In the cause of maintaining public order, we give police officers extraordinary powers. We authorize them to make arrests, carry firearms and use force when necessary. In exchange, we ask them to exercise those powers with restraint, probity and, above all, impartiality, treating everyone the same and doing no one special favours.
That is what makes the case of Stacy Clarke so troubling.
A turf war has fueled a 50% rise in Toronto shootings, mostly with guns smuggled from the U.S.
TORONTO—Towing cars has become a deadly business in Canada’s largest city.
Rival gangs control parts of the tow-truck industry here, using the heavy-duty vehicles to transport drugs, extort car-crash victims with high fees, and fake automobile accidents to defraud insurance. They once resolved their territorial differences with their fists, but now a wave of gun smuggling from the U.S. has turned their fights into a lethal blood sport.
This year through late August, Toronto shootings are up 50% compared with the same period last year and homicides are up 20%—a surge caused in part by “the tow-truck violence,” said Inspector Paul Krawczyk of the Toronto Police Service’s guns-and-gangs unit. In all, about one in seven of Toronto’s shootings and dischargings of firearms this year have been related to the towing industry, police said.
There are some Toronto questions that appear unanswerable. They appear designed for frustrating contemplation rather than any real-world application. Kind of like the “sound of one hand clapping” in Zen meditation.
City bureaucrats ordered a 140-year-old stone carving depicting Christopher Columbus to be removed from display and hidden in a wooden area in Scarborough’s Guild Park in 2021, the Toronto Sun has learned.
Summertime in Toronto is marked by days and nights at beaches, park gatherings and, of course, festivals. From Salsa on St. Clair to Taste of Manila to the Caribbean Carnival, they reflect the immense ethnic and racial diversity of this city, which has a population that is more than 50 per cent people of colour and home to many immigrants and refugees.
Among these many festivals is an event that is marred by controversy.
Toronto is a painfully exorbitant city to try and make a life in, and young people now are learning that lesson harder than generations past, facing “disproportionate challenges” than others, according to a new study.
The investigation, which comes from the Toronto Foundation, outlines how poorly the twenty-something age group, in particular, is faring in the city — especially when it comes to basic things like finding and affording housing in what can feel like an impossible market, feeding themselves, and establishing a sense of community and social connectedness.
Perhaps it was inevitable that Toronto, the city that has managed to bring down restrictions on all sorts of perfectly normal things, from food trucks to toboggan hills to splash pads, would eventually get to this point.
But still, the sentence is almost too perfect: No dogs in the dog park.
OK, fine, it is not quite that simple. The park in question, Ramsden Park, right across from the Rosedale subway station, has banned pooches brought to the off-leash part of the dog park by professional dog walkers. Again, to be clear: (some) dogs are banned from the dog park.
Long gone are the empty roads and unfilled train and bus seats of the COVID-19 pandemic days.
More Canadians are commuting to work and the average commuting time has returned to pre-pandemic levels, according to new data released by Statistics Canada Monday.
The number of commuters reached 16.5 million this May, up 585,000 compared to the same time last year, the agency said. The data continues a rising trend over the past few years following major declines in 2020 and 2021 when pandemic restrictions kept many workers at home.
I find this number questionable given the traffic disaster TO has become.
Stacy Clarke just now, leaving Toronto police headquarters, saying she is disappointed with the two-year demotion and requirement that she reapply for the rank of superintendent. Says she’s taking some time to consider next steps. No official word yet on appeal. pic.twitter.com/ezbQQZ5LE4
Nobody likes to sit in traffic, but if you get stuck — whether due to reduced lanes, construction, a crash or sheer volume — you just have to scream-sing to an angry song and deal with it.
Clarke — the Toronto Police Service’s first Black female superintendent — has pleaded guilty to seven counts of professional misconduct and admitted she helped six Black cops cheat to get a promotion in “a desperate effort to level the playing field.”
Toronto police Supt. Stacy Clarke — who admitted she helped six Black cops cheat to get a promotion in “a desperate effort to level the playing field” — has been stripped of her trailblazing rank.
In a highly anticipated penalty decision, a tribunal hearing officer sentenced Clarke, the first Black female superintendent in Toronto police history, to a two-year demotion, knocking her down one rank to inspector.
She will not be automatically reinstated to the rank of superintendent after demotion, meaning she will have to reapply.
A white cop would have been fired. I would not be comfortable dealing with a racist cop would you?
Just call this a party at Toronto city hall for residents who are not legally supposed to be here.
One might think encouraging illegals to attend an official gathering between 3 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. would be the perfect time to address their illegal status, return to their country of origin, and then return when they get their documentation right.
After it was revealed last week that Metrolinx plans to charge Toronto $150 million to build a 2 kilometre extension to the West Toronto Railpath, city residents have been asking one question: Why does it seem so much more expensive to build infrastructure here than almost anywhere else in the world?
It’s a shame that the subject of everyone’s ire, a walking and cycling path, is the type of city-building project we should be doing more of. Adjacent to the Union-Pearson Express and GO’s Kitchener corridor, the existing path from Davenport to Dundas is well loved. The long-promised extension south to Parkdale and Queen West needs to finally move forward, but not without a serious examination of the price tag.
Just how out of step is Metrolinx’s bill for this trail?
Toronto wants to be a world-class city, but after years of constant construction I’m getting out — as soon as I sell my condo
“We’re in a holding pattern,” said my real estate agent. “It’s a buyer’s market and it’s slow everywhere right now. In fact, there’s a surplus of condos in your sector right now.”
Great.
A surplus.
Just when I thought I had an exclusive condo based on size and location for sale in downtown Toronto, buyers have a broad selection. I’m on this adventure in the real estate market featuring motivated sellers (me) and cautious buyers (everybody else) as, after 12 years in one place, my wife and I have decided to join the exodus of Torontonians searching for a little tranquility elsewhere.