Let's All Hate Toronto

Once upon a time, before he learned to poorly play the guitar, Timothy Ransom was a little tyke growing up in the big Canadian city of Toronto. It was so big! And he was so small! But time and biology helped him overcome that problem, so that he came to realize what a special place he truly lived in - the most hated city in Canada, and probably the world.

TORONTO, Ontario (Reuters) -- The dislike of Canada's biggest city, Toronto, in the rest of the country runs so deep that a filmmaker has made a documentary about it.

"People in Toronto are soulless, one-eyed corporate zombies," Joey Keithley, of the Vancouver punk band D.O.A., says in the film, "Let's All Hate Toronto."

The 73-minute film, which premieres at Toronto's Hot Docs documentary festival next week, follows a character called Mister Toronto, who embarks on a cross-Canada trip brandishing a sign that reads "Toronto Appreciation Day" and steels himself for the onslaught.

His tour leads from Newfoundland on the Atlantic Coast to the Pacific city of Vancouver, where feelings against Toronto -- usually acknowledged as the country's financial center and the cultural capital of English Canada -- run deepest of all.

"There is something different (about hating Toronto). People are more passionate about it," filmmaker and co-director Albert Nerenberg said in an interview.

"People have a grudging respect for New York outside of the city, and have a grudging respect for London. But people outside of Toronto don't have that for Toronto, they really don't."

Nerenberg, who is from Montreal, got the idea for the film from a 1956 publication with the same name as the movie.

He said collective dislike of a city is not unique to Canada, and said he might like to make similar films on other countries' love-hate relationships with major cities.

So there he lives, strumming his guitar, contemplating his MySpace-like life, and thinking, "I sure wish I was loved instead of hated. Then maybe I could find a girlfriend. Or a boyfriend. Whatever."