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

The post OP-ED: Can Toronto give itself a green light? appeared first on Spacing Toronto.

Most maps of Toronto tell us how to get somewhere. They focus on roads, transit lines, bike routes, neighbourhoods, and boundaries.

Few maps ask what places matter to us, how memories become attached to those places, or what stories remain long after we leave them behind. My research explores how relationships to place are remembered and carried forward. It begins with a simple question:

What does Toronto remember?

When I began Cities for Seven Generations, an ongoing research-creation project exploring relationships to place, memory, and urban futures, I was focused on individual experiences of urban regulations and public space — things like policy, governance, and the commons. I wanted to find out what people thought about these things, and how they navigated their way through the city because of (or in spite of) them. I was expecting conversations about traffic, transit, and infrastructure, maybe someone sharing a few of their favourite hotspots. I worried about my research being boring. I worried about it finding nothing of interest. I worried that no one would want to share their thoughts.

I worried too much.

When asked about policy, people spoke about parks, libraries, and waterways. When asked about transit, they shared stories about food, ceremony, and their neighbours and families. When asked about neighbourhoods, they described places they loved so much they visited them over and over again. People told me about their shortcut routes through the city, or how seeing the same strangers during their commute brought a sense of comfort to their day. Nearly everyone told me about a “secret” spot they go to in the city. These places were not necessarily spectacular or famous. Some were parks, some were stretches of shoreline, some were strip malls, gardens, libraries, or community spaces. What these places shared was a sense of personal significance. People spoke about them as though they were friends.

Where I expected conversations about policy, regulations, routes, and infrastructure, people consistently returned to something else: relationships. They wanted to talk about the places that mattered to them, the people they encountered, and what made them feel a sense of belonging in Toronto. Cities for Seven Generations is grounded in Indigenous teachings about relationships, reciprocity, and responsibility across generations. These teachings shaped not only the questions I asked, but also how I approached listening, storytelling, and relationships throughout the research. Participants from many backgrounds connected with these questions through their own experiences of place, even as their access to resources, support networks, and opportunities within the city differed significantly.

These conversations began to reveal a different map of the city. This map was less concerned with movement and navigation than with connection, memory, and the often invisible structures of everyday life. Lake Ontario has a profound effect on Toronto’s geography, ecology, climate, and identity, shaping weather, settlement, recreation, and cultural life. Yet many residents rarely spend time at the shoreline. Like many of the forces that shape a city, its influence is often felt more than consciously recognized. Despite remaining invisible, many of Toronto’s hidden infrastructures are integral to its experience. For example, research collaborators described parks, libraries, and community centres not just as places to go, but as places that both create and enable social infrastructure, an aspect that is often hidden behind building walls. These are places that anchor daily routines and offer moments of connection, repeating in patterns that create a sense of belonging.

Places that anchor routine, connection, and relationships often continue to hold significance long after people have stopped visiting them. Research collaborators recalled them years later, often with remarkable clarity. How does a place carry this memory? An example is Toronto’s Lost Rivers (lostrivers.ca), which continue to shape the city (sometimes as dramatic sinkholes) long after they disappeared from maps. Memory does not reside exclusively in archives, monuments, or “official” written histories. It can also be found in buried rivers, recurring encounters, neighbourhood rituals, and places that continue to matter long after they disappear from view.

What matters most in a city is not always visible.

As these conversations accumulated, I found myself wanting a way to better understand and represent these emerging relationships. Conventional maps could show where people were, but they struggled to capture why a place mattered, how it was remembered, or what connections people carried with them.

Thinking through the interviews meant considering layers of nuanced experience, interactions, and memory. I began to use cartographies as a way of representing these relationships. These maps wouldn’t have roads, transit, or boundaries. They would map relationships, memories, care, connection, and belonging. While conventional maps privilege efficiency and navigation, these maps would invite lingering.

What draws us back? What connects us to a place? What do we carry forward?

Most participants live or work in Toronto’s downtown core, or just outside it. Yet, no two people described the same Toronto. The same city, the same geography, is inhabited in dramatically different ways. A park described by one person as a place of meditation might appear in someone else’s story as a gathering place. A library might function as a study space, a warming space, a community hub, or a refuge, depending on who was speaking. The same geography carried different meanings, memories, and relationships.

In this research, the city began to feel less like a fixed place and more like a collection of overlapping stories. Yet, that doesn’t even quite describe it: the overlapping stories are also themselves connected in surprising ways. People often spoke about different places, yet similar themes emerged repeatedly: care, belonging, water, community, safety, and connection. A library in one neighbourhood and a park in another could serve remarkably similar roles in people’s lives. The stories were distinct, yet they also echoed one another.

Cities, it seems, remember through water, practices of care, routines, relationships, and stories. Together, these stories contribute to a collective memory of Toronto — something that exists beyond monuments, archives, and buildings. Remembering is not only an act of looking backward. It can also shape the future through responsibilities we carry forward.

