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.

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 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)

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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.

Have you heard of the term “bed town”? It is used to describe commuter suburbs where folks who work in the city return primarily for their dwelling, or, namely, just to go back to their beds. This phenomenon is driven by the suburban sprawl, the centralized economy, and the commercialization of city centres, creating a culture that is increasingly car-reliant. This auto-centric city plan is visible across major North American cities, including ours, creating a stark contrast between downtown Toronto and the rest of the GTA.

Mississauga has traditionally been perceived as an iconic example of such a “bed town.” That is why it was surprising when, in March of this year, the New York Times put Mississauga on the map, calling it “The Suburb That Won’t Sleep”, thanks to the booming popularity of Ridgeway Plaza. Located at the furthest west point of Eglinton Avenue, this warehouse-lot-turned-food-plaza continuously attracts locals and tourists alike. This unforeseen popularity has led to challenges for surrounding neighbourhoods in adapting to its growth. Congestion and noise have triggered escalating demand for measures to address these issues. In the aftermath of the City of Mississauga’s direct intervention in May of this year, I wanted to explore Ridgeway from the inside and through the voices of visitors and locals.

Not your average Canadian suburb

Growing up in a bed town myself, in Port Coquitlam, B.C., my youth was backdropped by the classic suburban landscape, where strip malls and bus station loops were our after-school hang out spots. Whenever I visit, my hometown remains comfortably familiar – the convenience stores, barbershops, local grocery stores, with the same cashiers as when I was a teenager, are still there. The neighbourhood isn’t flashy, nor does it attract people beyond the local residents, but its consistent use over decades keeps it going. This is why I was intrigued by Ridgeway Plaza. How did this outer city strip mall attract global attention? Is the Plaza reinvigorating local residential neighbourhoods? Bringing these questions with me, I decided to spend seven hours observing the Plaza and talking to people there and in the surrounding neighbourhoods to get a better sense of its appeal, the concerns, and the impact of recent changes. Seeing teenagers seeking shade under storefront signs in the perimeters of parking lots triggered a deeply rooted nostalgia, a universal language of the Canadian suburb.

Isolated amidst quiet residential and formerly industrial areas, the Plaza is a massive outlier in the landscape. Its sprawling layout houses over 115 food spots, including a wealth of Halal options, as well as clinics,  massage parlours, hair salons, boutiques, and jewelry stores. Many of them are open well past midnight, or even for 24 hours. Fields of parking lots spread around the islands of businesses. At peak times, cars queue up, waiting for spots to open. To a traditional urban planner, it may be a nightmare of auto-centric design, but to the thousands who gather there daily, the space has adapted to the particular needs of local communities, organically transforming this former empty lot into something between an open-air mall and a marketplace. It has become a third space – neither home nor work – for a car-dependent suburban city.

Evolution throughout the day

From 4 PM to 11 PM on a Saturday in late June, I witnessed a dynamic transformation of the Plaza.

4:00 PM

The plaza appears to be a larger-than-average suburban commercial hub. Rather than one mega strip mall, the Plaza is structured like a village of businesses, clusters of stores and restaurants tracing along parking lots and interconnected by single-lane roads lined by sidewalks. Cars dominate as people hustle into medical appointments or grab early dinners. I also notice groups of teenagers on the sidewalks, talking and walking with a cold drink in hand. The late-afternoon sun feels especially blistering because of the vast stretches of asphalt and the lack of trees, carrying the remnants of its past as a warehouse lot.

7:00 PM

As the sun begins to set, the energy of the space shifts. Bigger groups begin to pour in and customer lines start to form, spilling out of restaurants and onto sidewalks. The Plaza quickly fills with multi-generational families, couples, and friends talking and eating around restaurant tables and catching a FIFA game on the wall-mounted TVs.

10:00 PM

By 10 o’clock, the space has shifted from family dinner to a night market filled with younger people. Cars idle, waiting for an empty lot. At this hour, the physical geography of the parking lot is completely rewritten. People use car hoods and popped trunks as dining spaces and seats to chat. The use of this space challenges how we view the parking lot and strip mall, as people adapt them to stay longer and create more spaces to hang out. It’s an enactment of civic agency.

The manufactured vs. organic third space

Intentionally designed third spaces are often curated to garner hype, such as the themed cafes, bars, and lounges that have been popping up downtown in recent years. Ridgeway Plaza is an antithesis to this manufactured idea of a third space. The Plaza seems to have emerged organically and unexpectedly, moulding itself to the auto-centric mobility of the communities who live in the area.

For multicultural communities, the Plaza is a safe space. Some visitors describe it as a “little slice of home”, reminiscent of West and South Asian (amongst other regions) tastes and sounds familiar to them. Crucially, the businesses and customers here are not a monoculture. As one of the interviewees, Laiba, described it:

“I know it’s known as a Halal Plaza, but it’s not a monolith by any means. Visiting here could expose you to such diverse cultures. You can experience cuisines ranging from Palestinian, Turkish, and Ethiopian to Somali, and we shouldn’t generalize the clientele into a broad group of people.”

The cost of success: Contentious space

However, this booming popularity has not been met with universal welcome, becoming a contentious space between its enthusiasts and its residential neighbours. Since 2022, when the Plaza opened, the City of Mississauga has received 112 complaints regarding extreme congestion, late-night noise, unauthorized fireworks, street racing, and waste storage issues.

