Opposite the bascule bridge, the Gardiner diverts around a long industrial shed whose chimney is emitting a plume of grey smoke. This was the Canron pipe foundry, at 324 Cherry Street. Originally named National Iron Works, it was established in 1909 on a waterfront site purchased from the City. It remained in production until the mid-1980s.

Unlike the other metallurgical plants located along the city’s waterfront a century ago, National Iron/Canron has left a unique legacy. It was a manufacturer of large-diameter cast-iron water pipe and fittings, which can last more that a century. A large proportion of the water consumed in Toronto today passes through pipes that were cast and finished in this plant during its more than seven decades of production.

Although I was never able to photograph the Canron foundry from inside its gates, a single visit I made to 324 Cherry Street in the early 1960s had a profound effect on my imagination. During the summer holidays I was working for my father, who was a public works contractor. One hot summer day, I went along as a passenger in a truck sent to the foundry to pick up some watermain fittings.

On arrival at the foundry, we were directed to a corner of the yard. While the truck was being loaded, I was able to examine the foundry buildings, from which had emerged the huge array of products ready to be shipped. Fascinated by those drab and voluminous structures, I strained for a glimpse of what was going on in the shadowy spaces behind their open doors, but the process remained hidden. Later on, when I had become a competent architectural photographer, I sought out similar industrial plants to photograph inside and out.

The surviving photographic record of early heavy industries in Toronto is usually quite meagre. Fortunately this foundry complex, in its early guise as the National Iron Works, was photographed repeatedly between 1916 and 1934 by the Toronto Harbour Commission’s official photographer, Arthur Beales. It first appears in his 1916 photos of dock wall construction along the Keating Channel (see below for the complete photogallery).

Arthur Beales documented the various activities of the Harbour Commission from 1914 until his retirement in 1951. Like Arthur Goss, his counterpart in City administration, he ran his own department and was responsible for churning out blueprints as well as photographs. Recording progress on the diversion of the Don River into the Keating Channel was one of his many photographic duties.

Throughout his long career, Beals exploited every opportunity to take elevated views of the waterfront and harbour. He took his earliest photo of the National Iron Works from atop the Gooderham and Worts distillery’s wooden grain elevator at the foot of Parliament Street. The elevated viewpoint emphasizes the foundry site’s irregular shoreline; it had originated as a sand spit.

In 1917, Beales climbed to the roof of the National Iron Works two-storey office building to photograph the derrick being used to construct the Cherry Street bascule bridge. He then crossed the channel to take counter-views of the foundry and its surroundings from the top of the derrick.

Returning in 1918, the photographer used both the foundry’s office building and the completed bascule bridge to document the rapid development of the port industrial district. His subjects included industries related to the war effort, such as the Canadian Shipbuilding Company along the Keating Channel and the British Forgings munitions plant south of Commissioners Street.

Finally, in 1934, Beales mounted to the high roof of the foundry shed to take a general view looking south, then crossed the channel to take three overlapping views from the top of the bridge structure showing the downtown skyline with the foundry site in the foreground. His evident intention was to create a visual link between the financial and industrial centres of the city.

Although many of Beales’ photos of the industrial waterfront feature leaden skies and clouds of smoke, there is no indication that he chose those light in conditions  for pictorial effect. The dirty light was unavoidable, given the habitually high level of local air pollution from numerous sources. By the mid 1960s, when the aerial view described above was taken, the air had begun to clear.

Two photos taken at the plant in 1955 by commercial photographer Gilbert Milne, the year the National Iron Works became a subsidiary of Canada Iron Foundries, contrast in their matter-of-factness with Beales’ earlier work. My own view from 1986, shortly after production had ceased for good, is strictly a documentary image.

In 1968, a new, streamlined Cherry Street lift bridge replaced the one shown in these photos. In 2024, as part of Waterfront Toronto’s revitalization of the Port Lands, that bridge was demolished and not replaced. Cherry Street was relocated farther west, and it now runs through the centre of the former Canron foundry site. Twin fixed bridges connect it to the new island called Ookwemin Minising

Despite the pollution it undoubtedly caused, the National Iron/Canron foundry contributed to Toronto’s urban development by providing main components for its existing water distribution system. That it repeatedly served a vantage point for Arthur Beales’ documentation of the port industrial district allows us to better comprehend the gritty inter-war industrial waterfront of which few traces remain today.

Photogallery

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Now, as spooky season approaches, it’s worth re-examining the films to see what the onscreen world of Oz says about our real-world dreams. The film adaptation of the 1995 novel  shows what happens when people with influence fail to imagine mass transit. Instead, ordinary cities around the world are a source of more optimism and innovation than the transportation solutions seen on screen. Unlike Oz, we can’t let our ambitions for transit be constrained by a lack of collective solutions.

The focus on private transportation is clear from the opening shots of Wicked: For Good. Beasts of burden strain under the weight of a roadbuilding contraption as yellow bricks clunk into place. When a frowning foreman whips the animals, Elphaba swoops in on her broom to defend the creatures.

