Matt Elliott is a Toronto Star Columnist and publisher of the City Hall Watcher newsletter, and Inori Roy is Features Editor at The Local who’s been working to track every candidate for every ward in Toronto.

Please enjoy, and don’t forget to hit the polls.

Subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or SoundCloud, or follow our RSS feed.

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Politicians running in Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, where unaffordability has hit disastrous levels, need to be speaking more about this crisis for middle-income households.

CivicAction’s research finds that half of GTHA households, those earning $40,000 to $125,000 annually, can be described as the “squeezed-out” middle. They make too much to qualify for most subsidies but too little to afford suitable housing near their workplaces.

Sixty-six percent of surveyed middle-income workers in the region spend more than 30% of their household income on housing. Almost 30% spend more than half. Overall, middle-income housing unaffordability means our region loses $5.88 to $7.98 billion every year.

No wonder that a recent poll shows that over one-third of Toronto residents are considering leaving, 65% of which say the city being “too expensive” is their top reason.

The most frustrating thing is that these workers have what we call “good jobs.” They’re nurses and personal support workers, educators and childcare providers, transit operators, skilled tradespeople, human services providers, and hospitality workers. They’re the people everybody relies on, in some way: fellow city dwellers, as well as all Ontarians and Canadians, given the GTHA’s share of GDP.

When workers can’t afford to live within a reasonable distance of their jobs, when they are pressed to leave or else stay and struggle to make ends meet, loosing wiggle-room to participate in and fuel the local economy, the city-region flounders. The needle that pivots between city-as-problem and city-as-solution starts to lean in the wrong direction, where no one can afford it to go.

The losses, too easily cast as the failing of an individual or family, start to spread beyond the household. They turn into a community and city with needs unmet, services unrendered, construction and repair halted. These losses become weak productivity and sluggish markets, an austerity lived from the ground up, where no one can spare the change.

The good news is that Canadians want real fixes. A recent Abacus Data poll found that three in four Canadians support governments taking steps to encourage partnerships between employers, nonprofits, builders, and institutions to create affordable housing for middle-income workers in high-cost regions. The sentiment crosses party lines, stretching beyond housing developers and providers. Nearly 60% of Canadians believe major employers and institutions should play a role in delivering housing affordability, and nearly 70% characterize it as a public policy and workforce issue, not just a personal or household matter.

Policy debates have cycled around unit targets, approvals, and pipelines. These findings suggest the need to answer deeper questions: who can afford what’s built, and where it’s located? How will all actors with a stake — including the employers who do well when workers live near work — play their part to deliver affordable, attainable housing, rental and owned options alike?

Housing-workers-who-power-us logic helps us get out of the weeds. It helps us envision the true wins of housing affordability at speed and scale. This is not just about making sure people at risk of housing precarity will be relieved. It’s that we can’t expect our cities to act as Canada’s solution engines when we don’t invest in affordability for key workers with intention. We need to use every tool available to reduce friction and lower barriers that get in the way of lasting affordability.

Our goal, however, shouldn’t just be about building affordable housing stock. That’s too narrow. Our goal should be to shift how we “do housing” so that it becomes easier to finance, deliver, and maintain affordability for lower, moderate, and middle-income residents. We need productive partnerships that make housing affordability easier to pursue than to not pursue.

CivicAction’s Workforce Housing Affordability Playbook for Action, shaped by more than 350 leaders in the housing ecosystem, offers a path for change we need. Our problem isn’t an absence of land, money, or interest. Affordable projects stall because effective land, capital, approvals, and partnership arrangements aren’t assembled early enough. The Playbook shows how partners can get into the game with what they each do best: government can bring land, approvals, infrastructure coordination, and policy certainty. Employers can bring demand for housing from their workforce. Builders and non-profits can bring development and operating capacity. Lenders and investors can bring financing and patient capital. Community partners can bring local knowledge and durable outcomes.

There are inspiring examples of partnership-based workforce housing projects we can all get behind, like the Coach Terminal development near University Health Network and the new development near Vancouver General Hospital, both designed to support healthcare workers. We need more of this targeting employees across more sectors, at speed and scale.

Faster approvals and lower development fees certainly help, but they don’t create lasting affordability in and of themselves. Our urgent opportunity is to revitalize our housing system to do better than it has ever done for workers.

In coming weeks, we’ll hear a lot of ambitions for our cities from the people who take the risk and put their hats in the political ring. What deserves attention and action is whether the workers who power our city-systems will be able to afford to stay, thrive, and make our cities benefit all of us.

photo by Asthon Emmanuel (cc)

Andrea Gunraj is Vice President of Policy and Partnerships at CivicAction, an organization that turns cross-sector collaboration into action to build better, more inclusive cities. She is also author of Go-Between Girl: My Indentured Roots as Reclaimed Present, published by McClelland and Stewart in 2026.

The post Election 2026: Who gets to live in the city? appeared first on Spacing Toronto.

These are small questions, but they tell us a lot about how a city is doing. On October 26, Torontonians will elect a new Council. That Council should make beautiful, resilient parks central to Toronto’s identity and to residents’ daily lives.

Toronto faces overlapping crises: climate change, biodiversity loss, social isolation, and declining civic engagement. Parks help address all of them. They cool neighbourhoods, absorb floodwater, shelter plants and animals, and strengthen our connection to nature and each other, with real gains for mental and physical health.

They are also one of the few climate and social responses residents can see and touch in the short term. And they shape how people feel about their government. A U.S. study found that residents living near well-used parks report stronger community connection and greater satisfaction with local government. Condition matters too: well-kept playgrounds, sports fields, and washrooms are linked to high civic trust, while neglected ones are linked to much lower trust.

When people help improve a park alongside City staff and councillors, the park gets better, and so does the relationship. Residents come to value public investment and stay engaged. When disagreements come, as they always do, they reach toward each other instead of away.

This year, Park People asked hundreds of Torontonians, from Scarborough to Etobicoke, North York to the waterfront, about their dreams for parks. Many of the ideas they shared are already happening somewhere in the city, but at a small scale, scattered, and dependent on a few determined people. It’s time to scale up. Here’s where the next Council should start.

Establish a shared vision for a connected network. People and other species experience parks and public spaces as one system, but they are planned and managed as several. Council should bring residents and City staff together to create one vision for a high-quality, connected network of green and public spaces across the city. That includes working with neighbouring municipalities and other landowners to link these spaces and use them to their full potential for biodiversity, community programming and climate resilience. It also means better wayfinding, especially in ravines and on trails, and partnering with the TTC and Transportation Services so people can find good routes to parks, including the last few metres from station to park.

Invest in the basics. The most important park amenity may be a simple park bench. Without enough seating, many older residents and people with disabilities simply stay home. Council should use the increased parks capital budget to bring seating up to the level people of all ages and abilities need, and keep it maintained. It should expand the park washroom enhancement program, tying washroom projects into larger redesigns, and reboot the pandemic-era winter parks plan, with more plowed paths and recreation programs brought outdoors.

Make it easier to work together. Residents want to bring their parks to life with gatherings, gardens, festivals and stewardship. Council should champion community partnerships in parks and City-owned spaces, support staff to make partnership decisions that maximize community benefit even when that means taking some risks, and keep cutting permit costs and red tape.

Protect nature and adapt to climate change. Toronto’s ravine system is one of the largest in the world, yet the Ravine Strategy has never been fully funded. Council should push for a partnership with the province, the federal government and the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority that funds the whole system over multiple years, not project by project. It should naturalize a percentage of the park system’s 3,000 hectares of mown grass each year, and fully resource parks as a core part of the City’s emerging climate adaptation plans.

None of this lets other governments off the hook. Parks are largely municipally funded and managed, but they are not simply a municipal service. They are essential health, climate, ecological and social infrastructure, and all orders of government should help pay for them. Cities don’t have the revenue tools to do this work at the scale and speed the moment demands.

But limited tools are not the same as no tools. Toronto owns most of its public space: not just parks and ravines, but the quarter of the city that is roads and rights of way, plus significant lands held by Toronto Community Housing, the TTC and other City agencies. After years of austerity, the New Deal with the province and recent property tax increases have brought larger parks budgets. Council is best placed to turn these assets into an integrated vision, and to invite other governments to the table.

Before you vote, ask your council and mayoral candidates: What is your vision for Toronto’s parks? How will you make them accessible to people of all ages and abilities? How will you fight for natural spaces like our ravines? What will you do to secure funding from other governments? And how will you help residents in your ward get involved?

Torontonians are paying attention. We are asking the next Council and mayor to put time, money and care back into the places we share – and to do it at the scale the city needs. Then the answers to those small questions will change: a shady spot to sit, a park people linger in, common ground where neighbours meet. It all starts at the park.

Read the full 2026 Parks Platform on Park People’s website.

Natalie Brown is Senior Director at Park People, a national nonprofit that supports community leadership and shifts park systems to help connect people and nature in our cities.

All photos courtesy of Park People.

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Toronto faces a long list of challenges, and the televised September 22 mayoral debate at Victoria University offered residents a chance to hear how the candidates proposed to address them.

In an hour.

For some viewers, this would be an introduction to the candidates themselves. Could Mayor Olivia Chow persuade undecided voters that her record deserved another term? Could her challengers make a convincing case that the city needed new leadership?

This placed a significant challenge on moderator Nicole MacIntyre. With sixty minutes, MacIntyre had to keep the candidates to time while drawing out answers that helped residents understand the choices facing Toronto. At the same time, MacIntyre had to articulate questions on the minds of most Torontonians: increased property taxes, stalled housing starts, congestion and general affordability could be the focus – and any one of these topics could be a few hours in length.

While no debate can examine every detail of a city budget, it may shed light on a few decisions from the Mayor’s Office. For example, in 2024 the City increased property taxes by 9.5 percent  – the largest single-year tax hike in over 25 years. What initiatives did the money go toward? How did those pan out? What did the City learn? How will it balance property tax increases with general affordability?

Those are questions worth exploring. But is it possible in this format?

Diving deeper into issues however, does not mean the audience must sit through a lecture on municipal public policy, with endless questions on process. Instead, voters are eager to hear the candidates tackle the most pressing issues and see if the vision aligns with their own, which can be done through strategic follow-up questions.

Succinct and meaningful dialogue with proper follow-up is indeed something Canadians want. Following the 2021 federal election, the Leaders’ Debates Commission identified an overly crowded format as a concern. Simply put: there were too many questions asked of candidates (45 in total). In 2008, only eight questions were asked and in 2011, six. The Commission noted clarifying positions through follow-up questions allowed for substantive discussion.

An exchange between then-Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer and Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party, during the 2019 federal debate highlights this point. Moderator Susan Delacourt asked Scheer how a proposed energy corridor would proceed through consultation with Indigenous communities. The question addressed a difficult choice the federal government would face: “What will you do when your plans come into conflict with Indigenous rights and interests?” Scheer proposed assigning responsibility for consultations to a cabinet minister and argued that concerns must be addressed while finding a path for construction. May challenged the suggestion that consultation should continue until Indigenous communities agreed, emphasizing consent and territorial rights. Scheer then asked, “What does free, prior and informed consent mean?”

In a short exchange, voters heard both a proposal and a challenge to its underlying assumptions: could consultation change whether the project proceeded, or only how it proceeded?

The Leaders Debate Commission completed an evaluation and found the following: “…viewers were better able to identify party positions as a result of watching the debate. We also find that debate viewers changed their ratings of the parties and their leaders more than non-viewers.”

MacIntyre pressed the candidates to explain their track records, probing Mayor Chow on property tax increases and the lack of housing starts. As well, asking Councillor Bradford how lowering property taxes would allow for more police officers and safer subway platforms.