A Translucent City: Collective Memories of the Future is an exhibition that emerged from these questions. It includes illuminated textile cartographies in dialogue with a documentary film and evolving public participation. Rather than providing answers, the exhibition invites visitors to contribute their own cartographies and reflections. Together, these contributions continue the conversation by asking: What does Toronto remember, and what futures become possible when we carry those memories forward?

A Translucent City: Collective Memories of the Future runs Monday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-6 p.m., from September 1 to December 31 at the Urbanspace Gallery, 401 Richmond Street W. Visit urbanspacegallery.ca  for a listing of upcoming workshops and events.

The post OP-ED: What Does Toronto Remember? appeared first on Spacing Toronto.

Next, the book Saving Toronto: 10 City Builders Tell Us How is available now. It’s a collection of essays organized by themes like governance, transit, and housing. We asked public policy analyst Anne Golden and urban designer Ken Greenberg, who co-edited the book, how it came together, and if we can actually achieve what the title says and save Toronto.

Then, David Shellnutt (The Biking Lawyer) tells us about the double standards Toronto cyclists face from police, compared to motorists, and a violent assault the TPS carried out last June.

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

The post PODCAST: Spacing Radio 95, Saving Toronto appeared first on Spacing Toronto.

The majority of the 60 malls included in my Strip Malls series are each represented by a single architectural photograph. However, because of their unique relationship, I decided to take extra views of the two large malls on Eglinton East near Kennedy Road. Both had opened in the early 1960s, and they were aligned directly opposite each other, set back behind their wide parking lots.

The unnamed mall on the south side of Eglinton was partially abandoned, while the units in Liberty Plaza on the opposite side were fully occupied.

Liberty Village also had a couple of unusual features. The Kennedy/Eglinton branch of the Toronto Public Library occupied its west block, while a carriageway through its central section led to a second large parking lot in the rear.

Although it would not open for several more years, by 2022 the Line 5 LRT rail corridor had already been completed on this section of Eglinton, forming a traffic barrier between the two malls. Thus, I was able to include a new piece of transportation infrastructure disrupting a scene that otherwise reflected the car culture of the past.

The news reporting suggested the July 22 fire, as well as a previous one in April, might have been arson attacks on Seven Heaven Massage Spa at 2408 Eglinton East, which lacked external signage and sat in an inconspicuous corner of the mall. The spa was devastated, but its neighbours, Incredible Discount and All Star Beauty Complex, also sustained considerable damage. Ten residents were displaced from apartments above the stores.

The affected businesses are typical of the small enterprises I encountered in 2022, when I photographed different inner suburban strip malls to the south, east and west of downtown. Strip malls are attractive to retail startups of all kinds, but some businesses remain for generations. While All Star Beauty Complex was only eight years old when I photographed it, Incredible Discount had been in business at Liberty Plaza since 1995.

Arson attacks against businesses are not a new phenomenon in Toronto. They can wreck thriving enterprises and displace or frighten residents of mixed-use buildings. Recovery can be a long process, but happily restoration work at Liberty Plaza is already underway.

All photos  © P. MacCallum, 2022 (petermaccallum.com)

The post Exploring Liberty Plaza appeared first on Spacing Toronto.

The OBC is a living document and should continually evolve as new risks, technologies and societal needs emerge. It contains many exemptions that make it easy to build single-family houses and it contains appropriate requirements to address relative risks in large apartment buildings. However, the code lacks proportionality with regard to the so-called “missing middle” of housing options.

Houses don’t require a fire alarm system (only smoke alarms) and don’t require barrier-free access, whereas four-storey apartment buildings require an elevator, fire alarm system and sprinklers, even if there’s only one or two homes per floor. A recent Pew study also notes that the fire death rate in existing houses is statistically six times higher than in recently-built apartments. Regulators should therefore be doing everything they can to unlock the feasibility of new four- to six-storey housing with elevators and modern safety systems (fire alarms, sprinklers, etc.) to increase the overall quality and safety of our housing stock.

Across Canada, small apartment buildings were heavily discriminated against through exclusionary planning policies for most of the 20^th century. (The 1912 Toronto apartments ban is one of the earliest.) As a result, there was little interest in modernizing the applicable building code provisions because zoning by-laws didn’t allow such housing anyway.

However, municipal, provincial, and federal governments are now actively encouraging the construction of “gentle density” and it is hence timely, and even urgent, for the building code to be updated accordingly.

In the mid-1990s, the provincial government actually led on this topic, preparing an OBC study that resulted in a few innovative changes at the time. Inspired by these earlier efforts, I recently collaborated with Jack Keays, senior fire protection engineer at Vortex Fire Consulting, to develop eight recommendations for building code reforms, each backed by careful analysis and illustrated with built examples from other jurisdictions.

Published in June, 2026, by the Neptis Foundation, our study identifies the technical provisions that obstruct better multiplex and small apartment building design, from sidewall restrictions that prohibit wood-frame construction to mezzanine rules that count an efficient layout as an extra storey. Each section of the report sets out the current requirement, what it prevents, and a suggested change, with draft code language to support further discussions.

