“Toronto – Canada’s version of a Democrat run city”

A 57-unit apartment building in Scarborough had only seen two eviction applications over the course of nine years under the ownership of one landlord.

Then in 2018, Starlight Investments purchased the building and, in just over a year, filed 29 eviction applications — increasing the rate of filings more than 10,000 per cent, a recent study revealed.

Starlight Investments “is, in some ways, leading the charge” in transforming multi-family housing stock, said Martine August, a professor of planning in Waterloo’s faculty of environment and the co-author of a recent study on Toronto landlords’ behaviour around eviction.

Would this be getting the same attention if the land of the Mosqueteria was not affected?

So I’m homeless and unemployed and it feels alright.

Why, you might ask? Because I’ve left Toronto. I have only the vaguest idea of where I’m going at the moment — I’ve been bouncing between various couches in several cities and provinces and the spare room at my mother’s place in rural New Brunswick for several months — but it’s a done deal. I’m not coming back this time. It hurts to leave the town I’ve called home for 27 years and all the deep personal and professional connections I’ve forged there. Make no mistake, though; I’ll live longer because of it. Toronto was killing me.

A lot of memories reside amidst the decline.

I find myself wondering what it will be like to pack up and leave TO.

My reasons are familiar to readers, this Star piece is more a personal lifestyle lament that ignores the real reasons for the decay of Toronto into 3rd World status. 

Just a little more than year out, Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow has revealed she’s not sure if she will seek re-election.

Her uncertainty on whether to seek another term had light shined on it Friday morning while she was appearing on Newstalk 1010.

Somewhere right now, in the city of Toronto — in a garage, a basement or a dusty shed — likely sits the decapitated husk of a speed camera.

Or maybe there are 12 of them, piled up. The spoils of theft and vandalism. Victims in a culture war that’s hit the side streets of Canada’s biggest city.

This has been the summer of the speed camera.

The recent decision by the Ontario Superior Court rendering the removal of Toronto’s bike lanes unconstitutional recalls the great Dr. Seuss book Oh, The Thinks You Can Think. Just think how we could change Canada if we take the logic of this ruling and keep going.

Oh, the thinks we could think.

Was the steam rising from the sidewalks or my brain? This I wondered as I made my way through the hot, soupy (and this past week, I understand, smoky) air of Toronto, in the summer of 2025.

The world surely does not need another piece of journalism where a reporter parachutes into a city where they do not live and makes pronouncements about the place.

That said, Toronto was my home for more than half my life before I moved to Vancouver in 2007. Growing up, we called it Toronto the Good. I propose a new moniker: Toronto the Grind.

This week an Ontario court struck down a provincial law that required three bike lanes to be removed in Toronto and which also limited the installation of new bike lanes by municipalities.

The decision handed a big win to advocacy group Cycle Toronto and two individual cyclists who challenged the law in court.