A pivot, during the debate however left voters wanting more. Candidates were asked for a simple yes-no answer on using strong mayor powers to advance an important housing development. Mayor Chow said no, while both opponents said yes – and quickly, the moderator moved on to another topic. But that left many questions unanswered. What circumstances would justify those powers? What would the ramifications be at City Hall? How would the Mayor regain trust?

These are consequential differences. Absent an explanation, voters are left wondering whether the candidate has considered the barriers to their ideas. With an explanation, the discussion can turn to whether a decision was justified and if another approach would produce a better outcome.

And this is perhaps what televised mayoral debates require: focus. Organizers may consider limiting debate to one or two topics, allowing candidates time to present their ideas in greater detail. Creating space for audience participation through vetted questions on the topic may also be considered: a housing debate could have questions from both renters and homeowners as well as developers and community organizations. Fewer questions would fit into the hour, but voters could leave with a clearer understanding of each candidate’s approach and the choices it would involve.

At the next debate, a useful question may be: “have the candidates explained their ideas thoroughly?” What would need to happen to make this work? What could derail the idea?

While an hour-long debate cannot settle these issues, it would demonstrate to voters how the future Mayor thinks through problems. And that just might be worth voting for.

Christopher Balkaran is a Toronto-based policy professional and host of the Open Minds Podcast, where he explores public policy, civic life, and the questions shaping Canadian society.

Image screen captured from September 22 mayoral debate.

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Debates about bike lanes inflame passions, albeit in different ways across the province. In cities like Toronto bike lanes have come to be accepted as necessary road infrastructure for commuters, shoppers, and visitors. In other parts of Ontario, where cycling may still be seen as recreation, opposition remains strong. As provincial leader, Ford had an opportunity to educate — but bike lanes serve him better as a wedge issue. When residents who cycle react angrily to his threats, Ford can pretend to play the motorist’s champion. Ford wins. We all lose.

Ford’s claim that removing 19 kilometres of bike lanes — on Toronto’s 5,600km road network — will solve the region’s multi-billion congestion problem is fanciful. Even removing all bike lanes would affect less than 5% of Toronto’s roads, with no impact on routinely clogged Gardiner, Allen, and DVP expressways, or local segments of Highways 400, 401, and 427. But threatening to remove bike lanes is easier than explaining the inefficiency of single-occupant cars.

No family has gotten more electoral mileage out of the bicycle than the Fords. When Doug’s brother Rob became Toronto’s mayor in 2010, his ‘War on the Car’ rhetoric played a leading role in his success, with bike lanes as the villain. If bike lanes were actually removed today, the premier would lose his scapegoat. How would he then explain worsening motor traffic congestion – an outcome that’s virtually assured given a growing population and his measures to induce driving by making it cheaper: eliminating vehicle registration fees, reducing gas taxes, and banning speed cameras.

If the premier merely used bike lanes as a distraction, predicting his actions — and planning a response — would be fairly straight-forward. But much like Donald Trump, Ford appears to treat every past slight, including his rejection by voters in the 2014 Toronto mayoralty race, as requiring retribution. How else to explain Ford’s dismissal of the compromise offered by Mayor Olivia Chow that would restore car lanes on Bloor Street while keeping bike lanes – lanes that city council had approved in a 21-1 vote. Petty vindictiveness is not a leadership quality.

Round and round we go, where we end nobody knows. We are beginning to look like character actors or extras in political theatre directed by Ford’s whims.

The way forward is for Ford’s opponents to write their own script.

First, the defence of Toronto bike lanes has to be seen as part of a broader struggle that encompasses the chill Ford imposed on new bike lanes across Ontario. More important still is to reframe the debate to focus on efficient, affordable, clean transportation centred on walking, cycling, and transit. Professional, community, faith, and business organizations that may not be interested in cycling, can nonetheless be drawn into the debate by concerns for fairness, economics, health, and vibrant neighbourhoods.

Second, the Liberals and NDP must be urged to stand up for better transportation, instead of merely lamenting Ford’s meddling in municipal affairs. Leadership also has to be more than telling people what they want to hear. Speak facts to fiction: Cyclists are traffic. We won’t solve the congestion problem without getting more people out of cars. City councillors alone shouldn’t have to be the standard-bearers of good policy.

Third, to bypass Ford we have to seize opportunities, instead of simply biding our time until his departure. Improved GO bus service and bus-only lanes are cost-effective, quickly-implemented transit improvements. Cycling infrastructure can still be built out along wide rights of way or by connecting disjointed trails, including Toronto’s unfinished 75km “Loop Trail.” And all roads can be made safer by tackling the troubling proliferation of pickup trucks. 

Finally, while social media has isolated many people in online tribes, we need to re-engage in a larger community that values evidence-based decision-making, the environment, and integrity in politics.

Albert Koehl is an environmental lawyer, Executive Director of Community Bikeways, and author of Wheeling through Toronto, A History of the Bicycle and Its Riders.

Photo courtesy of Rob Zaichowski

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For every municipal election since we started Spacing, we’ve published a special election-focused issue in advance of the polls. This year, we decided to do something a little different. Rather than look into the policies around key city issues, we’ve cast our gaze on the people and organizations who influence those issues. It’s a bit like the “power” issue put out each year by another Toronto magazine, but ours is focused less on the bigwigs (though we do touch on those) and more on the grassroots people who devote their time to making the city a better place for everyone.

While they may not make conventional power rankings, the people and groups we profile in this issue make a fundamental difference. They will shape the discussion during the election, bringing up vital issues for candidates to address. And they will also shape the direction of Toronto’s government once a new city council is elected, influencing the decisions, motions, and votes of both new and returning members. This issue will, we hope, be a useful reference for not just election season, but the next four years of the council we will collectively choose in October.

Some of our influencers have a regional or even national scope, others are focused on just a neighbourhood. But each focuses on some particular passion – we haven’t looked at broad ideological lobby groups like Progress Toronto on the left or ABC on the right. We wanted to dig deeper to profile names that might be less well known, but are shaping the discussion on specific files.

One unending issue we decided not to delve into is governance. As I write in my introduction to our election cover section, Toronto’s governance situation is perpetually unsatisfactory, with endless micromanaging interference from the Province and councillors who serve, sometimes, for decades and who now represent wards the size of small cities.

I can’t help contrasting that with my mother-in-law, who is one of six part-time town councillors in a Nova Scotia town with a population in the four digits, able to deal with issues in detail and be in contact with a significant portion of her constituents. While that setup would obviously not be practicable in a metropolis, one has to wonder if some kind of closer governance would not be possible. But both the Constitution, which makes cities a mere creature of the province, and practical politics suggest that little change will happen, and we’ll just have to keep muddling through.

Fortunately, there are more than enough other issues to explore in our bailiwick. We’ve called on our writers to explore congestion and movement, transit, housing, the public realm, the waterfront, the environment, services, and safety – issues that impact our daily lives in the metropolis and that our municipal representatives can directly shape through their decisions.

Meanwhile, in the front of the magazine, local historian Jamie Bradburn marks two anniversaries – the 70th anniversary of the province’s blue plaques program, and the 50th anniversary of the opening of the CN Tower to the public. We also are pleased to welcome science writer Dan Falk to our magazine, who for his part marks a loss this year – the demolition this spring of Toronto’s long-shuttered planetarium. And we are honoured to include an excerpt from a new book edited by two of our favourite people (both featured in past issues), Zahra Ebrahim and Jane Farrow, who have compiled the self-explanatory anthology Women, Walking.

Even as the world around us roils with conflict, climate change, trade disputes, and intemperate leaders, the everyday life of the city continues. As we worry and try to act to address those big issues, we can still find the time to pay attention to our immediate urban environment, try to make our city a better and more welcoming place, and celebrate and enjoy the good things we have created. We hope this issue will be a guide both to your decisions in the election, and to observing and getting involved with how the municipal government we choose evolves over the next four years.

This issue is available now at the Spacing Store at 401 Richmond St. W., and soon at fine book and magazine stores, as well as arriving soon in subscribers’ mailboxes.

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Sitting in middle of the flat plain to the southwest was a small curious-looking industrial complex, the Canada Building Materials concrete batching plant known as CBM Bathurst, which dispatched truckloads of ready mixed concrete to construction sites in the downtown core. This plant was one of the first subjects I photographed as part of  my Concrete Industries project of 1998-2004, whose aim was to depict the life cycle of an essential building material.

CBM Bathurst had opened in 1960, just as the Gardiner was being driven past Bathurst Street on a path that detoured around of Fort York. The plant was sited parallel to a group of existing rail sidings connected to the Spadina freight yards to the east. Direct rail access would have been an important advantage in the 1960s, when rail transport was still being used to deliver aggregates mined at quarries and sand pits outside the city.

Like all the buildings in its neighbourhood, CBM Bathurst occupied land the Toronto Harbour Commission had created before 1927 by filling in Lake Ontario.

The fill material included sewage sludge, excavated material from construction sites, silt dredged from the harbour bottom and municipal garbage. Public works photographer Arthur Beales documented this long term project for the Harbour Commission.

In 1960 the neighbourhood around the plant was still primarily industrial in character. Neighbours to the south included the Molson Brewery on Fleet Street, Tip Top Tailors on Lakeshore Boulevard and the Canada Malting plant at the foot of Bathurst. Directly across from the truck entrance to the CBM site was the former Loblaws Groceteria manufacturing and warehousing complex, which after 1983 would be occupied by the Daily Bread Food Bank.

North of the CBM plant and the expressway, a wedge of scrubby forest separated Fort York from the industrial area. The abandoned, overgrown rail spur that ran through this green area has since been replaced by Fort York Boulevard and residential towers.

In 1998, CBM Bathurst was receiving its cement powder from the St Marys Cement plant in Bowmanville, crushed limestone from its quarry on the Niagara Escarpment near Acton, and fine aggregates from its Aberfoyle Pit south of Guelph. The rail connection was long gone, and materials were now delivered by truck, at a higher cost to the environment.

There were no fences around the batching plant, and its operations often expanded to fill the available space. Its main structure can be seen to exemplify what the renowned German industrial photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher called “anonymous sculpture.” One could imagine it as the bridge of a fantastic vessel that had remained moored in place during the filling in of the lake.

The plant operated by a combination of gravity feeds and conveyor belts. On arrival, aggregates were dumped into an underground hopper, from which they were conveyed to an elevated gallery and dropped into separate bunkers. A row of hoppers below the bunkers weighed out the aggregates, and conveyors carried them to the top of the plant where they were mixed with water and cement fed from the towering silos and dropped into the drum of the concrete truck.

In 2009, the batching plant was forced to move to the newly established Concrete Campus in the Portlands, displaced by the very condominium development boom it had supported with its product. However, before it vanished, an archeological discovery nearby put its having been there in historical perspective.

In the spring of 2006 a backhoe excavating the foundation for a new condominium at 600 Fleet Street uncovered a row of timber cribs belonging to the long-forgotten Queen’s Wharf, which had been built in 1830 but was later buried as the waterfront was extended.

My mother and I visited the site one Sunday a short time after the discovery was reported, and I took several photos with her tourist camera through the fencing along Bathurst. In two of them the batching plant can be seen in the background. I was unaware when taking those snapshots that I was adding the final details to my documentation of CBM Bathurst.

Photogallery

All photos © Peter MacCallum unless otherwise specified.

The post Before the Bentway: CBM Bathurst, 1998 appeared first on Spacing Toronto.

After the Ontario Court of Appeal (ONCA) shot down CycleTO’s legally innovative charter challenge that sought to stop Doug Ford’s attack on the city’s bike lanes, Queen’s Park wasted little time before issuing a request for proposals in early September. The government has asked contractors to submit bids on the “project” by the end of November. CycleTO, meanwhile, has not yet said whether it plans to seek leave to appeal the ONCA decision to the Supreme Court.