Residents living nearby have expressed frustration over the chaos. One resident, S*, noted:

“The place is open very late and serves local cuisines, nothing like what you might see at Square One. I like the food, but I try to avoid eating there because some people drive like back home, wherever it might be. It’s poorly planned and busy most of the time. The noise, garbage flying around, and people speeding with mufflers off. It’s gotten a little better over time, though.”

Another resident, J, shared similar feelings:

“I essentially live down the street from it. I do get takeout from there and appreciate the diversity of choices and how late they’re open. But the reckless driving is such a big problem. So many people who drive like traffic laws don’t apply to them.”

After the storm: Ridgeway restrained

To address these “nuisance gatherings”, the city considered zoning changes to scale back and limit the number of restaurants. This prompted pushback from business owners, who petitioned for expanded parking and better traffic management instead, growing concerned that a reduction, rather than accommodation, may hinder the Plaza’s presence for the communities and customers they serve. Ultimately, the city decided on a 15 percent reduction in restaurant space, anticipating a natural cool-down could occur as businesses close.

The city further pursued a legal injunction to prevent “planned unsanctioned events” (such as the Pakistani and Afghan independence day events that took place last year) to reduce density and control large-scale activity. After months of discussion, in May, the city and the Ridgeway Plaza condo corporations struck a formal security deal, altering the landscape by installing 11 entrance gates, 17 security cameras, 61 speed bumps, and aggressive no-parking and surveillance signage alongside a heavy presence of paid-duty police.

This raises some questions: when does socializing get flagged as “loitering”? Who gets to decide where and how people celebrate their heritage? As a result of implementing these security measures, the Ridgeway Business Association formed, expressing concerns that while these changes appear to be a step in the right direction, some of these safeguards could interfere with customer access, and the massive costs to implement and maintain security infrastructure may ultimately trickle down to tenants through increased fees.

For regular patrons, seeing gates and cameras go up in a space where they come to socialize may feel like an invalidation of their community. Another Ridgeway visitor, Mozhdeh, echoes this sentiment, highlighting potential underlying prejudices:

“My family from the U.S. and Europe exclusively eats and shops at Ridgeway when they visit. The food is really unique. I do understand the concerns from locals about noise, but when I lived in the area in the early 2000s, the traffic and noise were always there. People should know that Ridgeway was extremely popular for street racing even back then, and the area is a mix of houses and warehouses, not just a residential area.”

Another visitor, F, responded similarly to these changes to the Plaza, expressing that while some bylaw infractions are genuine, the policing of minority joy often carries double standards:

“The energy at Ridgeway does kind of feel different compared to a few years ago. Yes, the parking issue has gotten better since the city got involved, but it used to be an even more lively place than you see now. I think the complaints about this place are also fuelled by people who are already upset about immigration. I’m guessing a majority of the complaints are from people who have never been, but they know who goes there.”

A bed town no more: Mississauga’s new identity

What is a third space if restrictions and surveillance continue to suppress its flourishing and natural use? A parking lot where people crowd together to share food, culture, and conversation is fulfilling the sense of civic life, a space that’s not work, nor home, but somewhere in between. The friction caused by Ridgeway’s unexpected surge may be a symptom of a city undergoing growing pains, as Mississauga rapidly transitions away from its sleepy suburban identity to becoming a self-sufficient and cosmopolitan city. Echoing Laiba, the city is not becoming a “little Toronto” but something else, something that emerged and adapted from its residents’ everyday lives and needs.

“People I met in San Francisco even know about this place. Now, Mississauga is a place where people from the GTA will travel to do things. It’s not even like a mini Toronto anymore. It’s its own ecosystem”

The Plaza challenges the dominant urban planning ideal of what counts as a third space and the forms it can take. Its rapid growth may be a testament to how much a space like this was needed. Ridgeway reminded me of how strip mall parking lots served as a backdrop to my adolescence – sitting on a hot concrete curb with a slushie from the convenience store, or late-night hangouts in a friend’s parked car. People can turn anywhere into a third space, no matter its intended purpose. The Plaza is proof that in a car-centric suburban context, communities will find ways to bend the built environment to their needs. The solution to congestion and safe access must benefit both neighbouring residents and the Plaza’s visitors. It has to be possible to find a version of Ridgeway Plaza where neighbours are respected, communities feel welcome, and the continuing excitement and sense of pride that this Plaza brings are fostered. Beyond the growing pains that the Plaza is experiencing, I hope the tensions of this transition may be supported safely, while also retaining its authenticity that shaped this space in the first place.

*Some interviewees are identified only by an initial for the sake of privacy

All photos by Kaede Ashizawa

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Through their various governments and agencies, the people of Toronto have invested decades, and vast amounts of money in pursuit of redeveloping the downtown waterfront. As a result, Toronto has emerged as a true waterfront city. A formerly obsolete and derelict industrial zone has been transformed into a thriving and popular recreational district that serves millions of the region’s residents and visitors. It is also a major residential community where thousands of people of all incomes and demographics enrich the area’s unique urban mix. Similar planning and investment dollars are currently going into re-developing the East Bayfront, including commitments to extending the Harbourfront LRT eastward to service the expanding urban waterfront there.

Currently limited to short range aircraft, Billy Bishop Airport positively contributes to that mix. Its usage and infrastructure are in balance with the recreational and neighbourhood uses.

Enabling larger, long range aircraft to use it will, by orders of magnitude, increase the airport’s volume of passengers, flights, and the need for additional transit and parking facilities. As far as we know, there is no plan or funding commitment to improve access to an expanded airport. –
Apparently the province hopes to provide additional parking by expropriating the area and surroundings of Little Norway Park, an important central waterfront amenity that offers beautifully established gardens and a unique baseball diamond.