One consequential example: above two storeys, the OBC requires two exit stairs in every apartment building. In a larger building with many homes on each floor, that makes sense. In a much smaller building, the two stairs and the corridor between them take up too much space. Much of the world builds small apartment buildings another way: one stair and elevator protected by upgraded sprinklers, fire alarm systems and better doors. Cities like Seattle and New York have allowed this for decades; British Columbia now allows it too. Our study recommends Ontario follow. It also recommends letting a smaller elevator open directly into the protected exit stair, instead of a smoke-filled corridor, keeping the elevator available for much longer in a fire emergency.

The full report is now available for free download, or you can order a physical copy from the Neptis Foundation’s online bookstore. A brief, bullet point summary for each of the eight recommendations is included below.

It would be easy to disregard these eight recommendations as technical minutiae. They are the opposite. Together, they decide if new homes will be efficient enough to be affordable, laid out well enough to be desired, built with low-carbon materials to be sustainable, and served by elevators, so that parents with strollers are welcome and empty nesters can grow old in neighbourhoods where they want to live. Zoning reform was the necessary first step, but zoning just decides where housing may go. The OBC decides what the architecture will be, and until it is updated, the “missing middle” housing we have legalized on paper will keep arriving compromised, or not at all.

Our study is timely, as the provincial government recently appointed an expert advisory body to review the OBC and is inviting public comments until August 14. If you have experience from professional practice, please share your insights. The province is asking and we should answer.

Recommendations of the 2026 OBC Missing Middle Study

• Mezzanines in Dwelling Units (OBC 3.2.1.1. & OBC 9.10.4.1.) Allow larger mezzanines on the uppermost level of a three-storey building to not count as an additional storey, if a fire alarm system is provided, consistent with provisions in the City of Montreal.
• Rooftop Enclosures Not a Storey (OBC 3.2.1.1. & 9.10.4.4.) Allow elevator lobbies and small rooftop areas to not count as an additional storey, if a fire alarm system is provided, consistent with recent updates to the British Columbia Building Code.
• Combustible Sidewalls (OBC 3.2.3.7. & 9.10.14.5) Allow mass timber or wood-frame walls near a property line, if the fire-resistance rating of the wall is increased or the wall is rated from both sides.
• Emergency Generators in Low-rise Buildings (OBC 3.2.7.9.) Allow dual feed electrical service connections for buildings less than 18 metres in height as an alternative to fossil fuel generators, consistent with provisions in the International Building Code and the NFPA standard for fire pumps.
• Single Exit (OBC 3.4.2.1. & 9.9.8.2.) Allow a single exit stair in low-rise residential buildings that are sprinklered, under specific conditions.
• Distance between Exits (OBC 3.4.2.3.) Allow a reduced distance between exits in low-rise residential buildings, consistent with recent updates to the Vancouver Building By-Law.
• Elevator within Exit (OBC 3.4.4.4. & 9.9.4.2.) Allow an elevator in low-rise buildings to be located in an exit if the elevator only opens into the exit and the building is sprinklered, to increase the available use of elevators during a fire emergency and eliminate the piston effect of smoke movement between fire compartments.
• Elevator Size and Speed (OBC 3.5.4.1.) Allow smaller and faster elevators in low-rise residential buildings, consistent with requirements in New York City, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe.

Image credit: Snowy facade from Impossible Toronto: On the Courtyard, by Studio VAARO and Gabriel Fain Architects (Neptis Foundation, 2025). Rendering by Aron Lorinc Ateliers.

Conrad Speckert is a building code consultant with a background in architecture. His work focuses on the regulatory environment of low-rise housing in Canada. He has authored research on single-stair provisions worldwide, supported multiplex and mid-rise policy reforms in Toronto, and consults on code-related questions for residential projects.

The post Bridging the gap between houses and high-rises appeared first on Spacing Toronto.

Sabat Ismail (SI) met with Rachel Wang, Sylver Sterling, and Jess Nachman, creators and editors of the Journey Lines zine, to discuss the zine and its launch. The zine explores the art, experiences, and stories of queer trans black people of colour (QTBIPOC) cyclists in their own words.

Rachel Wang (RW) (she/her) is an environmental consultant and founding Executive Director of the Bike Brigade. Her work centres art and culture as pathways for collective resistance and visions of collaborative survival beyond systems of oppression.

Sylver Sterling (SS) (she/her) is an artist and designer with 9 years of experience creating for communities, movements, and people who care. Her work lives at the intersection of design and storytelling, always rooted in emotion, clarity, and intention.

Jess Nachman (JN) (they/them) is a queer, Asian, anti-Zionist Jewish graduate student and mobility justice researcher. Jess organizes with Climate Justice Toronto and Sport Scholars for Justice in Palestine.

SI: What audience did you create the zine for?