Spacing last week obtained copies of the RFP documents. They include — contrary to the premier’s anti-Trump rhetoric — a form enabling U.S. firms to participate. The contract, to be concluded by the end of 2028, will be tendered and overseen by the Ontario ministry of transportation. Judging by the way the RFP has been scoped, the winning bid will reveal the extent to which the minister, Prabmeet Sarkaria, and Ford, have put their fingers on the scale.

According to the “intent” of the RFP [screen shot], “[t]he proposed design is expected to reinstate motor vehicle lanes and where feasible, provide bike facilities with modification made as needed to ensure road user safety, lane continuity, impacts to adjacent infrastructure, and other relevant factors.”

The project, the document continues, “will include an assessment to identify where vehicle lane reinstatement can occur while maintaining bike lanes, and where bike lanes cannot be maintained without major reconstruction.” How that assessment is conducted, the RFP doesn’t say. Nor does it offer any details about the fate of the street parking spaces all along the impacted routes.

The construction will affect the entire Bloor bike lane that extends from Royal York Road to Castle Frank Drive, as well as Yonge Street from Hayden to Millwood, University Avenue from College to Heenan Place, Queen’s Park and Queen’s Park Circle from College to Bloor, and Avenue Road north to Davenport. The RFP does not mention Danforth.

Based on the description of the scope of work, there’s no question that this will be a highly disruptive and expensive undertaking. Besides the bike lane removals, the RFP wants bidders to provide plans to “remove or relocate” islands, medians and gutters and “incorporate congestion relief measures at all major intersections to improve traffic flow, such as traffic signal adjustments (i.e. signal timing, signal phases), geometric adjustments at intersections, repurposing lanes, lane re-configuration, operational adjustments within the curb-to-curb platform, etc.”

Evidently, the construction will be extensive, and involve moving underground utilities (typically a hefty expense), as well as bus bays, bike racks, accessible platforms and even mailboxes. MTO also says it will “consult” with the city regarding CafeTO locations and street festivals. The process envisions the contractor connecting with external agencies, stakeholders, property owners and “impacted businesses,” but not, of course, the cyclists and delivery people who use that infrastructure and will be most directly “impacted.”

The whole contract, finally, will be divided into the phases, with the tendering for each one due to be submitted to MTO on April 1, 2027, December 1, 2027, and June 1, 2028. The government has left it up to the bidders to propose their own staging.

The most absurd deadline lands, appropriately enough, on April Fool’s Day, which is when bidders have to tee up proposals for “alternative” north-south bike routes to Yonge and Avenue Road, as if there’s anyone around who doesn’t already know that the only such streets near either arterial are Mount Pleasant, Beford, and Russell Hill roads.

It’s clear from reading the 110-page document that this project will not be a quick and dirty job. The government has set out an exhaustive range of technical standards and time-tables, and it’s not at all difficult to imagine that none of this will be complete according to schedule laid out in the RFP.

After all, the University Ave. bike lanes, and a portion of the Bloor lanes between Avenue Road and Spadina, were built during the pandemic, when traffic was way down. There’s lots of traffic now, and what the government is doing, ironically, is condemning all the users of those roads — vehicles, delivery trucks, cyclists, pedestrians, etc. — to at least a year of lane closures and detours. And for what?

The question, to my mind, is how all the baked in tensions in this idiotic exercise play out. The firms that vie for these kinds of civil engineering projects have to get over all sorts of technical bars, but the award will ultimately go to the lowest cost bidder.

Removing temporary concrete curbs and the flexible bollards, such as those found west of Bathurst, won’t involve a lot of work. But eliminating all the elevated purpose-built lanes and medians means digging up the street and mucking around with sub-surface utilities, which is expensive and slow, and involves coordination with agencies like Toronto Hydro and Enbridge.

Will contractors aiming to ante up the lowest bid be tempted to find ways to avoid those big costs by taking up the RFP’s allowances for retaining lanes where “feasible”? Or do they game out the politics of this tender, and gamble on the assumption that Sarkaria and Ford’s officials will automatically reject such proposals, even if they are the least expensive.

I can’t find any evidence on the documents we obtained that MTO has engaged a fairness monitor — as is done with large Infrastructure Ontario projects — to ensure the whole process is on the up and up, so we’ll probably never know how the winner was chosen.

What is certain, however, is that a vast sum of our money will be wasted, countless Torontonians will find themselves profoundly inconvenienced for extended periods, and, eventually, a cyclist will get struck by a car. But at least the congestion will be worse.

photo by rawpixel (CC)

The post EXCLUSIVE: Inside the contract to rip out Toronto’s bike lanes appeared first on Spacing Toronto.

In the hall-of-mirrors that is the current mayoral election, as my colleagues John McGrath and Matt Elliott noted, we had the following weirdness last week: Premier Doug Ford, in an aside at a presser, sort of endorsed Mayor Olivia Chow. The amplifier of this plug was none other than soon-to-be-former councillor Brad Bradford, who took to social media to accuse his rival of excessive chumminess with the provincial anti-Christ, or words to that effect.

Ford quickly walked back whatever it is that he meant, claiming he’ll work with anyone.

Our premier — whose appetite for political, um, dominance rivals that of a certain somebody stateside — is or should be the elephant in the room of this election. However, I’m not totally certain he’ll emerge as the ballot question on October 26, although Gord knows he should, given his seemingly insatiable appetite for meddling in the city’s business.

No one should deceive themselves into believing that a Mayor Bradford, who has already surrounded himself with Conservatives and right-of-centre Liberals, would govern as anything other than a willing supplicant to Ford’s high-handed decrees.

But Chow hasn’t exactly manned the barricades to fight Ford’s repeated incursions into the city’s jurisdiction. Her approach reminds me of John Tory’s, in that they both believe(d) that the most productive strategy for taking on Premier Shrek is to take the conversation off-line.

Strangely enough, Chow and Tory share a temperamental distaste for rhetorical bomb-lobbing and shouty populism. Having taken a measure of the city’s weak positionality viz Queen’s Park, both opted to cut whatever deal they could, and then move on to the next thing.

The degree to which this city’s form and function are being determined by the personalities at either end of University Ave. is a deeply dysfunctional dynamic that must be addressed, somehow.

I don’t want to argue that the big personalities of urban politicians don’t or shouldn’t matter. Montreal’s Jean Drapeau had mighty ambitions that he succeeded in selling to Quebec City legislators. In the depths of the Depression New York’s Fiorello LaGuardia’s epic clashes with governors and presidents left their mark on the city. The men and women who aspire to the office of mayor are not ego-free, nor, needless to add, are those who become premier.

That said, the relationship between Queen’s Park and Toronto and/or Ontario’s largest cities (Ottawa, Mississauga, Brampton, Hamilton, Waterloo) can’t only be determined by the political calculations and tactics of the executive branches of either level of government.

I’d argue, in fact, that because our 159-year-old constitution relegated municipal government to second (or third) class status, these inter-governmental relationships are over-indexed to the political personas of whomever is in charge.

Since amalgamation, Toronto’s only had a handful of such shotgun weddings, each with its own relational character. Mel Lastman and Mike Harris went from marriage of convenience to shouting and back again. David Miller and Dalton McGuinty, both cerebral and wonkish, got along well — until they didn’t. Rob Ford scared the bejesus out of McGuinty. Kathleen Wynne and John Tory gestured at one another politely, but that was about the extent of it. The famous cricket-bat photo of Doug Ford and Tory told us everything we needed to know about those two. And while Ford and Chow haven’t quite achieved that degree of submission, no one is especially mystified about who’s calling the shots and why.

In all cases, the inter-personal leader dynamic is out-sized and demonstrably harmful.

As countless pundits before me have observed, the constitutional division of labour may have made sense back when municipalities issued licenses, inspected abattoirs and ran the local gaol. But the 1867 status quo is totally inadequate for the needs of the modern metropolis, with its deep well of responsibilities, and even allowing for the fact that provincial governments must enact certain laws and policies to maintain some level of rational local governance.

Only once in almost 30 years has Toronto managed to make a case for somewhat more regulatory and financial autonomy, but this brief moment has been vastly overshadowed by the instances of the loss of power, which began at the dawn of amalgamation and continues to this day, through decisions such as Ford’s unilateral cuts to council, his move to strip the city of its ability to build rapid transit, and, most recently, the Tories’ idiotic bike lane demolition derby.

In this space two weeks ago, local governance scholars Nick Vlahos, Patricia Wood and Gabriel Eidelman argued for an urgent re-think of what municipal autonomy consists of, pointing out that meaningful reform begins with a constitutionally protected charter — an idea that percolates to the surface regularly. But, they caution, “[g]iving City Hall more power is not, by itself, the same thing as strengthening democracy, and making it more representative, participatory and accountable.”

My own view is that city charters are less effective than proponents make out, especially in a system in which the higher order government has so much more regulatory power. As we’ve learned in recent years, the City of Toronto Act, which is not quite a charter, did little to halt the tide of Fordism that has spewed out of Queen’s Park since 2018.

In the past year, however, I’ve become more interested in the workings of the Council of the Federation — the committee of the prime minister and the premiers. Its members are not politically or constitutionally beholden to one another, but they all have the ability to squeeze until it hurts.

For years, and through successive governments, Ottawa has practiced some version of “asynchronous federalism,” which involves the feds promoting national policies and then cutting bespoke political deals with different provincial premiers.

There’s no shortage of personalities and hierarchy in this mode of governing, but the capital-P political dynamics are blunted by the institution of the council, which is mirrored by similar ministerial-level councils geared at cross-cutting policy domains, like healthcare. The pragmatism and ritual baked in to this mode of inter-governmental negotiation seems to blunt the most egregious or high-handed power plays, i.e., the type of thing we see in the heavy-weight-to-welter-weight cage matches between City Hall and Queen’s Park.

What does a Council of the Federation look like at the provincial/municipal level in Ontario? It might consist of a limited membership that includes the premier and the mayors of four or five of the largest municipal or regional governments, with a rotating chair, a secretariat, and a regular schedule of meetings to work through the sorts of issues that come up only in big cities, and in which the provincial government has a stake.

With the federal government’s powers, Prime Minister Mark Carney could, if he wished, unilaterally impose export taxes on Alberta’s oil or Saskatchewan’s potash to hit back at the Trump administration’s tariffs. But the enforced negotiation entrenched in the council means he has to be more collaborative.

I’m not expecting Doug Ford to propose anything like this, of course. But if future premiers want to take the utterly counter-productive friction out of provincial/municipal relations, some kind collaborative body of might be a way to bring about a politics that is less chronically confrontational, less wasteful, less partisan, and, most importantly, less harmful to the people who actually live in Ontario’s big cities.

photo by Wylie Poon (cc)

The post Election 2026: The inter-governmental elephant in the room appeared first on Spacing Toronto.

Political campaigns must compress complex problems into phrases we quickly can understand. Our job as voters is to notice what those words are asking us to see.

Consider this phrase: “fix the TTC.” The words assume something is broken, but leaves the audience to fill in what that means. Is the problem reliability, frequency, cleanliness, safety, aging infrastructure or service in underserved neighbourhoods? Or is there a problem at all? And how do we measure what’s being fixed? If a commuter’s wait times are not improving, would this lead to them losing faith in elected leaders?

Another phrase, “Bike lanes are coming out and vehicle lanes are going back in” does something different. It claims to provide an immediate and visible solution to congestion. The framing suggests that a previous decision was wrong and can now be reversed — urgently.

Residents have legitimate frustrations with municipal decisions. Recognition of these issues matter, but recognition itself is not evidence. A neighbourhood could remain underserved by the TTC, congestion may stay the same after removing bike lanes (or, get worse). And bigger questions of the overall capacity of the TTC and the safety of cyclists can remain unanswered.