Moreover, the park is surrounded by hard to replace housing, including affordable rental units, and co-op buildings for disabled individuals and for artists. Immediately to its east is the newly commissioned Irish Memorial and its related theatre, and a local school and community centre. The thought of bulldozing such important public spaces and damaging needed housing is difficult to comprehend, all the more because all the above housing and facilities was made possible by federal government support and financing in the 1980’s kick-off of the re-development of Toronto’s Central Waterfront.

Moreover, the already heavy traffic congestion at Bathurst and Lakeshore Boulevard makes it hard to imagine much improvement to vehicular access. Similar is the case for public transit. The airport is currently serviced by the Bathurst streetcar, which terminates at Fleet Street, and the Harbourfront LRT, which is accessed at Queens Quay West. Extending these lines south to the airport terminal would be expensive and disruptive while providing only marginal capacity improvements relative to greatly increased demand.

In summary, this radical proposed expansion of the airport will create order-of-magnitude increases in demand for access infrastructure that will be difficult and extremely expensive to meet.

It also risks wiping out the pleasure enjoyed by millions of  Canadians, and rendering wasted the human, political, and financial resources that have gone into waterfront rejuvenation.

That prospect is cause for alarm. The concern is not just about jets or noise. It’s about radically shifting the delicate balance on Toronto’s downtown waterfront and compromising its quality as a unique urban asset.

The question we’re asking is why? Access between downtown Toronto and Pearson International has been greatly enhanced by the UP Express, bringing Union Station within 20 minutes travel time of a major hub airport.
The enormous expansion of the GTA has also shifted the demand for airport access to a far broader distribution of origin points, dwarfing the downtown need for additional airport access.

We suggest that future federal and provincial investment in supplementing Torontonians’ access to air travel be directed to responding to regional shifts in airport-bound demand and further improving operations at Pearson.

Ron Soskolne and Howard Cohen were senior city planners during the 1970’s, and principal co-authors of Toronto’s Central Area Plan. Howard headed up the original creation of Harbourfront, and went on to found Context Development. Ron headed up planning and development for a Toronto based development company, completing large waterfront complexes in London, New York, and Toronto. He subsequently served as as a consultant to the city, stewarding the development of Yonge Dundas Square.

The post An open letter about jets at Toronto’s Island Airport appeared first on Spacing Toronto.

I’m old enough to remember when Brad Bradford’s pungent symbol of Toronto’s urban decay was the apparently misnamed Sankofa Square — according to him, a forlorn concrete trapezoid populated by addicts and the homeless, in which anxious parents hustle frightened children lest they witness acts of public depravity.

Ah, the good old days.

Now, we’ve got an honest-to-goodness shooting calamity with which to bait Torontonians who, according to the mayoral aspirant and former Beaches East-York councillor, flock blindly into these risky shooting galleries formerly known as street festivals.

Much has been made in the past two days about Bradford’s alarmist social media posts concerning the gunfire that broke out at Salsa on St. Clair on Saturday night, leaving two young people dead, several others injured and thousands of alarmed attendees fleeing a sudden eruption of violence.

In his public statements, he’s also attacked Toronto police officials for asserting that Toronto is a safe city and has promised, as mayor, to do anything to contain gun violence.

As he was quoted in Wednesday’s Toronto Star, “I will make whatever changes are necessary, whatever changes are required, changes to the law, changes with the province and the federal government, changes to leadership to get this city back to what it should be.”

No one should be especially surprised at this dark turn in Bradford’s rhetoric. He’s been shopping around for a relatable public safety hook for his “deserves better” campaign for months, auditioning incidents such as synagogue shootings and home invasions in exclusive neighbourhoods. He was one of the dissenting votes on the Church Street pedestrianization project, although his objections seemed to drift more towards traffic than mayhem.

But now we have the shooting at Salsa, and it seems pretty clear that this fall’s mayoral showdown between Bradford and Olivia Chow is going to be about crime and punishment, and a reprise of the 20-plus-year-old fear-mongering whipped up around the so-called “Summer of the gun” in 2005.

A few observations about what’s transpired:

Perhaps because he’ll say just about anything, Bradford has become that rarest of political animals — a right-winger who’s slagging the cops, in this case for “tone-deafness,” i.e., daring to assert a plainly true fact, which is that Toronto is a safe big city.

Bradford, for the time-being at least, doesn’t want us to believe the gun crime data and join him instead in an orgy of emoting about “chaos.” “It’s more than just statistics,” he tells the camera in his widely circulated post. “Ask anyone who was running for their lives on St. Clair….”

What’s more, there’s been a conspicuous absence, in the post-Saturday media and political narrative, about the victims themselves, beyond a release of names and a vague statement by the police that they were targeted and “known to each other.” (Both had prior convictions, according to The Globe and Mail.)

There have been no human-interest media profiles quoting friends and co-workers and social media posts. No impromptu shrine of candles and flowers at the site of the shooting. No press conferences featuring grieving parents. Only a small vigil at a local church attended by Chow, area councillor Josh Matlow and NDP leader Marit Stiles. Bradford: not present, not surprisingly.

I could speculate about the reasons for this dearth of coverage (to date), but practically speaking, it has created a space through which Bradford can navigate. He doesn’t need to distract himself with complicated back-stories or engage in public displays of actual empathy. Rather, the victim in this tale is the city itself — a conjured space full of benighted parents with children innocently attending under-policed street festivals and, more to the point, middle class voters.