RW: We spent quite a bit of time journaling, reflecting, and talking through this. One common thread was not creating something for white consumption — it would be for us and our communities. This informed the zine approach: when we write, we’re not writing for mass consumption or entertainment. We don’t have to write about suffering, which as Jess said, is almost celebrated; we can write about the mundane, the joy and whatever what we want.

Nikita’s piece What your bike says about you is particularly interesting because it was her lens on cycling as a person of colour commuting in the city. She doesn’t have a bike, so she uses Bike Share and therefore doesn’t see herself as a “real cyclist”. So, the fact that she felt seen enough to submit something for the Journey Lines bike zine is something I cherish.

SI: Rachel, your work has explored arts and culture drive community change. How do you see this zine contributing to this?

RW: I think what makes art so powerful for community change is that it creates space for people to see themselves and each other differently. When you read policy documents or advocacy reports, you get data and recommendations, but you don’t necessarily feel the humanity behind it. Art lets people share their full selves in ways that can’t be reduced to talking points. With Journey Lines, we weren’t trying to convince anyone of anything — we were creating a container for our communities to express their experiences on their own terms.

When people feel that sense of belonging, they start building from there — organizing, showing up for each other, imagining new futures together. That’s the cultural shift, and it can start with a simple story.

SI: I also wanted to know whether your background in the Bike Brigade and community organizing informed this project.

RW: The Bike Brigade is made up of relatively privileged people — we have time to volunteer during the workday, we’re able-bodied, and we usually have access to a bike. The demographic reflects the broader cycling community in Toronto, though it’s a subset of folks who are particularly interested in solidarity-building and care work in the city.

This zine is a unique space for me because we were reaching a different community than the Bike Brigade typically does, but the approach to building solidarity was the same.

SI: What do you think are the distinctions of how QTBIPOC folks view cycling?

JN: I can’t say one overarching perspective, but it’s a way to get to the places that bring us joy, build community, or just have a way to get to where you need to be.

SI: In the introduction to the zine, you mentioned and critiqued the typical archetype of a cyclist in the broader cultural imagination, and you touched on their different relationships to taking up space. Perhaps a kind of spatial entitlement, can you elaborate on what you touched on, and the different experiences of QTBIPOC cyclists in taking up space on a bicycle?

JN: Sabat, your work also touches on this, but this is often the experience of all QTBIPOC, that class inequality has resulted in BIPOC and queer and trans folks having limited access to resources, including bicycling, especially growing up, whereas you see a lot of middle-to-upper-class kids getting to learn how to cycle when they’re younger and have access to biking.

Access to safe cycling as an equity issue is well-researched: it is connected to mobility injustice in which ableism, racism, gendered violence, and class-based inequality dictates who is able to move safely and who are targets of violence. So, communities like QTBIPOC may have to work twice as hard to access cycling.

RW: I don’t know if I have a direct answer, but it made me think of two particularly alienating experiences interacting with cis-het white male cyclists that illustrated the stark contrast in how we take up space. There was this guy cycling in a manner that broke a bylaw; the police confronted him and he escalated it into a confrontation. His demeanour emphasized that he deserved to ride how he was and take up space. I was shocked by how safe he felt in that interaction and how empowered and emboldened he was — I could never imagine doing the same.

The second instance was seeing a well-known cycling advocate that made a post disparaging cycling couriers, emphasizing his perception that they “ruin” bike lanes (after all their hard advocacy work) and, while emphasizing that bike lanes are not for these cyclists, who are primarily people of colour.

SI: You mention couriers, increasingly, there’s been a lot of stigma around bike couriers, and as you allude to, it’s racialized because a lot of them are people of colour, and immigrant men. I was just wondering if you could talk about this stigma and also the challenges of visibility and the visibility for people of colour while cycling, and how that’s experienced in a different way than white folks, because of the image of the M.A.M.L.

RW: It’s shocking to see how public perception and just the cultural shift around it have changed. Since COVID, bike couriers went from hero to zero — from being completely celebrated for bringing us our food as essential providers and on the front lines to being treated like a nuisance. They’re on the sidewalks, they’re on the road, yet they’re still doing the same thing.

It’s fascinating because it’s just cultural; behaviour informed by social norms of the day. Reflecting on moments in different Asian countries, I saw how societies approach cycling. It’s the norm to go from point A to point B on a bike, on safe infrastructure, for any age. To see how quickly culture can shift is scary, but it’s also an opportunity — to work within the system and humanize that experience to change it, because we’ve seen these shifts can happen overnight.

JN: In thinking about your question around bike couriers and how the white nation state that is Canada functions and the lines that have been drawn between who is seen as essentially “other” to Canada.

It’s a shift that Rachel was talking about, the culture of seeing Uber couriers as heroes to being nuisances that need to get out of “our lanes.” That these couriers are supposedly ruining the bike lanes that “we” have worked hard for clearly denotes a line between who is seen as belonging and who isn’t.

In the book Bicycle Justice, there’s a chapter that is set in the United States about migrant delivery cyclists, and this whole anxiety over migrant delivery cyclists entering wealthy white neighbourhoods, because the moment that they trespass into white private property, they’re seen as threatening and contaminating that space.