That is why the words candidates choose deserve attention. They reveal not only what candidates want to do, but how they want us to understand the problem in the first place.

Political communication scholars have a word for this: framing. Robert Entman described framing as the process of making certain parts of an issue more prominent while, inevitably, making others less visible. A frame helps define what the problem is, what caused it, and what kind of response appears appropriate.

That matters because political language intentionally narrows the questions, we are encouraged to ask. “Fix the TTC” directs our attention toward a system in need of repair but tells us little about which parts of the system should receive priority. Removing bike lanes focuses the conversation on road space usage and congestion, while questions about cyclist safety or where cyclists should travel move outside the frame entirely.

A frame can tell us where a candidate wants us to look — but evaluating the proposal means we are looking beyond the frame itself. Different questions begin to emerge: what can government actually do? What will it cost? Who will be affected? What does success look like?

A proposal eventually has to survive budgets, Council votes, staff analysis, public consultation, and the practical realities of implementation. That is where voters should begin asking a different set of questions.

Consider Toronto’s plan to extend library hours and move toward seven-day service at more branches. On its face, it is easy to support. More access to libraries sounds like an obvious public good. But the useful questions come next. What problem is the policy intended to solve? Are some neighbourhoods currently underserved? How many additional hours would be added, and at which branches? What staffing and security costs would come with those hours? Would the money come from new spending or from somewhere else in the library system? And several years later, what evidence would tell us that the investment had worked?

Those questions help us evaluate the proposal itself beyond the headlines we see. This same test can be applied to almost any municipal promise: identify the problem, examine the proposed action, ask who benefits and who bears the cost, and decide what measurable result would count as success.

Every campaign promise contains both a trade-off and an underlying assumption. Trade-offs involve what we are willing to spend, prioritize, or give up to achieve a particular outcome. Assumptions involve why we believe a proposal will work in the first place. A promise to “fix the TTC,” for example, assumes that the proposed solution addresses the most important causes of poor service. A proposal to remove bike lanes for vehicle traffic assumes that reallocating road space will improve traffic flow and reduce travel times. Voters do not need to be policy experts, but they should develop the habit of examining those assumptions and asking whether they are supported by evidence.

Platforms must simplify complex issues, but that should not prevent us from asking critical questions about the reasoning behind them.

A candidate may offer twenty individual commitments, and use emotive language that speaks directly to your experience and perspective. Taken together, these may articulate a clear vision of the City you’ve long wanted to see happen. When you start feeling this connection, it’s important to pause and start the questions. Who pays? What gets built? What gets maintained? What gets deprioritized? What kind of public life is being imagined?

It’s not a matter of whether you feel connected to a candidate – although that is a very important factor; the harder question is whether the Toronto behind those promises is one we want to live in and if the evidence suggests they can build it.

Christopher Balkaran is a Toronto-based policy professional and host of the Open Minds Podcast, where he explores public policy, civic life, and the questions shaping Canadian society.

The post Election 2026: How to Read a Candidate’s Platform appeared first on Spacing Toronto.

The timing is good. Toronto has just come through another summer of heat, flooding, and wildfire smoke. The previous summer brought 29 days under heat warnings — nearly twice as many as the year before. Toronto’s own climate risk assessment identifies extreme heat and flooding from heavy rainfall among the city’s most urgent climate hazards.

And Torontonians head to the polls on October 26 to elect a mayor and city council whose terms will take us to 2030.

Toronto is already doing a lot. The City has identified more than 80 climate adaptation actions underway, from heat relief and wildfire smoke response to green streets, ravines and flood protection. City staff also acknowledge that there are gaps, that responsibilities and resources need to be clearer, and that the work needs to be better coordinated. A city-wide Climate Change Adaptation Action Plan is now being developed for 2027.

People are working hard across the city, often within their own organizations, sectors and mandates. We are still not moving at the scale and speed the problem demands. We need to start doing some things differently, together. One place to start is with something we rarely think of as climate infrastructure: joy.

Joy and social connection can sound light or unserious beside flood protection, cooling centres, housing retrofits, and emergency plans. Relationships matter in an emergency too. The Government of Canada’s emergency preparedness guidance says it plainly: “communities that are more connected are more resilient.” Its advice includes getting to know your neighbours, holding community events, sharing skills and tools, and knowing who may need help during an emergency.

Canadian public health researchers have similarly argued that social connection should itself be understood as an adaptation to extreme heat. During a heat wave, knowing who lives alone, who has air conditioning, who can offer a ride, or who hasn’t been seen for a few days can be a very practical form of protection.

We have known this for a long time. Research following the deadly 1995 Chicago heat wave found that people living alone had more than twice the risk of heat-related death, while having friends nearby and participating in group activities were protective. Social isolation was itself a risk factor. A 2024 review of 24 studies found something similar across disasters more broadly: social ties support information-sharing, preparedness, learning and collective action. Those relationships do not spring into existence when the smoke rolls in or the basement floods. We build them beforehand, mostly through much more ordinary things.

A neighbour is a noun. Neighbouring is a verb.

Neighbouring means noticing the older person who hasn’t come outside during a heat wave. Sharing information, tools, or a cool place to sit. Caring about the tree canopy or ravine down the street because it protects people we may never meet. Knowing enough people nearby that, when something happens, there is someone to call and some way to organize. It also means having some practice at doing things together before we really need to.

Park People has seen this in Toronto’s parks. In 2024, its Sparking Change program supported more than 50 community groups to organize 110 days of programming reaching more than 3,300 people. Those events were everyday gatherings in parks. People met. They learned one another’s names. They spent time together. Some went on to organize other things. Ninety-eight per cent of participants reported stronger community connections and 84 per cent reported a sense of belonging to their community.

There is another kind of sustainability we don’t talk about nearly enough. Most climate conversations focus on ecological sustainability and economic sustainability. There is also human and psychological sustainability: can we actually keep this up?

Climate adaptation will not be finished in five years or ten. Residents, community organizers, public servants and elected officials will be dealing with harder conditions, more often, for the foreseeable future. When the work feels like emergency, sacrifice, conflict, and bad news all the time, people burn out or tune out. That is a design problem. Joy is part of how we make long-term collective effort livable.

Research on collective climate action points in the same direction. A 2025 review of research on positivity and collective climate action found that hope and a sense that action can make a difference were repeatedly linked to people’s willingness to participate. People need some experience of being useful. Of getting somewhere. Of doing something with other people that works.

And there is a political problem here too. How do you build a constituency for investing in something most people would rather not think about? You make it part of ordinary civic life.

You give people reasons to encounter adaptation before there is a crisis. You help them see what it looks like on their own street, in their park, around their school or apartment building. You create ways to participate that do not begin with a 90-page report or a public meeting at City Hall. You make it social, tangible and, sometimes, fun.

That is where the parties come in.

A good public gathering does a lot of useful work almost by accident. Strangers end up in the same place. People talk without having signed up for a consultation. Residents meet the people who work inside institutions, and staff meet residents in a different context. People trade information. Children run around. Someone brings food. Things get explained. Connections get made. The next time we ask people to do something harder together, they have some relationships to work with.

So what could this look like? Annual reports on climate adaptation could become annual climate street festivals. Every City division involved in adaptation could have a booth where staff show Torontonians what they are doing, what has changed, and what still needs doing. Residents could meet the people responsible for flood protection, shade, emergency preparedness, ravines, housing, and public health. The Mayor could host a friendly competition for the most creative or useful booth.

We could create small neighbourhood climate funds for block parties, park gatherings, and other resident-led events. Give people a few hundred or a few thousand dollars to bring neighbours together. While they are there, they might map the closest cool spaces, meet the person who knows how to grow food, figure out who might need help during an outage, learn about basement flooding, care for a street tree, or organize around a local climate risk. This could look like a radically expanded version of existing City grants, or something new.

Preparedness starts to look like something neighbours know how to do. The Infrastructure and Environment Committee could meet outside City Hall at least once a year — in a park, ravine, or neighbourhood already experiencing climate impacts. Committee members, City staff, and residents could share food, walk the landscape, and spend some time in the places they are making decisions about.

And we could build on this year’s Kids Vote Weekend, where children will elect Toronto’s 2027 Tree of the Year, by making municipal climate decision-making more genuinely intergenerational. Babies, children, teenagers, parents, and elders all have a stake in decisions whose consequences stretch decades into the future. An intergenerational climate assembly would be messy, literally and figuratively. Good. Public life is messy. Climate adaptation certainly will be.

We still need pipes, flood protection, cooling, housing retrofits, tree canopy, emergency planning, and serious public investment. The economic case for that investment is already strong: the City notes that every public dollar invested in climate adaptation today can save governments as much as $15 in future costs. Whether people support those investments will depend partly on whether adaptation feels distant and bureaucratic or visible, understandable, and connected to everyday life.

Urbanist Jay Pitter’s work on public joy is helpful here. Her Public Joy Framework describes public joy as a form of civic, cultural, and spatial infrastructure — part of what makes life together possible. Climate adaptation is going to ask a great deal of us for a very long time.

There will be no morning when we wake up and declare Toronto successfully adapted. We will keep rebuilding, preparing, learning, caring, arguing, and adjusting. We will need infrastructure that can withstand the weather. We will also need people who can keep showing up for one another.

So plant the trees. Fix the culverts. Retrofit the buildings. Fund the work.

And throw the party.

Dr. Kate Mulligan is founder of the Department of Neighbouring and an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health. Her work explores social connection, civic life and the conditions that help communities thrive.

Natalie Brown is Senior Director at Park People, a national nonprofit that supports community leadership and shifts park systems to help connect people and nature in our cities.

Photo courtesy of Park People.

The post OP-ED: Fighting global warming with joy appeared first on Spacing Toronto.

Emulating both the visual and textual practices of French modern artist Fernand Léger (1881-1955), Goluska also reworks a passage from the artist’s essay Le Cirque (1950, see Functions of painting p. 170-171) into verse. The text is a meditation on the embodied experience of cycling: presenting the bicycle as “a ballet / where the instant / flirts with eternity. / It commands legs, arms, and torso / churning from below, at the sides / and from above.”

Goluska’s passion for cycling at least in part explains his affinity with Léger’s work, but perhaps, on some level, the message also resonated with his craft: the text, mirroring its own making, just as readily describes the embodied practice of letterpress printing.

What is letterpress printing?

Canada is home to a vibrant fine press community made up of artists, publishers, and collectors who keep the knowledge of letterpress printing alive today: using antique presses and equipment, binding books by hand, making and decorating paper, and all other handicrafts that fall under the umbrella of the book arts.

Working with bulky, specialized equipment on tight budgets, it is not unusual to find printers and bookbinders setting up shop in basements, sheds and garages – or old laneway buildings, like Toronto’s celebrated independent publisher Coach House Books.

This brings us back to the matter at hand: acquainting Toronto laneway enthusiasts with print enthusiasts.

Enter: Glenn Goluska

Born and raised in Chicago, Goluska moved to Toronto in the early 1970s to study at the University of Toronto, returning to his hometown with a B.A. and an M.A. in modern languages (Russian, French, and German), and his wife, a fellow UofT student, Chicago-native, and bookbinder, Anne Bratton (now Sutherland). In 1975, during a visit to Toronto, Goluska dropped by Coach House Press and convinced founder Stan Bevington to hire him based on phototypesetting skills he picked up in Chicago, recalling Bevington’s first assignment— “go upstairs and type yourself a job offer for Immigration” (Glenn Goluska in Toronto p. 11, see cap 11081).

While making an impact and gaining recognition at Coach House, Goluska also established his private press, imprimerie dromadaire (1976), to print books, pamphlets, and broadsides guided by his own literary and creative interests, operating from his various homes in the neighbourhood over the years. He would write or select texts, design, typeset, illustrate, and print materials, with design support and bookbinding by Anne.