It’s worth considering the promises Bradford’s made in the past 48 hours (and quoted above). I get that we’re in an election campaign, and that all sorts of things get said. Yet I’d also argue that we should think about the implications of what the candidate is saying because, you know, he could win and then we’ll all be talking a lot more about the fall-out next year and perhaps beyond.

Mayors, needless to say, have limited powers when it comes to law enforcement. They can turn the nobs of the police budget, as Bradford would invariably do, and sit on the Toronto Police Services Board. But the reality with such public events — be they festivals or pedestrian zones — is that there are really only three options available to someone promising to improve safety: deploy way more cops; bump up the requirements of organizers to provide private security; or impose some kind of entry system.

I am prepared to boldly predict that a Mayor Bradford will only have the guts to pursue option one, which, of course, is mainly performative because there’s no way of knowing whether more cops actually serve as a deterrent. Maybe yes, but then people do stupid things.

As for his other pledges, it’s important to remember that outbursts of gun violence have, in the past, produced all sorts of policy ripples, many of which proved to be really unhelpful. The politics around the summer of the gun gave rise to years of aggressive over-policing in low-income and racialized suburban neighbourhoods by the Guns and Gangs Taskforce, as well as well-intentioned but stigmatizing municipal policies aimed at identifying the places where a certain type of crime apparently gestates.

Given the emergent tough-on-crime political consensus between Doug Ford and Mark Carney, I’d say a conservative mayor who spent a campaign banging on about urban crime and chaos will encounter wide open doors at Queen’s Park and Parliament Hill. In other words, there’s a real possibility that they could align on a new generation of hard-nosed policies that tend to achieve little more than fill the prisons with people on remand.

Ultimately, all this does, or should, come back to crime statistics, whether Bradford believes them or not. Toronto is a safe city where bad things sometimes happen, although at a rate demonstrably lower than many other places. He therefore faces a choice: promote and exploit fear in a way that could result in a generation of draconian legal and policing reforms, or find a more positive and accurate way of talking about the sprawling metropolis he aspires to lead.

We can all see which road he’s taking, and I assure you it won’t lead to the “better” city Bradford has told us that we deserve.

photo by Sam Javanrouh (cc)

The post LORINC: Brad Bradford continues his ‘city-is-on-fire’ routine appeared first on Spacing Toronto.

Amazingly and shockingly, after years of public hand-wringing in Canada about the inflationary consequences of over-concentrated sectors (banking, airlines, groceries, telecom), Rogers has scored a hole-in-one for monopolists everywhere by acquiring Larry Tanenbaum’s remaining slice of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, for $4.35 billion.

Consider for a moment: this company, whose ancestral roots trace to its cable TV monopoly, now owns all five of Toronto’s professional sports brands (Leafs, Raptors, Toronto FC, Blue Jays, and Argos), as well as two minor league franchises (Marlies and 905 Raptors) and a few other teams (but not the Toronto Tempo or the Toronto Sceptres, the city’s only pro women’s teams).

It owns the Rogers Centre and Scotiabank Arena, and controls the operations of BMO Field, the Coca Cola Coliseum, and several other elite training facilities, including the OVO Athletic Centre at the CNE.

Rogers recently acquired the remaining rights to Canadian NHL games from the CBC and controls broadcast rights to the Blue Jays, the Raptors, and TFC through Sportsnet. All of these venues, brands and platforms, in turn, are used to push Rogers’ telecom products.

On top of all that, Rogers and LiveNation, itself a vertically integrated monopoly, have a partnership to operate and promote Rogers Stadium on the Downsview Airport lands.

We love to sneer at a certain narcissistic president who suffers from an auto-naming fetish, but the reality is that Toronto — a megacity with tremendous wealth and dynamism — has become RogersTown, which, frankly, leaves me feeling kind of gross.

There are (or should be) bright red anti-competition warning lights flashing as a result of this takeover: you will no longer be able to see most live sports or big-venue shows without becoming ensnared in Rogers’ corporate tentacles. The impact of Rogers’ hyper-consolidation on ticket prices and streaming subscriptions will be profound, and it seems entirely predictable that the company will eventually use tied selling tactics to drive choice-free consumers to either its digital services or its venues.

I wonder whether this horizontally and vertically integrated behemoth will be challenged by the Bureau of Competition Policy, which has adopted a slightly less supine stance on mergers and abuse of dominant position (!) in recent years due to subtle reforms to the Competition Act. However, I think we can all agree not to place large bets on a break-up. Come to think of it, I wonder how long it will be before Rogers slithers into online sports betting.

As we head into the final frames of the FIFA World Cup, it’s worth reflecting on the stubborn tension that exists between the broad civic energy generated by mass sports and the narrow corporate greed that feasts off the public’s affection for its favourite teams.

At Spacing, we write extensively about the city’s inventory of public spaces, so that tension is relevant. The shared urban spaces, both physical and emotional, within which sports are played and consumed are tightly linked to city life and even city-building. Pro teams formally belong to very rich people, but they also belong to a city and its residents in some ineffable way, which is why Rogers’ commercial colonization of virtually all the planets in Toronto’s sports universe feels so intrusive (to me, anyway).

At least when Rogers and MLSE kind of divided up this empire of bats, sticks, and balls, we had the opportunity to choose, even if the choice had become increasingly circumscribed by their shared imperative to squeeze every last dollar out of those who would be spectators.

Post-consolidation, if you’re of the mind to reduce Rogers’ claim on your bank account, your options are Telus and Bell and the discount carriers, or, more promisingly, the city’s two women’s sports teams (although I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see them snapped up at some point). Point is, the options are exceedingly limited.

