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Survey of 36 cities ranks Toronto as 3rd most courteous; Montreal places 21st
Tue June 20, 2006
By Lorrayne Anthony


TORONTO (CP) - It's the city many Canadians love to hate, so detractors may be surprised to learn Toronto ranks as the third most-polite city in an international survey.


Canada's biggest city places behind New York and Zurich in the Reader's Digest survey of 36 cities, released Tuesday. Undercover reporters - an equal number of men and women - recorded more than 2,000 tests of behaviour to come up with the list. Seventy per cent of those tested in Toronto took a moment to do the courteous thing, compared to 80 per cent in New York and 77 per cent in Zurich.


Montreal was the only other Canadian city on the list, and ranked 21st, just below Amsterdam and slightly more polite than Helsinki and Manila. Fifty per cent of Montrealers tested were courteous.


The bottom three cities were Kuala Lumpur, Bucharest and Mumbai.


Toronto-based freelance writer Ian Harvey, one of the undercover testers for the magazine, said people shouldn't be surprised that big cities were the top three most courteous places.


"Courtesy is the social lubricant that allows us - in these densely packed urban areas - to get along with each other," he said. "And without it, we'd be at each other's throats."


He said he's travelled the world and Torontonians have always struck him as being polite: "(They) are the only people in the world that will apologize when somebody else bumps into them."


The courtesy testers walked into public buildings behind people to see if they would hold the door open, they dropped a folder full of papers in a busy location to see if others would help pick them up, and they recorded whether sales assistants said "thank you" after small items were purchased.


Harvey said he was surprised by the age of those who were willing to go out of their way to be polite.


The late winter wind at the Yonge and Sheppard intersection in Toronto made rush hour even more frenetic than usual but when a load of papers was dropped, two teens were there in "nanoseconds to help."


"It didn't matter how they were dressed. Whether they were dressed to go to a private school ... or they were wearing the baggy jeans with the MP3 player ear buds in their ear and baseball cap on sideways, they were right there helping us."


After being thanked for picking up the spilled papers, Harvey asked one young man why he stopped to help.


"'Well it's how my parents raised me. It was what I was taught."


As for the Montreal ranking, Raphael Fischler, an assistant professor in the school of urban planning at McGill University, said it's not that Montrealers are impolite, it's just that they have a more laissez-faire attitude to interactions on the street.


"There's something about Montreal. It's a city of live and let live to a certain extent. (Montrealers) are not control freaks," he said. "There's not necessarily a great respect for established norms, such as holding the door open. Just look at our drivers, they're terrible."


"Street life is quite intense in Montreal and we can have all these summer festivals, in part thanks to that. It's kind of an enjoyment of life"


"In Montreal we say 'tu' instead of 'vous,' which is very informal," he said from his office in Montreal. "It's a little bit of the other side of the coin from not holding the door."

The magazine recounts how a well-dressed man in his 50s failed to hold the door in Montreal's Central Train Station. When asked why, he offered only that he "just held a door for someone downstairs" before continuing on his way.

The findings suggested that Asia was the region that most consistently lacked courtesy.

In Mumbai, where only 32 per cent of those tested were courteous, a worker in a government-run supermarket told researchers: "In Mumbai, they'll step over a person who has fallen in the street."

But rudeness certainly wasn't confined to Asia.

In Moscow, a woman failed to hold the door. When asked for an explanation. she said: "I'm not a doorman. It's not my job to hold doors. If someone gets hurt, they should be quicker on their feet."

The article also noted that Zurich, a wealthy city which placed second on the list of most courteous, puts customer service first.

"Everyone I deal with is served attentively - even those who are rude to me," said one salesperson.

Meanwhile, in the city that was ranked most courteous, it could be that tragedy has brought out the best in people.

"After 9-11 New Yorkers are more caring. They understand the shortness of life," the city's former mayor Ed Koch, told the magazine.

[ajgeddes]

This is the 3rd thread on this exact topic.

[WorldWide]

The #1 ranking for NYC is a load of bulls**t!!! I've been to New York and I found the people very rude. People sneer at each other, cops bully people, driving is a nightmare with people yelling at each other, The rich look down on the poor, the poor look down on the rich, the blacks look down on whites, the jews look down on everyone who isn't a jew. Lots of fake smiles, but people are very rude overall. No one helps anyone unless there is a payoff.

As always the americans needed to be #1..... No surprise really, we all know americans lie and cheat. Its pathetic how americans can never allow themselves to be second to anyone. Reader's Digest is an american owned company, of course they are going to promote america shamelessly. Do the same survey in the foreign media and New York would be way down the list.

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