe lands because it’s not really about groceries; it’s about what cities choose to remember, and what they’re willing to sell off. He opens with a diplomatic love letter - “I like Toronto a lot” - the classic performer’s preface before the punchline. Then he swerves into moral language (“absolutely nothing short of disgusting”) over something, on paper, mundane: a building’s reuse. That mismatch is the point. It dramatizes the emotional reality of cultural loss in a way a measured complaint never could.
Maple Leaf Gardens isn’t just real estate; it’s a civic memory palace. For touring musicians and fans, venues become the physical proof that a scene happened, that a city once gathered in one room and agreed, for a night, on what mattered. Converting it into a grocery store reads as a downgrade in the hierarchy of meaning: from cathedral to convenience. Wakeman’s outrage is essentially the musician’s version of heritage politics, filtered through showman bluntness rather than committee-speak.
The subtext carries a familiar tension in booming cities like Toronto: relentless development marketed as “revitalization” can feel like amnesia with better lighting. The quote also sneaks in a class of resentment artists often hold toward the corporate logic that feeds crowds but flattens the spaces that made the crowds possible. He’s not arguing that people shouldn’t eat. He’s arguing that a city shouldn’t have to erase its sacred rooms to do it.
Maple Leaf Gardens isn’t just real estate; it’s a civic memory palace. For touring musicians and fans, venues become the physical proof that a scene happened, that a city once gathered in one room and agreed, for a night, on what mattered. Converting it into a grocery store reads as a downgrade in the hierarchy of meaning: from cathedral to convenience. Wakeman’s outrage is essentially the musician’s version of heritage politics, filtered through showman bluntness rather than committee-speak.
The subtext carries a familiar tension in booming cities like Toronto: relentless development marketed as “revitalization” can feel like amnesia with better lighting. The quote also sneaks in a class of resentment artists often hold toward the corporate logic that feeds crowds but flattens the spaces that made the crowds possible. He’s not arguing that people shouldn’t eat. He’s arguing that a city shouldn’t have to erase its sacred rooms to do it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Sarcastic |
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