The other piece of this story has to do with what Rogers sees as its civic duty to support the region it has worked so hard to dominate. The MLSE Foundation, which is owned by MLSE and whose post-acquisition status is not yet clear, last year raised about $17 million and gave away a little less than half, mostly to youth sports (including girls sports), recreation programs, and refurbished community spaces. Not a huge sum, given that MLSE is worth billions, but not nothing either.

Rogers, also worth billions, has a much larger national foundation, which donates about $200 million to a range of causes across the country, including youth programs and scholarships, environmental concerns and economic development initiatives, which it supports with free or low-cost internet. What becomes of MLSE’s local giving initiatives? And will Rogers feel some twinge of obligation to go further than MLSE with its corporate munificence in exchange for getting to lock down an entire city with its brand.

Quite apart from the funds strewn about through well-meaning corporate citizenship programs, the New York Knicks’ long-awaited victory in this year’s NBA final provides (as did the Raptor’s 2019 win) a glimpse of the way sports can bring a whole city together. The Knicks’ 53-year losing streak rivalled that of the Leafs, and the Knicks’ owner is a legendary creep. Yet residents of all five boroughs — long-suffering fans and bandwagoners alike — poured onto the streets, first for massive watch parties and then to drink in a spectacular win. The celebration was nothing that could be owned or narrowly profited from.

But then again, NYC has three NHL teams, two NBA teams, two NFL teams, and two Major League baseball teams, all owned by different plutocrats. Maybe the Knicks’ victory wouldn’t have been so sweet if one company had positioned itself to grab a big slice of all that happiness.

photo by Sue Thompson (cc)

The post LORINC: Toronto becomes RogersTown appeared first on Spacing Toronto.

I approach an unfamiliar neighbourhood a little east of the downtown core. I know I am at the right house when I notice Perry Walker standing on the second-storey front balcony. The host, today’s balcony-side storyteller, generously invites me to join them.

Once I’m let in, I notice Walker has set up his camera and tripod at the corner of the west-facing balcony. Settling in, we all chat about the quiet neighbourhood, the different streets we took to get here, how long our host has lived here, and stories about their neighbours. Walker settles behind the camera and starts it rolling.

The interview is not really interview-like at all. The host is a natural storyteller, and the conversation is more like a stream of consciousness. From roommates, landlords, job security, aspirations, people-watching, to using the CN Tower as a wayfinding guide, the conversation ebbs and flows between big and small ruminations from our host’s perspective.

For the most part, Walker is quiet in this interaction. His eyes monitor the camera, listening attentively. Once in a while, he might make a brief, acknowledging remark, a sympathetic agreement, or an occasional follow-up question. Walker’s camera captures not just the host, but little things that build the reflective atmosphere and nostalgic feeling of chatting on a sunny balcony- the half-eaten oranges, the view over the street below, the hand tapping the ashes from the cigarette, and the cat perched by the balcony window.

This interview is part of Walker’s documentary film project From Where I’m Sitting, which maps Toronto in a unique way. His background in film theory and 15 years of experience in documentary filmmaking shine through in his non-fiction storytelling approach. In this project, he travels across Toronto to record anonymous, podcast-style conversations with residents from their front porches, balconies, and similar spaces that face onto public surroundings. Centred around the core question of “what can you see from where you live?”, the project documents how residents interact with their immediate environment and explores the everyday issues currently occupying their minds. Ultimately, these intimate, observational interviews will culminate in a feature-length anthology film as a snapshot of the city through the eyes of its inhabitants.

The film captures the ephemeral moments felt in the city- summer, a break from the fast-paced day-to-day, a thoughtful moment shared with a stranger. As Walker says,

People are busy in this city. So, a part of the overall concept is to try to capture that essence of summertime in Toronto. Everyone’s cooped up indoors for so many months, and then spring hits, and people are like, “Okay, time to live life again, time to go out and talk to people,” and the amount of socializing people do in this three or four-month span, I think, is more than the rest of the year combined.

Since its production started in Spring 2025, From Where I’m Sitting has reached over 100 participants (and counting) in different neighbourhoods around the city.

Having this many participants involved, especially considering the range of neighbourhoods he’s visited thus far, from St. Clair West, Lansdowne, Roncesvalles, College, to Danforth, is no easy feat. Walker shared the journey of exploring how he approaches potential interviewees in the city.

Posters and flyers are my number one way right now. Now that I have my website set up and the project has been underway for a while, potential participants can learn about it in their own time, and they can reach out to me and invite me in, which is nice.

Last spring and summer (when the production began) was tricky because I was trying to establish the project. I was doing a lot of walking, talking to people and seeing who was up for it, but I’m doing less of that now- it’s nicer if people invite me in because I think it’s a bit more comfortable if people initiate the interaction.

Sometimes, someone sees me with my camera or hears what I’m doing, and they say, “Oh, my neighbour would be perfect for this”, or “I know someone who is always out front.” This kind of word-of-mouth, organic recommendation process keeps this project going.

When I asked Walker about his specific angle of porches and balconies as a motif for this project, he explained how he views the front porch as a particular point of view.

Choosing this specific space invites the question of what people can see from their front porch, what they see from where they live, and the world as they see it within their vicinity. So there is that idea of the porch almost being like a stage, looking out into the city, and watching the show going on.

For this project, the “porch” is a metaphorical concept that includes balconies, stoops, rooftops, and front steps. This setting creates a familiar, vulnerable backdrop, as a boundary between the private home and public street. Unlike stopping a person out and about, people on their porches are unwinding from the stress of their day, lending themselves to reflection and contemplation.