In 1980, Goluska quit Coach House to establish his own commercial imprint, the Nightshade Press, a decision largely credited to Margaret Atwood, who, following her own letterpress roots, sought a printer to design her next poetry volumes, published under her own short-lived Salamander Press, according to Robert Bringhurst’s retrospective of his life.

A decade later, Goluska moved to Montreal to design for the Canadian Centre for Architecture and McGill-Queen’s University Press. Over the course of his career, he earned many awards, including the Alcuin Society’s Robert R. Reid Medal for Lifetime Achievement in the Book Arts in Canada in 2011, just months before he lost his life to lung cancer. Goluska left his Linotype and collection of type to Nova Scotia-based printer and typographer Andrew Steeves (then Gaspereau Press, and more recently, Press of the Varying Hare), where it continues to be put to active use.

The Stable

Created in 1985, we know precisely where The Bicycle broadside was printed: 105 (rear) Major St. (today’s Louie Laki Lane), the Goluskas’ new residence and studio as of Christmas 1982. The laneway home was known among friends as ‘the Stable,’ given its early twentieth-century origins.

In its first life, the Stable was the Grimsby Dairy — practically a ‘horse mansion,’ as I like to describe it at the final stop on my print culture walking tour — founded and operated by John H. Locke (ca. 1888-1929) in the early twentieth century (now commemorated in the name of Grimsby Dairy Lane, intersecting with the south end of Loui Laki Lane).

In those days, the city relied on a network of small local dairies (commonly tucked away in back alleys) to distribute fresh milk daily. According to the city’s “Made in Toronto” web exhibit on local food manufacturing, by the start of the century, “Toronto received nearly 20,000 gallons of milk each day from approximately 900 farms within a 40-mile radius, sometimes travelling for up to 36 hours before reaching the consumer.” While the supply chain expanded rapidly to keep up with the city’s growing population, it also required increased regulation, being particularly vulnerable to contamination and market pressures.

During its active years, the two-storey brick-and-concrete Grimsby Dairy sheltered wagons and horses for milk delivery around the neighbourhood. The ground level, formerly storing the wagons and harnesses, just over half a century later would come to house Glenn’s presses, type, and Linotype machine. A ramp led horses up to the stalls on the second level, which later came to be Anne’s bindery, their living quarters and kitchen, according to accounts from Bringhurst and Douglas Fetherling.

Today, over a century later, passersby can still spot rare remnants of the stable’s original architecture and function, including a metal beam and loop towards the roof on the exterior wall, intended to hoist hay up to the loft through the double door (originally a hay door), as well as metal guards framing the ground-level garage doors, to shield the brickwork from passing wagons and horses.

A couple of oral history interviews conducted by the Harbord Village Residents’ Association (HVRA) in 2013 remarkably record some memories of the dairy. Take, for instance, the anecdote Arthur Zimmerman tells of his mother’s childhood, recalling how her sister would “ride the mares up and down the lanes … for exercise.” Zimmerman’s grandmother, looking out the back window of their home would see his “aunt’s head bobbing up and down behind the fence at the back, riding a horse.”

From what I can tell, no mention of Goluska’s studio or parties come up in the oral history project, and after contacting members of the HVRA, there is limited collective memory of Goluska’s presence in the laneway beyond the printing community.

Goluska’s imprimerie dromadaire and the Nightshade Press, alongside Coach House Press and others, model the affinity between print culture and the backstreets, from designing ephemeral neighbourhood signage with a personal and whimsical touch, to reuniting their nineteenth-twentieth century equipment with heritage buildings (and thereby safeguarding both). The printing trade, like the early dairy industry and the Stable itself, has weathered successive waves of technological change. But these crafts, labour histories, and peripheral sites form an important backdrop in our city’s story and reveal enduring lessons around community-building, collective response to emerging technologies, and the value of making (beautiful, quality) things by hand.

Afterword

As I write this, I have just returned from a trip to Nova Scotia, where I had the pleasure of meeting Andrew Steeves for the first time at his Press of the Varying Hare, the newest home of Goluska’s former equipment. Steeves also happens to be the printer commissioned to design the promotional poster for the upcoming Fisher Small & Fine Press Fair, in which playful and colourful letterpress techniques are on full display (not to mention typeset with wood type formerly belonging to Glenn Goluska). A couple of lucky visitors will have the chance to take home one of the 52 limited-edition copies of the handprinted poster to be raffled off by the Fisher Library at the fair.

If any of the above piques your interest, please join us at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library on Saturday September 19, 2026. The Small & Fine Press Fair is a biennial event, bringing together some of Canada’s finest book artists to display and sell their works, ranging from bookmarks, cards, and posters to rare, limited-edition handmade volumes. Drop in any time between 10:00 AM-5:00 PM. This event is free and open to the public. See the event page for more information and a full list of participating vendors.

Note: Unless otherwise indicated, all featured imprimerie dromadaire / Nightshade Press imprints were scanned from handprinted originals held at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library.

Leora Bromberg is the acquisitions specialist, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, and the designer/leader of a new walking tour called Toronto in print.

The post Intersections of print culture in Toronto’s laneways appeared first on Spacing Toronto.

The Telegram, popularly known as the Tely, was a broadsheet newspaper published between 1876 and 1971. Its photo archive, comprising 18,335 images, is housed in the Clara Thomas Archives & Special Collections at York University. Dick Leok was born in Amsterdam in 1940 and came to Canada in 1962. He had a long career as a news photographer based in Toronto, first for the Telegram and, after its demise, for the Star.

This series depicts commercial activity along the east side of Yonge from the Dundas intersection to just north of Gould Street. Dick Loek shot all the photos at night on Saturday, November 6, 1965 using a hand-held 35 mm camera. (A more conventional view taken three weeks later by Telegram photographer Madison Sale shows the same scene with Christmas lights added.)

The archival citations for these photos don’t include captions or any information about the story they were meant to illustrate. One can speculate that it had to do with the reputation of the neighbourhood in general, and in particular that of a certain “adult” book store. If the story made it into print in the Telegram, it’s unlikely that many photos were included. Only in an archival context can they be recognized as a coherent body of work.

Under these lighting conditions, a news photographer would normally have resorted to a professional flash unit, which had the advantage yielding flatly lit images suitable for low-quality newspaper reproduction. By shooting under available light, Loek was taking expressive liberties with image quality. He may have been asserting his identity as an artist and challenging his editors to accept the new form of small-camera photojournalism exemplified by contemporary coverage of the war in Vietnam. It’s also possible that his editors were looking for this kind of edgy reportage on a controversial subject.

Working with available light allowed Loek to remain in the background when it was convenient, but he also engaged directly with some of his subjects. HIs view of a street vendor selling a bag of roasted chestnuts to a cab driver exists in several versions. The same vendor appears in photos he took in front of the Biltmore Theatre, Times Square Books and the Coq D’or Tavern.

The hamburger joint shown in the series was probably the short-lived Stop & Go Standburger at 353 Yonge, one door north of the legendary A&A Books and Records. The interior photo Loek took of customers reflected in the restaurant’s large mirrors brings to mind the work of Robert Frank, whose monograph, “The Americans” had appeared in 1958.

Loek also managed to photograph two young women hesitating outside the door of Times Square Books at 3291/2, Yonge. According to Toronto historian Jamie Bradburn, Times Square “serviced patrons looking for thrills in the pages of titles like French Spice, Mr. Cool, and Sizzle.” It was open 24 hours, and was known for flouting the City’s Sunday closing bylaw. The customers Loek photographed standing at the long magazine racks were, unsurprisingly, all male.

Dick Loek was know for having an engaging personality, but perhaps more important to the success of this series was his point of view as an immigrant who had only arrived in Canada three years earlier, at age 22. He portrays the Yonge Street strip of 1965 as a scene of enchantment, and the individuals he encounters there as fascinating in their ordinariness.

All images unless otherwise specified: Yonge Street, November 6, 1965, photographed by Dick Loek (York University Libraries, Clare Thomas Archives and Special Collections, Toronto Telegram Fonds).

Thank you to the York University Archives for their assistance with this project.

The post Yonge Street, Evening, November 6, 1965 appeared first on Spacing Toronto.

The invitation came from Kathleen Wynne, then premier, someone I had first known as Minister of Transportation. We had worked together during my time as CEO of the Share the Road Cycling Coalition, advocating for laws and policies that would make Ontario’s roads safer for everyone. When she asked me to run, I remember asking her plainly: “Why me? What do you see that makes you think I should be part of your team?”

Her answer has stayed with me ever since. “Because you have been through things. And I admire how you’ve turned adversity into policy and societal change. I’m inviting you to bring that work into government — to continue the change we need, and that you are seeking.”

She was referring, of course, to the loss of my husband, OPP Sergeant Greg Stobbart, killed by a careless driver in 2006 while out on a training ride. His death shattered my world — and reshaped it. It forced me to confront not only my own grief, but the systemic failures that made his death possible.

That grief became the catalyst for a transformation: personal, political, and ultimately provincial. It led to legislative change, new cycling strategies, and a movement of people across Ontario who simply want safer streets and healthier communities.

That journey taught me something essential: when we centre people — their stories, their safety, their daily realities — policy becomes a tool for healing and progress. When we don’t, it becomes a weapon.

And today, as Ontario enters another municipal election cycle — especially in Toronto — I see cycling being weaponized in ways that feel painfully familiar. Not because the issue is inherently divisive, but because `wedge to win’ politics has replaced what should be at the centre of every conversation: people.

One candidate in Toronto, Brad Bradford, has promised to remove cycling infrastructure on Bloor Street — one of the city’s most important east‑west corridors — and has suggested that cyclists should simply use side streets, ravines, or multi‑use paths instead.

But this framing ignores a basic truth about how cities function: the best cycling infrastructure in the world is built where people actually want to go. Paris, Montreal, London, New York — none of these cities send cyclists on detours through back routes while reserving the main streets for cars. They build cycling networks on the very streets that connect people to their daily lives.

As the Danish architect and planner Jan Gehl reminds us, cities are for people — how they live, and how they move.

We would never tell motorists they cannot drive to the places they need to go: their workplace, their child’s school, their favourite restaurant, their bank, their grocery store. Yet cyclists are routinely told that their destinations are somehow less legitimate, that their mobility should be relegated to the margins.

Cyclists want to go to the same places motorists do — because they are the same people, simply choosing a different mode of travel.

Self‑serving narratives have crowded out lived experience. Polarization has replaced problem‑solving. Cycling — an activity that 3.2 million Ontarians do weekly or daily — has been turned into a proxy battle for something it is not.

Our polling at Share the Road confirms what most of us already know: 22% of Ontarians cycle at least weekly, and 87% of us are cyclists, motorists, pedestrians, and transit users. We are not separate tribes. We are the same people, moving through our communities in different ways depending on the day, the weather, the trip, or the need.

The wedge politics that frame cycling as “you versus me” is not only false — it’s harmful. It pits neighbours against one another while doing nothing to solve the real crises facing our cities: affordability, congestion, mental and physical wellbeing. And the irony is that cycling is a solution to all of them.

Cycling is one of the most affordable ways to get around. It reduces congestion because every person on a bike means fewer cars on the road. It improves mental health, physical health, and community connection. Cycling is a climate solution hiding in plain sight. And yet, instead of embracing it, we are watching it become a casualty of culture‑war politics.

This is not just a Toronto story. Across Ontario, municipal candidates are being told — implicitly or explicitly — that cycling is politically dangerous. That building bike lanes is a risk. That supporting active transportation is a liability. That the loudest voices define the public will.

