By Alan
Success is a strange phenomenon. Take the case of my birthplace. This spring it is building a million-and-a-half-dollar classical theatre that Montreal or Toronto might well envy. Yet four years ago it was just another railroad town, a farming centre, conservative and obscure. When anyone asked me where 1 was born 1 told them. Stratford, in southwestern Ontario, about a hundred miles from Toronto.
Then Tom Patterson, a business-paper editor who was also born there, talked Stratford into backing a Shakespearean drama festival. In one summer it became one of the world s great cultural meccas, a success story that has been told in some fifty magazine articles, several books and a National Film Board movie. On opening night this city of 20.108 gets more space in the world s great newspapers than Ottawa gets in a month. Stratford has appeared on TV as far south as Mexico. Through the CBC the fiat Ontario accent of Stratford residents has been heard in Europe and South America.