The porch setting also removes the pressure of hospitality. Because Walker does not enter their homes (unless the space is a balcony), participants do not need to worry about tidying up or hosting. Walker strikes the sweet spot of a not-too-public, not-too-intimate interaction.

This is why the porch works, it can be more casual, and people are at home, so they’re relaxed, but because it’s outdoor facing, it doesn’t feel like I’m invading anyone’s privacy, hopefully. The porch is almost this liminal third space.

Younger demographics I’ve interviewed live in houses that the landlord has chopped up and divided to the point where there isn’t even a real gathering spot. So sometimes the porch or doorsteps function as a living room, because it’s the one common space they have.

Walker’s subjects are a diverse mix of homeowners, renters, professionals, students, and anyone in between. Conversations often reveal the unique challenges tied to a person’s stage of life. Especially for younger folks, recurring themes include affordability, the job market, AI, and anxiety about the future.

Through this project, Walker has observed a shift in modern city life in Toronto. He notes that people-watching has become less of a social activity because residents are increasingly isolated in their own lanes.

There are a lot of times where people watching is now very much a one-way thing, where I feel like a few generations ago, it might have been more normal if you’re looking at someone, they might look out at you, nod or open up to you. I don’t know if that happens as much now because we’re in our own pressurized bubbles.

Walker came to embrace an organic approach of capturing a snapshot of participants’ stories and moments in these contemplative spaces. At first, he felt an internal pressure to accurately represent the city. He was considering approaching people who might explicitly comment on Toronto culture or those with historical knowledge of the city. But that internal pressure eased with each new person he encountered. Over time, he realized that Toronto was far too diverse and expansive for a rigid ethnography, and he pivoted to being receptive and letting people come to him.

[Loosening expectations] has been better for me creatively because I’ve been able to accept the true documentary ethos of letting reality and the participants dictate the story’s organic path.

 The more I let go and allow people to tell their own story, letting them lead the way, the more I can focus on what’s happening in the present. As a filmmaker and storyteller, I try not to get stuck in what I think is going to happen or what I want the results to be. The project’s been unfolding in ways I didn’t expect, which makes it interesting and exciting to keep going.

Stories shared by participants from diverse backgrounds and walks of life encapsulate the separate, yet shared life cycles experienced by residents. From welcoming a new child into the world, to finding your footing in your 20s and 30s, to the “what now?” of your twilight years, this project carries the essence of “the days are long but the years are short”, experiencing the passage of time and changes in landscape through the eyes of different people living in the same city. Even though Walker spends a brief moment of a single, ordinary day with Torontonians, his work captures the collective human cycle that keeps us connected and keeps us going.

Further information about this ongoing project can be found on the official website: fromwhereimsitting.ca. From Where I’m Sitting is looking for more participants — especially those who watch the world go by.

All images are stills from From Where I’m Sitting by Perry Walker unless otherwise specified. Participants agreed to be filmed and recorded, but exact locations and names are kept anonymous.

The post Porch Perspectives appeared first on Spacing Toronto.

Over the course of this World Cup, Toronto is welcoming 300,000 fans across the six matches we’re hosting. Fans and teams may enjoy what our City is proud of: diverse restaurants, sports stadiums, and playful fan activations. However, all the while they will also be experiencing the less glamorous side of day-to-day life: unreliable public transit, a lack of public washrooms, overflowing litter bins, and hostile benches (which are also few and far between). This summer, our public spaces and infrastructure are being tested as they accommodate many more people than usual. While our amenities may be burdened, Torontonians should use this as an opportunity to imagine what an accessible, well-designed, and well-maintained street furniture program could look like.

Currently, Toronto’s street furniture is delivered via the Coordinated Street Furniture Program, a 20 year (2007-2027) public-private partnership with Astral Media. It’s responsible for transit shelters, benches, litter and recycling receptacles, wayfinding pillars, bicycle parking, and more, encompassing an inventory of over 24,000 pieces. While expansive, the program is also plagued by controversies and problems beyond  aesthetic concerns (though the corporate gray plastic is certainly not doing Toronto any favours). Overflowing and easily damaged litter bins are a common sight in Toronto, just as bus shelters without adequate informational displays, but rather adorned with advertising schemes, are the norm. The use of defensive architectural design features is also concerningly common, for example, armrests placed to prevent users from lying down or seats that do not accommodate users of mobility devices. As the contract with Astral comes to a close in the next year, it’s clear Toronto needs to reconsider not only how these elements are designed but the principles they are designed upon.

Accessibility

At its core, street furniture should serve everyone, including people with disabilities. Accessibility needs to be one of the key principles Toronto bases its new street furniture contract upon. Well‑designed benches provide a safe place to rest for all. Designs must comply with AODA standards and most importantly be developed in consultation with disabled users and advocates. Instead of hostile features, street furniture should make streets feel safe and welcoming.

Seasonality

Although it’s summer now, Toronto is a winter city, so our public amenities must be designed with seasonality and durability in mind. With increasingly extreme weather, new designs should address both heat (e.g. additional shade structures) and cold. Other Canadian cities have already adopted the use of heated bus shelters to keep users warm, a feature that Toronto should follow suit on. Multi‑functional street furniture can serve different purposes across seasons, and thoughtful investment in design will help reduce future maintenance and replacement costs.