This xenophobic rhetoric is similarly present in the idea that migrant cycling couriers using Toronto bike lanes are “taking over our streets.” Bike lanes are supposed to be public space, and “our” streets imply a type of property ownership over land that is colonial in its nature.

SI: It’s also a very significant shift, mirroring some of those things happening at the national level regarding the stigmatization of immigrants. But I also see what you’re saying about how it is an opportunity there, the cultural shift in perspectives can also shift positively here, that social possibility, even if it seems distant right now. In the zine’s introduction, you also mention that cars are a symptom of deeper forms of violence. Can you elaborate more on this perspective?

JN: here’s a culture of car dominance in North America, which feels like an entitlement to public space at the expense of vulnerable bodies in the streets, such as cyclists and pedestrians — but that’s also a huge generalization. Many people need to drive cars, and I’m not implying that driving is bad..The history of cars however, especially in North American cities, is however rooted in capitalism — cars are a way for us to get to our jobs and transport capital more quickly. Not to mention, the automotive industry’s relationship with the billion-dollar fossil fuel industry.

SI: What motivated you to include the anonymized contributions and the different ways that you allowed people to contribute?

JN: We actually didn’t have an explicit conversation, except asking folks how they want what they want shared. It was simply: “What’s your signature?” and “Do you want any handles shared?”

For example, Dani T’s piece Rad Grandma, maybe at face value, it doesn’t look like a political piece, right? Yet Tiff, one of the event moderators and zine contributors, interpreted the Rad Grandma piece as incredibly political.

Through engaging with Dani’s piece, Tiff said, “I want to see that grandma more,” or “Why don’t we have more places for that grandma to ride a bike?”

Art and its interpretation can be so political, especially when read by other QTBIPOC. Art is such an amazing medium to express what we want out of the world in ways that aren’t stifled by institutions.

Still, some pieces weren’t political at all: not every piece was about activism, frustration, or suffering, because that’s the point: there are fun art pieces and exploratory pieces of people just exploring their thoughts and feelings about cycling.

Journey Lines is available at Another Story Bookshop on Roncesvalles and Queen Books on Queen East. There is also a digital version of the zine, and an order form for a print version.

The post Zine gives space to unheard cycling voices (part 2) appeared first on Spacing Toronto.

I can’t remember a moment when split-screen politics was quite as pronounced as it is right now.

Consider: On Friday, the federal Liberals put Doug Ford’s ridiculous island airport expansion nightmare up on blocks, thanks, in large measure to an outpouring of negative feedback — 87,000 responses to the public consultation, the vast majority of them opposed to the scheme — as well as the underlying nebulousness of a half-baked plan.

Then, on a perfect summer Saturday, Waterfront Toronto threw open the trails to the second phase of Biidaasige Park, a masterwork of landscape design in the service of city-building and a particularly vivid example of how we can, actually, have good things.

At the same time, mayoral aspirant Brad Bradford is on a tear about the fraying of our sense of collective safety, promising, among other things, a thousand new cops over the coming term in office and a damn-the-torpedoes approach to securing public spaces from all manner of predators, miscreants, and extremists.

His campaign is able to double-down on this stance thanks to a steady stream of highly disquieting crimes, such as this weekend’s attacks on two Jewish-owned bagel places, the latest in a string of anti-Semitic incidents that have nothing to do with the Middle East.

Meanwhile, the Ford government is advertising up a storm about building new prisons and Team Carney is doing its bit to prime the pump of public anxiety with pledges to bring back mandatory minimums and severely restrict bail.

All of which is taking place against a backdrop of declining crime, per the latest StatsCan data, which shows all the major indicators trending down and also reveals that Toronto, as has been true for years, records far fewer incidents per capita than many other Canadian cities.

In short, we’re genuinely in a choose-your-own-adventure moment.

It’s rarely worth over-thinking why the right gravitates to law-and-order rhetoric. However, I could argue that the surround-sound uncertainty of this moment — Trump, horrific climate-related wild fires, hyper-polarization, AI, etc. — serves as a kind of accelerant, prompting some nervous voters to sublimate geopolitical chaos into a heightened fear of local crime.

But what Bradford and Ford, and to a lesser extent the federal Liberals, are also doing is summoning the imaginations of voters — in effect asking them to conjure a presumably safer country/province/city dominated by more cops, tougher laws, restricted public spaces, etc.

Yet I’d argue that both the island airport victory and the extraordinary new waterfront park represent acts of summoned collective imagination — on the one hand, the shared conviction that engaging government is still worth the effort, even in a cynical age; and on the other, that a sustained and fierce determination by ordinary residents to build a better city can yield absolutely transformative results.

On the latter point, I’d be remiss not to point out that Ford, way back in 2011, wanted the current site of Biidaasige Park to become a cluster of luxury malls anchored by a high-end marina. But his own megalomaniacal imaginings cratered in the face of the sort of grass-roots opposition that coalesced to chase away Sidewalk Labs and now the Billy Bishop expansion.

