Toronto artists are being ‘run out of town’ by soaring rents. Should the city step in to help?
“We’re losing the spaces and places where artists, which make the city fantastic, do their business,” said Coun. Paula Fletcher (Ward 14 Toronto-Danforth). “Artists are the lowest-paid sector so it’s not like they can afford corporate rents.”
Why should my taxes support the creation of toxic PC “art?”
Will I be eligible for subsidy for the photo-shops I do for the blog?
Why not?
Voters who live in Toronto have endured two particularly awful election campaigns in the past year.
The federal vote called by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for last September was a pointless affair in which the leaders of the three major parties alternated between trashing one another and hurling promises at every interest group and voting bloc in sight. It cost $600-million and ended with the three holding almost the same number of seats as they had before it all started.
Boring like a slow motion train wreck. Tory will win, that’s a given. More tax dollars will be wasted on identity-politics driven issues as bit by bit we become indistinguishable from a Democrat run city in the US. Services will decline as taxes rise, crime will increase, businesses will leave and those residents that can will flee as the city becomes an unaffordable, perverse amalgam of the rich and social housing residents.
Toronto police have made a series of arrests in connection with the “troubling” rise in carjackings, Insp. Richard Harris of the hold-up squad said Tuesday.
The arrests of several teenagers — including an 18-year-old woman — come as Toronto has 182 reported carjackings so far this year compared to 102 in all of 2021. Fifty-six of the vehicles stolen this year have been recovered.
Time to start shutting down basketball courts.
Patricia Li’s year began with the theft of a Lexus NX 300 from her Toronto home — but that was just the beginning of her troubles.
Five months later, thieves returned in the middle of the night for her other vehicle, a Lexus RX 450, but this time they weren’t as lucky.
After the first theft in February, Li installed a video camera that captured footage of three people attempting to break into the car.
I wonder if the Ferguson effect plays a role?
For the past year, Bibhu Acharya has served behind enemy lines.
Not in Ukraine or Afghanistan but in The Esplanade in downtown Toronto.
“This is a war zone,” said one resident.
Guns, knives, fights, drugs and even dog fights have been the reality since the once four-star Novotel was converted into a homeless shelter to help deal with the COVID-19 pandemic crisis.
There’s a labyrinth installation in the little Trinity Square Park tucked behind the Eaton Centre — a winding path to “quiet the mind,” in the heart of Toronto’s hustle and bustle. If you visited it in late September, and wandered through its meandering route, you’d have ultimately come to the centre — the heart of your meditative journey, perhaps, the moment of enlightenment — only to be tripped up when you encountered a gaping jagged hole where bricks forming the path were missing, covered in caution tape.
Aha. If you were contemplating the state of Toronto on your journey, you’d have found a piece of the answer: stuff is falling apart.
Toronto has a lot working against it. For starters it’s run by progressives for progressives.
Its schools are so progressive in fact that menstruating girls are segregated for being impure during in-school Islamic prayer rituals. Just like in Progressive Iran where women are murdered for removing their hijabs. Contrary to the the city’s motto diversity is not a strength, it is a recipe for a low trust society.
Progressives know how to waste money on worthless endeavors. John Tory is great at proclaiming Left-Handed Vegan Transvestite Amputee Day but little else.
Toronto has 40,739 employees* most unionized. How they can’t fill potholes is beyond me. Maybe designating all pot holes as LGBTQ2S killers would result in better performance.
It won’t get better. Progressive cities only ever spiral into the dirt. Just check in with the residents of Portland or San Francisco. Taxes go up, services slide, crime rises, businesses leave and white flight follows.
Toronto city councillor Michael Thompson faces two charges of sexual assault and will plead not guilty, his lawyer told the Star.
The charges against Thompson, who is seeking re-election in Ward 21 Scarborough Centre, were laid by Bracebridge OPP, lawyer Calvin Barry told the Star’s Betsy Powell on Thursday.
Another senior Toronto cop has been caught up in the promotions scandal, the Sun has learned.
