On the 3^rd day of Christmas if you find there’s not a chicken small enough to complete your holiday turducken, use a French hen instead. It’ll give the dish a certain je ne sais quoi.

Councillor Janet Davis, Ward 31 Beaches-East York

There’s nothing more deliciously delightful and despairing at City Hall than watching Councillor Davis drop her head back with an audible groan of frustration at what latest idiocy has issued forth from the mouth of a Team Ford member. It is both comforting to know you’re not alone in disbelieving what you’ve just seen or witnessed as well as entirely dispiriting that such folly passes as governance in Toronto circa 2011. Rest assured Councillor Davis shares your pain and incredulity.

In fact, watching her in action, it’s safe to assume that the councillor not only feels our pain and incredulity at what’s going on at City Hall but raises it a couple fold. The Ford Administration is an affront to everything Davis stands for, an abomination of what a municipal government should be doing for its citizens. If there’s one word I had to use to describe Councillor Davis in 2011, it would be indignant.

She does not suffer fools gladly which — surprise, surprise – finds her oftentimes at loggerheads with the daftest of the mayor’s coterie, Councillors Mammoliti and Ford, and Speaker Frances Nunziata. None of whom can hope to match up which leaves her looking arrogant and disdainful at times. That downtown elitist badge further burnished onto her.

Which is not to say Councillor Davis is incapable of playing nice with her colleagues. As a member of the Community Development and Recreation Committee, she has fended off the mad rush to divest the city of its child care obligations led by committee chair, Councillor Mammoliti. The process has been slowed to at least wait until hearing from the provincial government later this winter about its plans for child care funding levels in the wake of the move to full day kindergarten. Councillor Davis has also been able to marshal enough opposition on the TPL board in order to blunt the axe being taken to the city’s libraries. At least so far but it has shown her ability to work with the more reasonable members of Team Ford like Councillor Jaye Robinson.

That’s a hopeful sign for this season of hope, a shimmer of light in these darkest of days. Maybe there will be fewer reasons for Councillor Janet Davis to be indignant in 2012, fewer times for her to hang her head in despair and uttering words of disbelief.

— here’s hopingly submitted by Cityslikr