Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Worship This

According to Wikipedia, most municipal leaders in Canada are called "mayor". Some small areas villages and rural areas still use the term "reeve". There is one exception to this. Niagara-on-the-Lake gets a "lord mayor" instead or a mayor or reeve. This is apparently in recognition of the fact that Niagara-on-the-Lake was once the capital of Upper Canada.

Mayors in Canada are styled "Worship", as in when talking directly to a mayor you say "Your Worship" and when talking about a mayor you say "Her Worship" or "His Worship". What I would like is for Toronto to get an exception to this rule, the way Niagara-on-the-Lake gets an exception to the "mayor" thing. I think that present and future mayors of Toronto should be henceforth styled "Corpulence". As in "Your Corpulence, Mayor of Toronto, I am writing you to ask that you use the considerable weight of your office..." and so on.

I can't find out where these stylings come from, so if you have any information about that, please leave it in the comments. I asked a librarian friend and she didn't know either but she said she suspected that it's a matter of tradition and that the way to "officially" change it would be to simply get people using the term. So, I beseech you to use the considerable weight of your conversation to make my (admittedly petty) dream come true.

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