In short, one can understand this strange moment as an epic clash between an envisioned future and a present made real by thousands of individual acts of imagination.

My own (admittedly naive) bias is that the people who seek leadership roles should aim to inspire voters, not pander to their fears, particularly when those fears consist less of a response to a demonstrable decline in public safety than an anecdote/media-driven perception that urban disorder is winning.

As I’ve written in this space previously, I’d say voters are ready and willing to hear messages about the positive potential of their city, if only as a necessary corrective to the onslaught of political rhetoric — not just here, but seemingly everywhere, and from both left and right — telling them/us that the world is going to into the crapper.

It’s by no means clear that Toronto voters who would prefer to light a candle than curse the darkness can project their aspirations onto a leader capable to absorbing and refracting this desire. I’m not convinced that Olivia Chow has the chops to do it. What we do know, however, is that a made-in-Toronto form of progressive, civic-minded populism has and continues to express its dreams for a better city without resorting to the allure of brain-stem politics.

I don’t obviously have access to the private polls and focus groups that tell the politicians selling tough-on-crime agendas that they’re barking up the right tree. But there’s no doubt in my mind that the allure of a positive vision for the city is every bit as potent and politically saleable as the negative versions we’re going to be listening to for the next three months.

After all, a focus group of 87,000 people just proved my point, did it not?

photos by Andrew Rivett (cc)

The post The power of positive thinking, Toronto’s version appeared first on Spacing Toronto.

Summer is the season to pause, to take a break, to refresh body and mind. It’s generally understood that not as much will get done (with the exception of construction), that people may be absent in the flesh or at least in the spirit. The most fortunate may escape to the countryside and a cottage, others to a front porch, back yard, or balcony, or if those are not available, to parks, beaches, and patios.

It’s the time between the busy seasons of spring, when we emerge from hibernation, and fall, when we get back to business or school. This year in particular, for the city and for Spacing, it’s a pause between intensive events – hosting the World Cup, featured in our “Toronto Soccer Issue,” and the upcoming municipal election in October, which as always we’ll be covering in its own dedicated issue.

So for our summer issue, we thought we’d take a deep breath and revive our summer reading notion, which we last featured a decade ago. Getting away from the hurly-burly of everyday civic life, it’s a chance for us to feature longer deep dives and more contemplative explorations of the city, without being tied to a specific theme.

The ancients of Greece and Rome had a concept of the contrast between the active and the contemplative life. The active life was that of the city – politics, business, networking, debate, deal-making. The contemplative life – for the members of the elite who wrote about such things – was to retreat to their villa in the countryside, for leisure and relaxation that gave time for thinking deep thoughts and philosophizing. In theory, they most prized the contemplative life – the Romans called it otium, leisure, whereas the active city life was negotium – the lack of leisure. But really, the two were, and are, complementary – each one is necessary to feed the other. The active life gives you the material to think about, while the contemplative life gives you the time to process that material.

But we should not have to have the ability to escape to a countryside villa in order to find relaxing spaces to think during the hazy days of summer. As Jake Tobin captures in his cover illustration for this issue, Toronto is fortunate to have spaces within its boundaries that enable peaceful contemplation – parks, ravines, the lakefront, patios, as well as private outdoor spaces for those fortunate enough to have them.

Between the private and public, meanwhile, are front porches and balconies — liminal spaces that our summer intern Kaede Ashizawa explored with filmmaker Perry Walker as he talks to people who are enjoying those spaces for his documentary From Where I’m Sitting, whose goal, Walker says, “is to try to capture that essence of summertime in Toronto.”

So this issue is designed to encourage us to take a break, let the mind wander, and explore the city in spirit, guided by curiosity and wonder. Our writers take you out on the water and onto the islands, to cat colonies in inner suburbs, along sidewalks and benches, tracing the steps of history and imagined futures, drifting through the city in all its beauty and its troubles. They contemplate and philosophize in the city itself.

But our writers also provide the incentive to get out and explore the city physically, to find the synthesis between the active and the contemplative by getting out into the streets and parks and observing what one encounters. The heat of summer is the perfect time for a stroll, for being out in the city not aiming for a specific goal, but rather moving at an unhurried pace that lets us absorb our surroundings.

Carry this issue with you as you venture out to experience what our writers share. Seek out the boundaries of Toronto’s great fire, or the architectural carvings of Toronto’s “girl sculptor.” Keep an eye out for stray cats, stray rowers, stray drifters. Pay attention to the sidewalks, the benches, and the people who shape our experience of public space. Visit the island and imagine its shifting shorelines and competing visions. And then settle in a park, on a bench, or wherever you like, and read the next story in the issue.

Summer reading is often presented as romance or mystery, material that is light and escapist, that carries you away from the everyday. But we invite you to be carried away not by star-crossed lovers or troubled detectives, but by the stories of the city itself. Find a place to sit back, relax, and enjoy these meditations on city life.

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.