Creative and Artistic Design

Finally, having usable and well-designed street furniture has real economic value for the city. Numerous cities across the world have demonstrated how creativity can breathe life and foot traffic into previously neglected spaces, inspiring people to spend more money and time. Cities like Montreal, New York, and Barcelona have all invested in street furniture programs in specific neighbourhoods using fun, colourful designs alongside utilitarian features like WiFi hubs and shaded awnings to help boost tourism and promote local spending. Collaborating with local artists can also help ensure pieces reflect the places where they’re installed. In a city of diverse, unique neighbourhoods, there can be no one‑size‑fits‑all solution or aesthetic to our public spaces.

As Torontonians enjoy the excitement of this summer, we will also be reminded of the cracks in our system when the fun ends: the overcrowded stop as we wait for the bus to come, the lack of benches after a long day of cheering, overflowing garbage bins full of game‑day snacks, and insufficient wayfinding as we try to get home. As the current street furniture contract comes to a close, let’s remember the lessons of this summer and the past, and get ready to demand what we deserve from our elected officials. Toronto deserves a world‑class street furniture program designed to suit a city as diverse and multifaceted as its people.

The post OP-ED: The value of street furniture in Toronto appeared first on Spacing Toronto.

By now, most City Hall watchers know that Brad Bradford has selected, as a pointed wedge issue, a proposal to rename Sankofa Square while simultaneously using its apparently neglected condition as a symbolic cudgel to attack Mayor Olivia Chow’s record in office.

“It’s dirty, it’s unsafe, there’s open drug use in the middle of the afternoon,” he declared at a press conference earlier this week where he unveiled his new plank. “We’ve been told this is how it is. Mayor Chow has made her peace with this but I have not.”

He promised to not only clean and rename the space — “Toronto Square” is his equally unsubtle suggestion — but also to somehow work with the giant video billboard “brands” to project more meaningful content at the passersby and chip in to keep the place clean.

By now, many people also know, thanks to the Toronto Star’s reporting, that when council voted in 2023 to select Sankofa to replace Dundas, Bradford backed that change, although he now seems unconcerned, in a conspicuously Trumpian way, about getting ensnared in an inconvenient backstory.

These days, he’s all about the name/blame game, as are the spin-doctors on the right. “Real Torontonians will be cheering on the end of wasteful, woke, divisive Chow leading us into damning decline,” Liberal hack and failed mayoral candidate Stephen LeDrew wrote on X. (Whatever could he mean by “real Torontonians,” I wonder.)

I debated for a few days about whether it’s worth platforming Bradford’s coded position here and give it more oxygen than it deserves. But in the end, I think it is important to unpack what’s being said, insinuated and parroted with this gambit because Bradford’s choice, in my view, reveals some serious judgment issues.

Let’s start with parroted. The man who decided to weaponize Sankofa is Daniel Tate, the founder of IntegrityTO, which claims to have formed in response to the original re-naming but has turned into much more than that, as the name suggests.

For months now, Tate’s social media has been chock-a-block with a witch’s brew of antagonist attacks on anyone even vaguely connected with the left, Chow or Toronto Centre councillor Chris Moise, as well as click-bait images of homeless people or those with addictions in public spaces, especially the TTC. The impression he clearly wants to convey is that city services/spaces are overwhelmed with visible homelessness/addiction — they’re not — and that the fault for this state of affairs lies squarely with Chow.

It’s quite legitimate to raise issues of public safety in the context of a municipal election. But we should all be disturbed by Tate’s habit of photographing destitute people without their consent and then trafficking in these highly prejudicial images for political purposes.

Equally troubling, to me, is the fact that Bradford has chosen to effectively leverage Tate’s platform as a way of advancing his mayoral campaign. Tate, of course, has every right to express himself, but he’s a crank with a narrow agenda and I have no qualms about calling out someone who’s basically set themselves up as a troll who also sells merch.

This alignment alone is enough to raise questions about Bradford’s acumen. All elected politicians, but especially high visibility office-holders like mayors, should be thinking about whom they choose as their allies. I fully understand that many candidates are more than happy to pander in order to win over key supporters during election season.

But noisemakers like Tate will be emboldened to shout down or bully opponents if they end up on the winning side of a race, or otherwise leverage their political relationships in order to advance private agendas.

The third layer that disturbs me about Bradford’s Toronto Square wedge involves the textual and psychological association asserted between visible homelessness and drug use in the space and a name selected, quite explicitly, to acknowledge a strand of West African mythology chosen to respond to concerns raised about Henry Dundas’s slave holdings.

While Sankofa was a controversial choice, I’m not squeamish about arguing that Tate’s shrill attacks on this particular name, three years after the fact, clearly pluck on a racial chord, especially when they’re tethered to a lot of red meat rhetoric about safety, disorder, filth, and so on. There’s a not-too-subtle way to interpret how this rhetoric could land in certain ears, especially at a moment of rising anti-immigrant sentiment. Bradford’s making his bed…

Finally, there’s the issue of the square’s problematic urban design — a topic I don’t believe Bradford is interested in confronting. In the 1990s, when the city expropriated the land to create a central public space whose operations would be financed by parking revenue from the garage beneath the plaza, it selected an overly conceptual design, and then an approach to programming, that undermined its potential role as a civic space with gravitational pull.

The square itself is exposed and impermeable, lacks seating, amenities, and a focal point, and has no sense of enclosure or delineation at its edges. It is only animated by whatever the city decides to book there, and consequently the square has never become a casual destination in the middle of the downtown. The fact that Queen’s Park in 2024 shut down the supervised injection site on Victoria Street, right around the corner, also helps explain the visible drug use, which, of course, is the fault of a raging opioid epidemic, not the mayor.

