If you are successful in your career, one milestone that marks your arrival is that you graduate from job hunting to job choosing. When you’re starting out, hungry and desperate, you arrive at job interviews with a virtual “will work for food” sign around your neck, trying not to outright beg as you tell interviewers just how high you are prepared to jump on their command. If you work hard, and well, and get a bit lucky, then maybe you reach a point one day where when people contact you with job opportunities, you start asking the questions and deciding that maybe you’ll take a pass. It’s not like there’s some ceremony to mark this privileged transition — it happens gradually, and it’s not always permanent (a few changes in your industry or your life circumstances and you could be back to cold calling with your cap in hand). But it is a good place to arrive at, one in which you’re steering your own ship, making decisions about what to do with your life based on your own goals and needs, rather than someone else’s demands. It seems to me there are similar marks of success and self-assurance cities can reach, such as the decision of Calgary residents this week in a referendum to not proceed with an Olympic bid, and in Toronto’s approach to Amazon’s search for a new headquarters. Both cities appear to have looked at a cattle-call audition opportunity and decided they had no intention of debasing themselves for a chance at recognition.Read more:Calgarians reject 2026 Olympic bid in citywide plebisciteHow Amazon picked HQ2 and jilted 238 citiesLosing bid for Amazon HQ2 was still a win for Toronto, advocates sayTraditionally, bidding for the Olympics was a Survivor-style process of outwitting, outplaying and outlasting rivals while running a gauntlet of civic degradation, graft and self-punishment. The payoff, for most contestants, was as dubious as for most who appear on reality TV: a chance to b ...
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