Looking stern and displeased, Staff Sgt. Kirwin Marshall made his first appearance, albeit virtually, at a disciplinary tribunal Thursday on Police Act charges alleging he exchanged texts with Supt. Stacy Clarke that contained “racist or ethnic stereotypes.”
… “During your conversations with Supt. Clarke, you made comments that belittled the Pride parade, contained racist or ethnic stereotypes and were insulting to senior officers of the organization,” the notice alleges.
Hydro One says it is investigating an issue affecting power to Toronto Hydro and its downtown customers on Thursday.
The hydro company tweeted about the outage just before 1 p.m.
“We’re currently experiencing a large outage in downtown Toronto and working together with Hydro One to address it,” Toronto Hydro said.
Holy shit 😮 look at this madness #KingstonFest pic.twitter.com/0Sdc9x5eKs
— B • (@WomanofGold_) August 8, 2022
Kingston festival a complete disorganized disaster left after this… there goes my vip section…#Refund #KingstonFest pic.twitter.com/3GldGsSd9p
— Sherry Rampersaud (@SHERRYtheCOACH) August 7, 2022
h/t DM
“… It is no coincidence, said study co-author Karen Chapple, that Toronto and San Francisco were two cities with some of the longest, deepest lockdowns during COVID-19. Other Canadian cities also lagged behind their U.S. counterparts.
“It’s clear. You look at that ranking chart and you look at the red cities, which are the Canadian ones, and Canada had much stricter lockdown policies than almost anywhere in the United States, with a couple of exceptions. The San Francisco area, sometimes New York were almost on the Canadian models,” said Chapple, director of the School of Cities at the University of Toronto.”
The dramatic change would dilute the influence of municipal councillors in Ontario’s two largest cities, ensuring far more authority for the mayors over financial matters and appointments.
Premier Doug Ford is poised to give U.S.-style “strong-mayor” powers to the cities of Toronto and Ottawa, the Star has learned.
The dramatic change would dilute the influence of municipal councillors in Ontario’s two largest cities, ensuring far more authority for the mayors over financial matters and appointments.
Ford, long a proponent of mayors having greater clout than councillors, wants the Toronto and Ottawa chief magistrates empowered to oversee budgets and act unilaterally if need be.
Just imagine if Rob was still Mayor… unfortunately that isn’t the case and these new powers may accelerate Toronto’s collective suicide.
City of Toronto staff have unveiled a plan to lease a North York hotel for more than $68 million and convert it into a temporary home for refugees — just weeks after an auditor’s report slammed the city’s handling of contracts with local hotels it uses as shelters.
Coun. John Filion, who represents the area and is also vice chair of the city’s audit committee, said he only found out about the plan to lease the 17-storey Hotel Novotel from city staff less than two weeks ago. Even so, he said he’s committed to ensuring the red flags pointed out by Auditor General Beverly Romeo-Beehler last month are addressed.
“I’m all over the contract,” said Filion, who represents Ward 18, Willowdale. “I want to know everything that’s going on here.”
Adam Westland knows cars and trucks. His friends call him a “petrolhead” — someone who’s obsessed with vehicles.
And so when Julie, his wife, looked out their Toronto window in December and shouted — “Adam, the truck’s gone” — he swung into action. It was a few days before Christmas, and they were about to drive to Prince Edward County to see family.
Using the state-of-the-art tracker he’d installed, Adam precisely located his Ford F-150 Raptor pickup while on the phone to Toronto police. What happened next is becoming a common occurrence in Toronto. The police did not show up.
In a nutshell work on the assumption that your vehicle and its contents are a write-off and hope your insurance company will make it all better.
The road to 45 The Esplanade was paved with woke intentions.
Yet, some local residents say the reality of the hotel-turned-emergency shelter during COVID-19 was an enabling, urine-scented, theft and vandalism hell.
It was hard for many neighbours to see the good in this project as they watched drug dealers come around to cash in on addiction and then shelter residents taken out in ambulances.