The post NEW ISSUE: Summer reading appeared first on Spacing Toronto.

Rachel Wang (RW) (she/her) is an environmental consultant and founding Executive Director of the Bike Brigade. Her work centres art and culture as pathways for collective resistance and visions of collaborative survival beyond systems of oppression.

Sylver Sterling (SS) (she/her) is an artist and designer with 9 years of experience creating for communities, movements, and people who care. Her work lives at the intersection of design and storytelling, always rooted in emotion, clarity, and intention.

Jess Nachman (JN) (they/them) is a queer, Asian, anti-Zionist Jewish graduate student and mobility justice researcher. Jess organizes with Climate Justice Toronto and Sport Scholars for Justice in Palestine.

SI: Can you introduce Journey Lines and how it came about?

RW: Over a year ago, we submitted the concept for this zine through the LUSH Charity Pot grant and were successful. Initially, it wasn’t specifically a zine, just something artistic. This led to connecting the three of us to envision this project. In short, the three of us came together as friends to envision this project, and it grew from there.

JN: It was something that we were comfortable with pursuing because we had the funds to pay artists to contribute to the zine. For transparency, we paid folks $150 each to do a piece of their choice. Otherwise, it would not have been easy to pursue this project.

Also, during my master’s, Rachel was the director of the Bike Brigade and helped me with my project with the Bike Brigade, which was also arts-based and featured BIPOC cyclists. So, this was a logical next project that my PhD is now also building on.

SS: I came on after the paper that Jess wrote, which is how I knew about the project.

SI: Jess, could you share a little more about what your PhD research explores?

JN: How folks use bikes for social movements, whether it’s for activism or just surviving systems of violence. My projects have focused on BIPOC queer, trans, and femme cyclists. I’m also curious about how we use art to express ourselves and our stories, because I think there’s a history of research on these “vulnerable communities” that is very extractive, using interviews and survey data that don’t show the whole picture.

I’m interested in how research with art can yield more authentic stories or stories that make sense to the folks sharing them, rather than stories that researchers create that are baked in harmful stereotypes, like BIPOC communities being damaged in some way.

SI: What inspired the zine’s title?

RW: We were brainstorming, and considered five different options, and landed on “Journey Lines.” It came from our own collective imagination and experiences, connecting different threads of biking and stories.

JN: I think it initially came from wanting to create a map of the city with stories from the west to the east of Toronto.

SI: Jess and Rachel, prior to this zine, you’ve conducted research on participatory arts-based and decolonial feminist participatory action research. Did that influence the zine?

JN: I would say it did. The idea of doing research with communities, rather than on them, is where participatory research comes from. In Western research practices, certain communities are deliberately silenced and misrepresented, especially folks who are marginalized by gender, race, and class. There is a similar pattern in mainstream cycling spaces and urban planning. So, for Journey Lines, we chose to invite queer, trans, femme BIPOC cyclists to contribute to the project.

SI: In spring 2025, you launched your zine, and the event featured a uniquely interactive format. What led you to organize it the way you did, including thoroughly involving the zine contributors?

RW: We were excited to hear from the zine contributors, like Jess mentioned. We saw ourselves more as facilitators  —  building the medium for people to share their stories  —  rather than it being about us. Coupling the zine with an in-person launch event was enlightening to see how people’s stories are told and felt differently across different mediums.

Hosting the launch at the Tranzac was so lovely because it felt like a living room in someone’s home — the vibe was perfect: very warm and welcoming. Food abundant, friends present. The format and flow of the event is very intentional for us.

We also invited a lot of co-creation from the contributors in the planning process, eventually landing on a “fireside” chat. This approach was similar to Jess’s academic work on the participatory aspect of research methodologies, with interviewees as “colleagues” invited to co-create that space with us.

Ultimately, I think so many people came because the contributors/panelists felt ownership of the event; they brought their people. It ended up being a full house (maybe too full!), and wonderful because everyone felt that there was a piece of them in it.

SI: What motivated the multidisciplinary artistic contributions to the zine? Could you describe some of the multimedia contributions?

JN: There are written pieces, visual illustrations, linocut, and even sound. Someone made a soundscape and put in a QR code. We just left it open for our contributors to express themselves however they want. And we’ve obviously got such incredible pieces that I wouldn’t have dreamed of asking for. I’m really happy that we left it open. Even the design of the actual theme: Sylver developed the zine’s artistic theme.

SI: Sylver, the zine mentions your interest in amplifying untold stories as an artist. How do you depict the narratives of these cyclists and bring their stories to life?

SS: My practice is usually based on a lot of feelings. So, what I did was read through the participant pieces or just visualize them. Some of the pieces were literal, like Yasmine’s piece as sound & connective tissue, and I played off of and mirrored what their art was, and I just depicted and drew that. But there were pieces like Imagine a Toronto, and I had to consider what it would look like. So, I think about it, feel through it, and draw something that would depict the person’s piece.