And this is exactly why, at the Ontario Bike Summit taking place later this month in Toronto, municipal leaders, planners, engineers, staff, and advocates will gather to explore these themes — to share knowledge, confront the polarization challenge head‑on, and discuss how to change the narrative. Because the consequences of the province’s decisions ripple far beyond Toronto.

Rural municipalities and small towns, many of which are working hard to attract tourists seeking cycling and active travel experiences, are feeling the impact too. When provincial choices constrain local action, communities across Ontario lose opportunities to build safer streets, support local economies, and welcome visitors who want to explore by bike.

The loudest voices are not the largest group. They are simply the most amplified.

The real story is quieter, steadier, and far more representative: millions of Ontarians want to cycle more often. They want safer streets. They want choices. They want communities where getting to work, school, or the grocery store doesn’t require navigating fear.

As we enter the cut and thrust of municipal campaigns, it’s impossible to ignore the role of the Ontario government — because municipalities are creatures of the province. The decisions made at Queen’s Park shape what cities can build, fund, and prioritize. And right now, those decisions are being influenced by a culture war that has nothing to do with the lived reality of Ontarians who simply want safer, more connected communities.

Culture wars make for compelling headlines. They do not make for good policy.

The stakes are high. The choices made by voters in this election — and the choices made by the province— will define the future of our cities for decades. Will we build communities that reflect how people actually move? Will we invest in infrastructure that supports health, affordability, and resilience? Will we listen to evidence instead of outrage? Will we allow polarization to continue shaping decisions that affect millions of people who are simply trying to get home safely?

I think back often to that conversation in 2014 — to Premier Wynne’s insistence that lived experience matters, that adversity can be a source of clarity, that policy can be a tool for change. She was right. And that truth feels even more urgent now.

We can choose a different path. One that is centred on people, not politics. One that recognizes cycling not as a symbol in a culture war, but as a practical, human‑scale solution to the challenges facing our cities.

It’s a path that honours the stories — including mine — that have shaped Ontario’s cycling movement. The culture war is loud, but it quiets the moment we listen to people — because protecting their safety, with evidence not ideology, is what must guide our decisions and our city building.

The Hon. Eleanor McMahon is a former Ontario cabinet minister, executive and cycling safety advocate who work has shaped provincial and national active transportation policy. She founded the Share the Road Cycling Coalition in 2007 and now chairs the board. She also leads McMahon Public Affairs and Communications and serves on several other boards. 

The post Election 2026: Culture wars are warping cycling policy appeared first on Spacing Toronto.

Housing. Transit. Crime. Taxes. Bike lanes. Billy Bishop Airport. Almost every major issue facing Toronto turns on the same question. Who should decide: the City, the Province, or the federal government?

“Local” decisions have become battles over jurisdiction instead of debates about what is best for Toronto and its residents.

As Torontonians prepare to vote in municipal elections this October, we should be asking every candidate, and ourselves, a simple question: what should local democracy look like?

That question sits at the heart of the City of Toronto’s Municipal Autonomy and Effective Local Governance Program Advisory Body (MAPAB), whose final report was presented to Toronto’s Executive Committee on July 21, its final meeting before the election.

For eight months in 2025 and 2026, the three of us served on this advisory committee, alongside other experts and local community advocates with interests in municipal governance, constitutional law, and civic engagement.

Together, we examined Toronto’s relationship with the Province of Ontario, compared the City’s governance with cities across Canada and internationally, explored legal pathways for strengthening municipal autonomy, and considered how to ensure a democratic process would guide any future discussion of a city charter.

We have two broad conclusions:

First, Toronto requires greater municipal autonomy and stronger, more inclusive practices of local democracy. Giving City Hall more power is not, by itself, the same thing as strengthening democracy, and making it more representative, participatory and accountable. These goals must be pursued together.

Second, we need stronger political institutions and norms that give all municipalities, not just Toronto, a more meaningful voice in decision-making. Government relationships and authorities are unclear and out of balance.

As it stands, the City must regularly ask permission or seek clarification from the provincial government before adopting local policies and programs. Information provided by the City Clerk’s Office indicates that City Council has sought permission, clarification, or legislative changes from the Government of Ontario more than two dozen times during the 2022–2026 term, while the province has also intervened directly in local decisions concerning planning, development rules, and transportation policy. Ultimately, Toronto’s authority remains subject to provincial oversight and unilateral intervention.

This is not effective local government. We need a more defined, balanced arrangement. In the long run, our report identifies a constitutionally protected city charter as the most secure pathway to greater autonomy. That would require negotiation with the province and a single-province constitutional amendment. But there is a lot we can and should do in the meanwhile.

The City of Toronto Act was intended to give Toronto broader powers, but it did not change the fundamental relationship with the province. Further statutory and institutional reforms could produce a more balanced relationship, even if they cannot provide the security of constitutional protection. Our report is not a blueprint demanding a single outcome. It is an invitation to think more carefully about how local democracy should work in one of North America’s largest cities.

Greater autonomy does not mean complete independence. Toronto cannot, and should not, shield every decision it makes from provincial or federal involvement. Like every municipality in Canada, Toronto lacks the financial resources to solve its challenges on its own.

Moreover, many of the city’s biggest challenges can only be addressed through cooperation with our neighbours in the region. Following the 1998 amalgamation of the municipalities comprising Metro Toronto into the City of Toronto, there were a few attempts to create more systematic forms of regional governance, but they have not produced a durable solution. We need better ways for mayors and councils across the GTA to work together.

Public transit, for example, makes the problem obvious. Millions of trips cross municipal boundaries, while responsibility is divided among municipalities, the province, Metrolinx, and other agencies. Metrolinx, in particular, lacks the direct political accountability and public accessibility found in municipal institutions such as the TTC Board of Commissioners. There is no durable, accountable forum through which GTA municipalities collectively coordinate and govern transit across the region.

We should therefore think carefully about which decisions are best made locally, which require shared responsibility, and how governments can work together more effectively. The goal should be to build more balanced relationships between City Hall, Queen’s Park, Ottawa, and our municipal neighbours.

Toronto’s governance debate isn’t peculiar to Toronto. It is part of a broader question confronting both small and large cities about how power is organized, how residents are represented, and how cities work with other governments. Chicago, for example, is debating state legislation that would allow it to establish a charter commission and put a new governing charter before voters.

We also need to talk about what, and who, we mean when we say “local.”

That starts with representation itself. Since the province reduced Toronto City Council from a planned 47 wards to 25 in 2018, the average ward population has grown from roughly 61,000 to more than 116,000 residents. That makes it considerably harder for councilors to maintain meaningful relationships with the communities they represent.

Those communities are pretty diverse, too. While Toronto has good things to say about social equity, it has struggled to ensure that residents who experience marginalization based on social identities, immigration status, or abilities, are truly and fairly involved in local democracy.

Public engagement includes the right of residents to participate in formal consultations and to bring their own issues to their representatives, not merely to ‘approve’ or witness Council approving decisions already made.  Too often, public engagement occurs downstream, after priorities have been set and solutions have taken shape. Moreover, meaningful public engagement cannot be reduced to a standard survey followed by limited, often unrepresentative consultations. There are many other possible options for engagement to be empowered, layered, inclusive, and accessible. Plain-language materials, translated resources, and accessible formats are essential to informed participation.

Such practices are directly connected to any plans for a city charter: the process by which a charter is created or revised carries as much democratic weight as the document itself.

An important conclusion of our MAPAB work is that if Toronto ever pursues a city charter, its legitimacy cannot rest solely with the Province or Toronto City Council. It must also be built through inclusive and robust public participation and deliberation that goes well beyond the “town hall” info session.

Meaningful public engagement must begin before solutions are drafted. Residents should have opportunities to learn about the issues, deliberate with one another, hear different perspectives, and understand the trade-offs involved in different approaches.

Just as importantly, governments must be clear from the outset about how public input will influence the final outcome. Without full transparency, any push for greater local autonomy risks deepening the public’s frustration, cynicism, and distrust of public institutions.

The MAPAB report offers a foundation for these conversations. Executive Committee directed City staff to return in 2027 with an analysis of the report’s findings and recommendations. But it is up to all of us, elected officials, candidates, and residents alike, to take it further and build a stronger and more democratic future for Toronto.

The Council Torontonians elect this October will inherit this conversation. Mayoral and Council candidates should have something intelligent to say during the election campaign about specific ideas for how and where they will work with others, and how they will make sure all voices are heard.

If their answer is “hold a town hall,” we hope you will tell them that is not good enough.

photo by David Ing (cc)

Nick Vlahos is Managing Director of the Center for Democracy Innovation. Patricia Wood is Professor of Geography at York University. Gabriel Eidelman is Associate Professor at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.

The post Election 2026: Let’s talk about local democracy in Toronto appeared first on Spacing Toronto.

Spacing

So, here we are on the eve of the firing of the starter’s pistol for the mayoral race, and Brad Bradford is already mired in the company-you-keep problem.

Or, maybe to put it more precisely, the judgment deficit problem. Because the j-word is definitely something voters, including those who are right-of-centre but not maniacally so, will have to contend with as e-day approaches.

This week’s choice example has to do with an X-post by his spin doctor, Warren Kinsella, who first opined that Mayor Olivia Chow was over-reacting in the run-up to Wednesday’s biblical storm, and then had to issue an exceedingly rare apology in the face of all the destruction, not to mention the blow-back on Bradford’s campaign.

Kinsella is a for-hire bomb-lobber, and the attention to his tweet over-shadowed the more salient point, which is that Bradford hired him in the first place. And this wasn’t his only recent miscalculation: Bradford, who has raced early towards the endorsements chapter of the election narrative, got a plug from former small business lobbyist Catherine Swift, only to walk it back within hours after the social-media universe shared recent evidence of her Islamophobia.

Exhibit C, for me, is Bradford’s expedient retreat from his hard-line stance on bike lanes, which he show-cased earlier in the summer with a pledge to remove the Bloor lanes through the Kingsway and into Etobicoke.

As has been widely reported, Bradford voted for said bike lanes, but now thinks bike lanes should be routed through an imaginary off-street path. Trickier, though, is how, as mayor, he’d deal with the Ford government’s much more expansive desecration, which includes, initially, all the lanes on Bloor, Yonge, University and Danforth, as well as a veto on future ones.

On Wednesday, he attempted to thread the political needle by claiming he still supports the very lanes that will be torn out (except the Kingsway and points west ones), then asserting that none of this would have happened three years ago if the city had “listened to the community,” whatever that means.

And herein lies the essence of Bradford’s judgment deficit, as well as his related habit of saying anything that he thinks will win him votes. In the last several weeks, as the volume on the race ratchets up, Bradford’s been making hay with an entirely fatuous, and obviously self-serving, line of reasoning. He’s blaming Chow for Ford’s excesses — Ontario Place, the Science Centre, the island airport mess, bike lanes — because it appears to position him, a candidate for mayor, as a critic of Chow, while actually not critiquing the current provincial government.

He claims, all evidence to the contrary, that he’d have negotiated better deals with Ford to save the family jewels. But how do we know?

The rhetoric reminds me of the way Pierre Poilievre has spent much of the past year fruitlessly blaming Mark Carney for not landing some kind of deal with Donald Trump’s insane administration. Again, how do we know he’d have done a better job?

The conflation of accusations that lack any basis in reality with the appearance of offering both a critique and a forward-looking plan is the sleight of hand here, an attempt to bamboozle voters who might be sitting on the fence by, well, performing opposition.

There’s plenty of room to take issue with Chow’s leadership — high tax increases, no obvious effort to confront the city’s bureaucratic excesses, a lack of responsiveness to mounting evidence of police corruption, some waffling on zoning reform.

But as Poilievre does with his endlessly shifting attacks, Bradford test drives various talking points — there was a whole series of short videos with business people frustrated by red tape earlier in the summer — but invariably gravitates back to the click-bait issues: violent crime (Salsa), homelessness (Sankofa Square), and attacks on Chow that should really be attacks on Ford (but for his lack of spine).