If he wins, Bradford will bulk up the security there and give the place a whitewash — which is to say, he’ll achieve nothing. Nor will upbeat messages on the giant video screens (assuming the city can even extract such concessions from the outdoor advertising giants).

What’s needed for this space is a wholesale urban design makeover, beginning with the flawed premise that its animation is the city’s responsibility and thus is only intermittent. If Sankofa Square was a successful public space that attracted the public, Daniel Tate wouldn’t have dared attack the name, and Bradford would have had to look elsewhere for his wedgies.

As it stands, this fight will become the stupidest election issue’ of the 2026 campaign.

The post Brad Bradford’s name blame game appeared first on Spacing Toronto.

For this exhibition, which runs until April 31, 2027, curator Paul Sharkey has taken a conceptual approach to a photo series created between 1910 and 1957 by City Photographer Arthur Goss and his successor Howard MacDonald. Instead of using a conventional layout, he has arranged large numbers of images into “repetitive grids based on visual similarities”.

The stated aim of the exhibition is to “reveal the creativity of the photographers by removing the photos from their original documentary context and arranging them by visual themes, associations, repetitions and typologies”. This approach produces a strong graphic effect, but I find that it conveys little information on the character of Subseries 58.

Many archival photos that were only intended to record facts can be appreciated for their aesthetic qualities after their original use has been forgotten. The photos in Subseries 58 that I find most interesting were those taken between 1910 and 1939 by the City’s first official photographer, Arthur Goss.

Goss was already an accomplished artist before he was commissioned by the City to head his own department, providing photography services to all the other City divisions. His successor Howard MacDonald was an uninspired journeyman who laboured from 1940 until the position of City Photographer was eliminated in 1957. The artistic and the technical quality of the photos in the Roadway series deteriorated markedly during his tenure .

The photos Goss took for the Roadways series demonstrate his ability to animate an image from edge to edge, often by choreographing random street traffic to balance the composition. Roadway No. 109 from April, 1914, looking north on Spadina at Queen Street, features fifteen moving figures, five vehicles and a wheelbarrow, but nothing seems out of place. The dismal weather is visceral, creating a powerful mood that transcends the banal scene.

By comparison, my own photograph of this intersection take during construction of the Spadina LRT in July, 1915 is a strictly factual record of a construction site. I might have done better, but security guards prevented me from getting closer to the work.

Goss was also skilled at placing a single figure on a large stage. Roadway No. 339 from October, 1914 depicts a workman in the foreground of a deep perspective of steel rails. The shallow depth of field emphasizes the man’s posture and clothing, revealing a hole in the elbow of his cardigan.

This mildly comical element is reinforced by advertising signs in the background. One directly above the figures is recognizable as the logo for Old Dutch Cleanser. Another sign close to the upper left corner depicts a pair of pants.

Roadway No. 369 is an example of how a photo taken for administrative purposes can slip into the uncanny. The camera eye looks straight ahead from a position only a few inches above a perfectly smooth and level sidewalk. The identities of the two truncated figures standing to either edge of the frame might be guessed from their clothing. The one on the right could be a City official while the one opposite could be a foreman. But who is that barely visible figure sitting in the mysterious vehicle in the near distance?

When photographing sidewalk scenes on commercial streets, Goss usually oriented his view at an acute angle to the building facades. The nominal subject of Roadway No. 1293 from November, 1931 is “sidewalk encroachment” by merchants on Queen Street West. But the riot of shapes in this image, including that of the warmly dressed window shopper, results from his choice to shoot against the light.

In Roadway No. 1275 from March 1931, Goss again works against the light, which transforms winter-ravaged pavement on Spadina Road into a glistening plane. The saluting cyclist on the left is perfectly balanced against the pedestrian on the right. What can be mistaken for a sagging hydro wire on the upper right is actually a crack in the glass negative.

Although it appears as a main thoroughfare on the Goads Insurance map of 1910, Roadway No. 71 from August, 1911 shows Carlaw Avenue as a muddy field veined with squirming tire tracks. The photographer’s shoes are not shown, but their condition can be imagined.

Roadway No. 1303 from February, 1932 offers a comparable scene of suburban development, while illustrating the City’s preoccupation with public safety.

On April 1, 1954, two days after the opening of Toronto’s first subway line, City photographer Howard MacDonald began a project to document storefronts and sidewalks on lower Yonge Street. The timing was not a coincidence. The cut and cover method used to construct the subway on this part of Yonge Street may have resulted in damage to some facades. The City must have wanted MacDonald’s photos to serve as potential evidence in property damage lawsuits.

The need to work fast seems to have trumped all other considerations for the photographer. He produced approximately 190 photos over an eight day period, most of which are details, awkwardly composed and badly lit. They give the viewer no sense of what the streetscape really looked like, only truncated views of the store windows and pavement. Roadway No 2532 is typical.

MacDonald was tasked with documenting selected downtown streets by taking a series of axial views of each. His documentation of Terauley Street (originally Alice Street) in June 1950 comprises four views, Roadway Nos. 2069-2072, progressing west from Yonge Street to Bay.*

This series provides a glimpse of what Toronto’s downtown looked before its modernist transformation. Terauley is one of the two streets that were erased entirely from the street grid to make way for the Eaton Centre development of the 1970s. The Eaton’s factory that dominated the street was demolished in 1973.

* Until 1922, Bay Street between Queen and College was called Terauley Street. Alice Street was renamed Terauley before 1924.

The post The photographic techniques of Toronto’s City Photographers appeared first on Spacing Toronto.