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Comment by _0nac | Hacker News Reader

Though it sometimes seems like it, Toronto didn’t become a worldwide tech hub overnight. In fact, it was a years-long process that led to Canada’s biggest city being mentioned alongside tech markets like New York and Silicon Valley.

Yeah, I'm going to need a citation for that being a thing even now. London, Berlin, Boston, Seattle, Los Angeles, Tel Aviv, Beijing, Singapore... but Toronto? Srsly?

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Here's a link from an article I remember reading a few months ago that caught me by surprise as well. https://m.huffingtonpost.ca/2018/07/24/toronto-best-city-tec...

As a former Toronto person, I am certain there is an intentional behind the scenes campaign to promote Toronto as a global destination. Some of the articles I've run across have been quite breathless in describing features that would be mundane in other places. Sure, it's a nice enough city, more or less a New York wanna-be but with most of the growth extending back only a few decades. It does not deserve to be compared alongside other cities with extended history, geographical features, etc. It's clear many of the publications that published these articles received a payoff, or an insider had influence.

You don't need to dig that deep. Brainstation sells bootcamps in downtown Toronto. If they can show that working in tech in Toronto yields crazy opportunities and salary, they'll get more people to buy their bootcamps.

If you look behind the stories and check on which company's blog or who wrote these praises to Toronto, you'll see they all have something to sell from people thinking that Toronto is the place to be. Usual incentives include: difficulty hiring cheap talent, astroturfing for more VC money, selling a Toronto-tech related product.

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