As for his proxies attacking Chow for somehow allowing Toronto’s infrastructure to be vulnerable in the face of a violent storm, Bradford’s own participation in years of municipal decisions about huge capital budgets puts the lie to these claims, which nonetheless went viral on social media in the past two days. (For the record, as my colleague Matt Elliott recorded, council two years ago, on a motion by Chow and former Scarborough councillor Jennifer McKelvie, unanimously — i.e., including Bradford — adopted a far-ranging strategy to reduce run-off and mitigate flooding.)

Setting aside the specifics, Bradford and his alternates are tacking directly in the opposite direction from what we’re seeing nationally — the public’s appetite for, and support of, stable leadership and meticulous strategic planning. What voters don’t want is more of the news-cycle sugar highs that seem to be the preferred mode of engagement for Alberta separatists, B.C.’s weird conservatives, Poilievre and his spin-doctors, and, now, a forty-year-old planner turned councillor who wants everyone to believe he’ll be a better, well, somethingorother.

That positioning, to my mind, reveals the calculus of an unserious politician with demonstrably poor, if not terrible, judgment, the evidence of which is really starting to pile up.

To borrow a phrase, Toronto can do better than a cynic like Brad Bradford.

The post Brad Bradford’s glaring judgment problem appeared first on Spacing Toronto.

An original thinker, Brown has run for mayor twice, coming in third in 2022. Now, the former director of Solidarity in Numbers Co-op is tackling Etobicoke North (Ward 1), the stronghold of the Ford clan. Currently, the ward’s councillor is Vincent Crisanti, a staunch Ford supporter who has been councillor in that part of the city on and off over 20 years.

Brown, 35, is a former policy analyst at the Future Skills Centre. She is passionate about transforming the complexities of public administration into tangible community benefits. And she espouses a true love for the community in which she grew up. Spacing sat down with the candidate to understand her desire to run in Ward 1.

Spacing: You are running on a platform of affordability. Where would you begin?

Chloe Brown: There’s a lot of underused and vacant lands in North Etobicoke, so adding more people to the tax base is one way to start addressing affordability. How do you do that? Building housing. Right now, one of the largest undeveloped tracts is the Woodbine Casino [north of Woodbine Racetrack]. It’s 684 acres, and there’s a 25-year residential project in the works, as they’ve just completed the secondary plan. They’re supposed to be mid-rises, affordable. It’s supposed to have 20,000 residents.

I’d begin by putting public assets to work for public good—not private profit. My approach is rooted in what’s called Community Wealth Building, and it starts with concrete, local action: Set aside city-owned land and a portion of public contracts for cooperatives and social enterprises that provide living wages to non-executive workers. Rezone aging malls into community hubs that cluster essential services under one roof. Partner with labour unions to build mid-rise housing and co-ops, not just condos. And pilot a shared-services grocery store model to lower food costs and stabilize local supply.

Spacing: What’s happening at Humber College’s north Etobicoke campus?

CB: Seven thousand people were recently laid off!

Humber has been slow to translate its institutional presence into tangible community benefit. It’s a major anchor in Etobicoke North, yet we’re not seeing the kind of workforce pipelines, local hiring commitments, or partnership opportunities that a college of its size should be delivering.

Humber’s layoffs are a crisis and an opportunity. I’d use social procurement to attach community benefit agreements to city contracts—requiring developers on major Etobicoke projects to hire Humber students and faculty, among other ideas.

Spacing: You grew up near Islington and Finch. What was it like then?

CB: I grew up at 2765 Islington—right across from a community centre, beside the Humber River Trail, and strip plazas. I would bike everywhere. My building was a true mix of immigrants and locals. I spent most of my time at Gord and Irene Risk Community Centre, Albion Library and pool, and the Woodbine Fantasy Fair. But what really made it work was affordability and access. The grocery run was Knob Hill Farms at Weston and the 401, Galati’s, and No Frills. Woodbine Mall gave us department stores like The Bay and a place to go for entertainment. Weston Road itself was—and still is—a vibrant main street. As a kid, I had everything I needed.

But when I went downtown, everything changed. Subways, museums, galleries, Electric Circus, big events—it hypnotized me and made me want to live downtown. And that’s the problem. We’ve built a city where all the energy, investment, and opportunity flows downtown, while places like Etobicoke North stay frozen in time.

Spacing: You’ve been outspoken about the current political climate, saying, “I want to drag Doug Ford into the ground.”

CB: Doug Ford got his start in local politics. It’s really important that we take responsibility for the bad actor that we’re allowing to govern the province. If [you] want us to stop Doug, it’s about putting attention back in North Etobicoke. A lot of advocacy groups I’ve worked with in the downtown core seem to not understand that we have the same desires in Ward 1, and we would be willing to work with you if you were willing to come up north of Bloor.

Spacing: So you are saying everything north of Eglinton is forgotten.

CB: It’s treated like a no man’s land. Doug Ford fundamentally understands that as long as he can position himself as a good guy against City Hall neglect, he will always win. If we want to get rid of Doug Ford at the premier level, we have to get residents in the local neighbourhood feeling empowered.

Spacing: You want to fight against Ford’s encroachment on the City of Toronto?

CB: To be honest, this neighbourhood is Conservative – for 30 years. While I am hopeful, I am fighting against one of the largest machines in Ontario politics.

Spacing: Tell us about canvassing in competition with Crisanti.

CB: There’s mixed reactions. Because voter turnout is low, some don’t know his name. Those that are connected to politics or community organizing say he’ll be hard to beat because he’s finally hired enough staff to be responsive. BUT they’re encouraged to see how many young candidates and volunteers there are.

Something I’ve heard from a lot of residents at the door: they feel stigmatized by downtown. Like the conversation around bike lanes. People are cyclists up here too. Where are the cyclist groups coming up to North Etobicoke to make a stand? The loss of bike lanes doesn’t affect downtown Toronto only. The housing crisis doesn’t affect downtown only. Vincent Crisanti, the incumbent, was absent for 332 council votes since the last general election. Crisanti should resign. He has no vision, no plan for poverty reduction, and no strategy to advance prosperity in Etobicoke North –– his voting record makes that clear. He’s been absent for more than one in every five decisions that determine access to funding, programming, training, and operational support for this ward.

His absenteeism mirrors Doug Ford’s approach at Queen’s Park—where the legislature sat just 51 days in 2025. By contrast, even councillors I disagree with politically—like Stephen Holyday—have perfect attendance and show up to fight for their communities. Living in the ward isn’t enough. Proximity without presence, and presence without a plan, delivers nothing for the people who need it most.

Spacing: Ward 1 gained 5,937 voters since 2022, more than Crisanti’s 3,406 winning margin. Did that influence your decision?

CB: No. I’m running because Ward 1 is my home—where I grew up and where I’ve watched neighbours step up time and again in the absence of real political leadership. I’m tired of parties treating this community like a voting bank while ignoring their basic duty to govern with integrity and govern democratically. For me, service isn’t a slogan—it’s how I show up. As I approach 40, I want to look back and know I gave everything I had to lift up the people I care about.

Spacing: What inroads have you made in Etobicoke North that give you a fighting chance?

CB: I’ve already done the work—without holding office. I authored the Community Benefit Agreement for the Woodbine Casino redevelopment with the Toronto Youth Cabinet. As Phase 2 moves forward, my hands-on experience in granting, public tendering, benefit agreements, and workforce development puts me ahead of an incumbent who has been reactive at best.

Beyond that, my policy work with George Brown College and TMU connected me directly to key organizations and initiatives—including the federal Future Skills Centre and provincial programs that recruit and train skilled trades workers. These aren’t just résumé lines; they’re relationships and frameworks I can activate immediately to deliver for Etobicoke North.

Spacing: You’ve said, “If I get elected, I’m going to build bike lanes outside Ford’s office.” Another line: “Asking a politician to set their own term, is like asking a toddler to set their own bedtime.” Opponents could use that against you.

CB: I see myself as candid. I speak plainly about the patterns of behaviour that are eroding public trust in democracy, and I offer straightforward solutions. I’m not interested in fitting into my opponents’ idea of what a politician should sound like, because that status quo is exactly what got us here. I know I’m not perfect, and I own that. But the myth of the flawless, all-knowing leader is part of the problem. My willingness to be imperfect isn’t a liability—it’s what makes me accessible to people who are tired of soundbites and hungry for substance. I’d rather be real than rehearsed. If opponents want to weaponize my honesty, that’s their choice.

Spacing: Do you think there is a change-up fuelling progressive hope? Given the rise of Zorhan Mamdani, I’m curious what you think.

CB: What Mamdani has accomplished in New York is nothing short of remarkable, and it’s a powerful signal that voters are hungry for something different. That said, we have to be careful about drawing direct parallels between New York and Toronto—they operate within very different political ecosystems.

My hope lies in the public itself. More and more, people are getting crystal clear about what they want: genuine democratic governance, an economy that rewards social good over sociopathic greed, and a society that prioritizes caring for community ahead of concentrating capital in the hands of a small number of people, companies, or market sectors. That shift in public consciousness is real, and it’s far more durable than any single election cycle.

Spacing: What is one thing Toronto residents could do to stop being part of this picture you’ve painted and take a step in the right direction?

CB: Step out of your comfort zone. Be a tourist in your own city. I’m always surprised when I tell people I’m running in North Etobicoke, and so they’re shocked that it’s a part of Toronto. Be a tourist in your own city. Give people you don’t know more respect. Being a tourist is a humbling experience because you have to lean on the locals and their local knowledge.

I wish more Torontonians would gain the courage to come up and actually just see what we have out here. There’s delicious food outside of the downtown core. There’s arts programming. There’s everything that you think is exclusive to the downtown core. If you’re willing to give Chloe Brown a chance, give all of the people I grew up around a chance too, because that is the only way anyone can feel potential.

photo by Janice Reid

Sue Grimbly is a freelance editor and writer.

The post The Return of Chloe Brown appeared first on Spacing Toronto.

Growing up in Scarborough, I routinely watched mayoral debates frame transit through the experience of downtown residents. Scarborough community members, it seemed, were adequately served by a network of buses connecting them to a small number of subway stations. The geography of the borough however, told a different story. Scarborough was expanding north and east, while its subway connections remained concentrated along its southern and western edges. Residents relied heavily on buses moving through ordinary traffic as mayoral candidates debated new streetcars and shorter wait times for downtown crowds.

In more recent years, candidates began using phrases Scarborough residents had understood for too long: Scarborough has been forgotten when it comes to transit. Transit proposals began accumulating alongside that language. Priority bus lanes appeared on the same street where I grew up. The Scarborough East Rapid Transit Line, formerly the Eglinton East LRT, remains part of the conversation today, while repeated promises of a subway extension eventually became a project currently under construction. To someone who had grown up watching buses struggle through traffic, these investments felt overdue. They also made the candidates advancing them sound as though they understood Scarborough.

That feeling of being understood matters in politics. To feel forgotten while living in Canada’s largest city was to feel that Scarborough’s frustrations belonged only at dinner tables and in private rooms. We were part of Toronto, but we were also from Scarborough: a distinction that carried both pride and distance from the city’s political centre. When candidates began using the same language publicly, those private frustrations entered mayoral debates, campaign platforms, and nightly news reports. The problem was no longer treated as merely personal or local; it had become part of the city’s public conversation. That is the power of political recognition: a candidate who accurately names an experience can begin to sound credible before the proposed remedy has been examined.

Recognizing a problem and solving it are different political achievements. Recognition can happen in a campaign sentence; solving a problem can extend far beyond a four-year term. A credible plan must connect a long-term vision with immediate steps: what can improve now, what infrastructure must be built over time, and how future growth will affect the services residents rely on.