RW: I want to highlight how instrumental Sylver was in the creative process — from the colours to the bike chain that moves throughout the zine. Sylver led sessions to discuss what Jess and I had envisioned, which she captured beautifully in visual form. She essentially captured the essence of our conversations into the zine — even down to the topography to create Journey Lines.

SI: Were there some commonalities that arose from the different contributors?

JN: One theme that I’ve been thinking so much about is safety and especially the way that we keep each other safe. It’s actually explicitly said in multiple pieces. The Untitled Piece by MZ explores Abolitionist Pride in opposition to mainstream corporatized Pride parades, bike marshalling, and keeping protesters safe by placing a bike between traffic and protesters.

Yasmine’s piece also includes the line, “We keep ourselves safe.” I know that Yasmine was also thinking about bike marshalling and even just the ways that we ride our bikes to show up for each other. It’s also interesting that there is a piece about a significant experience with violence, about being assaulted on a bike. Also, this person’s child was put in an unsafe position, and cops got involved, and obviously, the cops didn’t keep the artists safe.

What I keep coming back to is that sometimes the narrative on safety and cycling is about road safety and helmets. Safety came up in a way that isn’t talked about in mainstream stories about bicycling in Toronto, likely because of the identities of the artists: queer, trans, and BIPOC communities in Toronto are disproportionately targets of state and police violence and therefore systemic change is needed to ensure our safety.

SS: A theme that I also noticed is taking up space. I’m outside the biking community, and I don’t bike. But I noticed that a lot of the pieces were just about making space for us on the road or even in the streets. I also think that even the zine itself was kind of a space for those people to take up space and have their art shared.

RW: There was a particular contribution where the contributor felt that the police were their first line of safety. This aptly highlighted the important complexity around the relationship different communities have with the police regarding perceptions of safety.

We also invited contributors to share space online with each other. We thought about how we could best navigate and support the conversation around the contribution I mentioned, as there are abundant critiques and politics around the police in our spaces — but there was no need. The contribution I mentioned was shared, and the amount of care and kindness shown towards this person was beautiful. Every single person rallied around them to make sure they knew they were seen, cared for, and safe in this group. I was thrown at this radical kindness.

SI: It’s interesting how frequently the theme of safety emerges and how BIPOC folks grappling with that.

RW: Stories and storytelling is life — that personal element is so important to how we learn and connect with different people. For example, I love the piece that you wrote in 2020. When I read it, I wasn’t part of the cycling community. That piece helped me understand that some people also see what I see about how the cycling community exists, how people move, and how they have different experiences. The zine is a reflection of just bringing more of those stories — even a story makes an impact on one person, that is worth it.

JW: Another theme from the zine was how great it is to be part of this community because there’s so much opportunity for cross-movement solidarity. In contrast, when you exist in the cycling advocacy space, it’s often all about one thing — bike lanes.

Cycling justice can include newcomers and immigrant rights, labour movements, human rights movements, etc. Mainstream stories about cycling don’t quite have those intersections yet.

SI: It makes me think of the Audre Lorde quote: “There’s no single issue, struggle, because we don’t live single lives” and some of cycling anthropologist and researcher Adonia Lugo’s work on race and cycling and where she talks about how sometimes people’s first experiences with some degree of marginalization especially what some have referred to as the middle-aged-man-in-Lycra (M.A.M.L) type is on a bicycle because in other areas of their life they’re often so privileged, which informs their approach to advocacy.

JN: I love Adonia Lugo’s work.

SI: How can the broader cycling community ally with QTBIPOC folks who cycle?

RW: Allyship is really important to me. There have been many instances where I’ve had to rely on a white man to deliver my message because it wouldn’t have been heard coming from me directly.

As documented in Jess’ research, cycling advocacy spaces are primarily white, male, and middle-class. I personally don’t want to enter these spaces, but of course understand the value of this work. Because of this, allyship is crucial — it allows the work to continue even when I’m not in the room. I’m grateful to have a now-good friend that has demonstrated to me that this can work.

JN: I was talking to somebody who did an art piece for the zine. When I showed up for a protest against Ford’s bill to remove bike lanes in Toronto, I looked around and thought, “there are enough people out here who are spending their energy on these protests.” This isn’t immediate for me right now; there are other pressing ways I’d like to organize and put my energy into especially during the genocide on Gaza and our government’s complacency in it.

Based on my PhD project, this seems to be the case for many QTBIPOC who choose to put their energy into organizing around the liberation of Black and Indigenous peoples worldwide. Maybe another way to put it is, when we direct our energy to ensuring the safe movement of communities oppressed by state violence and Western imperialism, this inherently makes it safer for QTBIPOC who disproportionately face intersecting systems of violence.

SI: How can people support the project or get a copy of the zine?

JN: As of now, Another Story Bookshop on Roncesvalles and Queen Books on Queen East are selling copies. There is also a digital version of the zine, and an order form for a print version.

Images courtesy of Journey Lines.

Read part 2 of this conversation.

The post Zine gives space to unheard cycling voices (part 1) appeared first on Spacing Toronto.