This is where critical listening begins. Voters do not need to master the how of municipal government. Instead, listening for three things could be most beneficial: does the office have the authority to act? What funding, approvals and partners stand between the announcement and its completion? What will residents experience while they wait?

That last question is especially important for transit. A long-term project may outlive several terms of council, while residents must continue travelling through construction, delays, and changing routes. A candidate should therefore be able to explain both the destination and the journey: what can improve now, what can reasonably be accomplished during the next term, and what will depend on future councils or other governments. These questions actively help voters distinguish between a compelling vision and a credible plan.

What does this kind of listening look like in practice? Consider SmartTrack, the centrepiece of John Tory’s 2014 mayoral campaign. Tory spoke to a frustration many Toronto residents understood: building transit seemed to take far too long. His answer was a 53-kilometre “surface subway” that would largely use existing GO rail corridors. The proposal included 22 stops and was supposed to be delivered within seven years.

Once Tory became mayor, however, the promise entered the machinery of government. City staff began studying its infrastructure requirements, projected ridership, costs, and relationship with the province’s GO expansion program. The original vision was gradually transformed. Council approved six new stations in 2016, and the program was reduced to five in 2021. By the end of 2024, escalating costs led Council to prioritize three stations and defer two others until additional funding could be found.

Critical listening does not require dismissing SmartTrack as a failure. New stations are still being built, and parts of the original proposal were absorbed into other transit plans. But its evolution gives voters important questions to ask before accepting a campaign timetable. Has the proposal undergone technical and financial analysis? Which parts depend on the province or federal government? What assumptions must hold for the promised timeline to remain credible? And if the project changes substantially, what will count as fulfilling the original commitment?

Listening to a candidate name a frustration that had long gone unrecognized matters. But recognition should begin our listening. Once a candidate has our attention, harder questions must follow. Does the proposal address the problem residents actually experience? Does the candidate understand what the office can accomplish? Can the promise survive the costs, partnerships, trade-offs, and time required to turn it into public policy?

Critical listening means remaining open without judgment. A candidate may earn our attention by speaking our language. To earn our confidence, their promise must survive deeper questions.

Christopher Balkaran is a Toronto-based policy professional and host of the Open Minds Podcast, where he explores public policy, civic life, and the questions shaping Canadian society.

The post Election 2026: How to critically listen to a municipal candidate appeared first on Spacing Toronto.

Participants in the video underscore the character and life that public art brings to spaces, as well as the need to adequately plan for maintenance. Risks to artists and communities posed by failing to keep spaces in good condition are also considered. Discussion topics also cover quick accessibility fixes to help maintain enjoyment for all visitors.

Watch the video:

https://vimeo.com/1133293342
06:42 mins, CC

Roll/Walk & Talk Video Participants:
Diane Kolin, ArtsAbly, Researcher, Waterfront Accessibility Advisory Committee
Emily Gillespie, Writer, Researcher
Jen Conroy, Accessibility Advocate
Shaun Pearen, Canary District Neighbourhood Association
Adam Cohoon, Artist, Advocate, Researcher
Videographer: Justin Peterson
Producer: Devon Ostrom

AccessArt / Artmap.ca is a team of Disabled, D/deaf and Neurodivergent artists and collaborators who have assessed over 1800 outdoor art sites across Canada. AccessArt’s mission is to expand who shapes and enjoys the benefits of creative public spaces. This work has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.

Previously on Spacing by AccessArt / Artmap:
PART 1: Can I go there? Do I want to go there?
PART 2: Can I move around and get close to the art?
PART 3: What do I feel?
PART 4: What do I think?

The post VIDEO: Art of Maintenance appeared first on Spacing Toronto.

On an icy day last December, Mac Bauer, AKA the 514runner, beat the brand-new Finch LRT by 18 minutes over 10 kilometres. In a recent rematch, Mac lost to the LRT after measures were taken to speed it up. Why did it take so much public attention to get it right?

On King Street, Toronto dramatically improved streetcar speed and reliability, then slowly allowed enforcement, construction and other changes to eat away at the gains. Meanwhile, the cycling network remains fragmented and undersized.

Different modes, same underlying problem. People walking and cycling, transit vehicles, trucks and cars, along with deliveries, patios, parking and construction, all compete for the same limited space.

Yet Toronto continues to plan, manage and debate this space in silos. Our actions, and too often our inaction, have produced expensive but underperforming infrastructure and corridors that try to meet every need but serve none well. The consequences for our economy and quality of life are real.

The question is not whether Toronto should favour one mode over all others, but whether the City can make difficult choices, use its assets more effectively and be accountable for the results.

One street network, many institutions

The street is one system but City Hall treats it like several. Transportation Services controls streets and signals and much of the cycling network. The TTC plans and operates transit, but generally not the streets or signals its vehicles run on. The Toronto Parking Authority manages parking and Bike Share. Planning, construction, licensing, and enforcement all shape the same space. Political responsibility is scattered among Council committees, agency boards, and individual councillors.

The governance structure reinforces these silos. The TTC and the TPA each have boards focused on their own mandates, while roads, cycling, and pedestrian infrastructure run through City divisions and Council committees. Holistic oversight is absent, with no board or Council committee looking after transportation as a whole.

Every part of the transportation system has its own priorities. The system itself has none.

Toronto has projects and policies, but no governing transportation plan

Toronto is notoriously fond of plans. Agencies and governments have filled shelf upon shelf with plans for transit, parking, congestion, Vision Zero, and individual districts. Yet Toronto still lacks an adopted multimodal transportation plan that says where it wants to go and identifies the choices, investments, and policies needed to get there.

So projects are too often planned one at a time. Without a picture of the future network, it is hard to know how one project affects another, what is missing, or whether the pieces will add up to something that actually works. Toronto risks spending billions on individually defensible projects that collectively underperform.

Streetcars show what this means in practice. Their speed depends on signals, stop spacing, operating rules, street design, enforcement, and much else. FastTrackTO, the campaign to speed them up, makes an important point: each measure helps, but the real benefit comes when they work together. Toronto needs the same system-level thinking across every mode — and one plan capable of expressing it.

No one is clearly accountable

Toronto has three accountability gaps and they compound each other:

No politician is specifically accountable. Council has committees and boards producing policy for and overseeing actors such as the TTC, the TPA, and Transportation Services, but no politician has to answer for whether transportation as a whole is getting better or worse.

No official owns it either. The TTC illustrates the problem. The City pays much of its bill and appoints its board, but the TTC both runs transit and writes much of the policy governing fares, service levels, and network priorities. No one on the City side has the clear mandate and expertise to set those objectives, fit them into a broader transportation strategy and hold the TTC to them.

And no one measures the whole result. There is no shared scorecard connecting what Toronto says it wants, what it spends and what travellers actually experience. That makes it too difficult to tell whether things are getting better, and who is supposed to act when they aren’t.

Toronto lacks a political owner, an experienced integrator, and a common dashboard.

Toronto has already started to build the answer

The good news is that Toronto is not starting from scratch. The Chief Congestion Officer already has a mandate to work across organizational boundaries, even if the office cannot direct them. The new Congestion Management Plan reaches beyond cars to surface transit, technology, and changing how people travel, and comes with a proposed $299.4 million investment.

The City is also developing a Citywide Mobility Plan, while the TTC is reviewing its Service Standards and how it measures performance.

The pieces are appearing, but now is the time to connect them.

Here are four ways to do it.

IDEA 1 — Put one politician in charge

The Mayor should put a Deputy Mayor visibly in charge of mobility and give them a new Transportation Committee to chair. Their job would not be to run the TTC or time traffic lights. It would be to guide and champion the citywide plan, force unresolved trade-offs into the open, get the right people around the same table when things conflict, and report publicly to Council, the media, and Torontonians on whether Toronto is actually getting better at moving people and goods.

When it isn’t, somebody should have to explain why, and what happens next.

IDEA 2 — Build one transportation team, not five

Political accountability needs a professional counterpart. Toronto should bring the people who think about transportation strategy, policy, and performance together under a single Deputy City Manager or other senior City official, instead of scattering that responsibility across divisions and agencies.

There is no need to invent a new transportation bureaucracy from scratch. Much of the expertise is already grouped under Infrastructure Services, City Planning, TTC, and TPA. The missing step is to turn that collection of functions into a genuine transportation authority, led by a Deputy City Manager with responsibility for the performance of the whole system.

It would also change the City’s relationship with the TTC. In cities such London and Budapest,  there is a clearer distinction between the authority that decides what transit should provide and the operator that decides how to provide it. Toronto could do the same. The City would set fares, broad service levels, network priorities, funding, and performance standards. The TTC would get on with running transit safely, reliably, and efficiently.

If the TTC were to keep its board, it could focus on meeting the CIty’s targets through operational excellence. Is service reliable? Are customers receiving a great experience? Are assets being looked after? Are costs under control?

IDEA 3 — Write a plan that Toronto can deliver

A citywide transportation plan should start by answering a deceptively simple question: what are Toronto’s streets and transportation networks actually supposed to achieve?

Most people can probably agree on more than our age-old transportation debates suggest. Torontonians should be able to access jobs, schools, and services. Goods need to move. Streets should be safe. Trips should be reasonably reliable and affordable. People with disabilities have the same right to mobility. And transportation should not make the city dirtier, noisier, or less pleasant than necessary. There is already a strong basis for consensus around trade-offs.

Toronto could then make explicit choices about the roles of transit, roads, cycling and walking networks, parking and curbs, construction, and goods movement, instead of turning each project into a culture war. Infrastructure plans would be developed in close collaboration with the federal and provincial governments, since Toronto depends on their funding. A citizens’ assembly, selected much like a jury, could help test some of the hardest trade-offs.

Finally, the vision has to meet the budget. Every Council term should come with a four-year delivery plan delivered centrally and not by individual departments or agencies, saying what will actually happen, when, at what cost and with what expected result. Update it every year with the budget.

A plan that does not force choices is just another plan for the shelf.

IDEA 4 — Keep score, and do something with it

As the truism states, “What gets measured gets managed.”

We may all feel that Toronto transportation is not working particularly well, but proving it is difficult since the measurements are as siloed as the organizations producing them. The King Street story is instructive here too. The initial gains were reported as a win. What wasn’t in place was ongoing, independently owned measurement to catch the erosion as enforcement lapsed and diversions piled up, so by the time it was visibly worse, there was no scorecard flagging it, and no one whose job it was to ask why.

Better measures would ask questions travellers actually care about. How many jobs can I reach within 30 minutes? How reliably does my streetcar arrive at my stop, not just when it leaves the terminal? How many minutes does a project save for every dollar spent, and how many people benefit?

Set a baseline and target, compare Toronto with peer cities, identify who owns the result and publish it. When something goes off course, explain why, say what will change, and do it.

The point of measuring transportation is not to produce a dashboard but to make someone act.

Toronto is in control

Queen’s Park controls major transit expansion, regional integration, important legislation, and much of the money. But Toronto controls its streets, signals, and curbs, coordinates construction, regulates parking and turns, funds the TTC, and decides what it asks its agencies to report. Provincial changes may be needed for some reforms, but they are not an excuse to wait on everything else. Toronto does not need Queen’s Park’s permission to move a bus lane, retime a signal, or fix a curb.

It just needs to get better at giving itself the green light.

After a decade at Metrolinx, Antoine Belaieff now splits his time between Toronto and Europe, where he works on making public transport simpler and easier to use.

Kelly Rowe is a Partner at City Action Lab with two decades of experience working with the public sector as a researcher, senior advisor, and management consultant. Kelly previously held senior roles with Canada’s Minister of Infrastructure and the Chair of
the Toronto Transit Commission.

Photo by Antoine Belaieff

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