The camera lingers on personal vehicles. Students arrive at Shiz University in single-family gondolas. Glinda glides towards campus on a boat piled high with her luggage. When she steps ashore, the docks are covered with other students’ trunks. Perhaps Wicked’s creative team was thinking of North American students being dropped off for university, sometimes with enough furniture to completely redesign their dorm rooms? Certainly, the scene reinforces the conceit that personal transportation is more appealing than any collective alternative.

Later, the lack of passengers on the train from Shiz to the Emerald City makes the locomotive seem like a glorified green limo. In the world of Wicked there is mass transit – but somehow no one seems to be taking it. University students crowd the platform but only one of them is meant to board. No one gets off and – unlike the gondola scene – there’s no sign of luggage. There’s also no one searching for a seat or jostling to store suitcases.

These are all normal parts of taking transit and they’re captured in another fantastical film. The Japanese animated movie Spirited Away shows other passengers throughout the protagonist’s train journey – shadowy figures shift to retrieve bags then get off at various stops. While Spirited Away normalizes mass transit by showing the mundane actions of anonymous passengers, Wicked subverts the real world possibilities of rail travel by framing it as a luxury good for the select few.

Other fictional train journeys have encouraged readers to imagine themselves joining the crowd and riding the rails. Generations of Harry Potter fans have posed for photos at platform 9 ¾. Elsewhere in London, the lost bear Paddington has been immortalized in bronze at the station that shares his name. Although Wicked was filmed in England, it doesn’t celebrate the energy and emotion of transit hubs like these British stories. Oz as built for the Wicked films is not a place that prioritizes moving residents at scale.

The narrow focus on individual transportation is surprising given the attention lavished on more fantastical aspects of the Wicked films. The rustic houses of Munchkinland contrast with the urban flair of the Emerald City. At Shiz University, spinning circular bookcases add a touch of magic to study sessions.

Moreover, the Wicked sets were built by hand, rather than relying on computer graphics. As director Jon M. Chu explained, “If you want to be inside that world, you gotta build it.”

Given this commitment to crafting a world that is different from our own, the dominance of personal transportation options is all the more jarring. Car culture is a problem for the audience but its equivalent doesn’t have to be a problem for Oz. If imagination is at the core of creating the world of Wicked, the films could invent counterpoints to the atomized and individual transportation solutions shown on screen and seen on our streets.

Why don’t Shiz students share a ferry to get to campus? The choice of gondolas for family groups is especially puzzling because it’s unclear how the character Nessarose — who uses a wheelchair — would board and disembark. Wouldn’t a gangway to and from a larger vessel be more accessible? The small boats seem to reinforce North American assumptions about how to travel: cars and their equivalents reign supreme.

After all the money poured into the construction of a 16-ton train, why doesn’t the film show a crowd of Ozians onboard? Without other passengers, the train feels like an elaborate Uber. Sure, docking boats and filling train compartments would have been costly to shoot, but the movie spared no expense. Director Chu boasted about using 9 million tulips. With that level of passion for world-building, the absence of magical mass transportation only demonstrates the limits of Hollywood’s imagination.

All of this parallels the absurdity of unfunded and underperforming light rail projects in Toronto. It’s hard to move people en masse, and Wicked suggests that alternatives to personal transportation are unpopular. On the shores of Lake Ontario, autonomous vehicle companies are increasing their lobbying efforts even though local streets are ripe for pedestrianization and other uses.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Iowa City has offered free bus service since 2023. In London, a stone’s throw from where Wicked was shot, public transit has had daily fare capping for riders since 2005. And of course France — where the Wicked train pulled a publicity stunt during the 2024 Olympics — has had a national network of high-speed trains dating back to the 1980s. Put simply, rapid rail connections and convenient public transit are more wondrous than anything in magical Oz.

Toronto has opportunities to improve bus service, expand waterfront connectivity and welcome a new type of electric vehicle. Done right, we could even honour the city’s transportation history in tandem with an industrial landmark.

For all the gleam of fantasy, the Wicked movies are proof that sometimes reality is more hopeful and ingenious than the visions that studio execs want to sell us. The films don’t encourage us to dream of speedy intercity rail or laugh at the unexpected antics of fellow passengers. (In contrast, boisterous encounters between travelling strangers are a fixture of films set in Russia.) Once we look past car dependency, we can see that the onscreen adaption of Wicked is complicit in a failure of imagination.

Without real investment in mass transit, congestion only gets worse and we all suffer through daily delays and sinking air quality. Plans and priorities from other parts of the world show that alternatives are possible. In the season celebrating witches and other ghostly neighbours, it’s time to recommit to our collective imagination and dream about high-capacity transportation.

Image from Toronto Public Library greeting card collection

The post Wicked transportation appeared first on Spacing Toronto.

Six winners were named from 75 nominees in three categories: Book, Public History, and Built Heritage. Each category was independently judged by a jury of experts. In addition, a People’s Choice Award was announced, selected by Heritage Toronto supporters and event attendees from among the Public History nominees.

This nominated and award-winning work exemplifies how Toronto’s heritage sector contributes to a creative and compassionate city, transforming city streets, neighbourhoods, and communities, driving tourism, fostering environmental sustainability, promoting inclusivity, and strengthening connections.

Spacing is proud to be the media sponsor and bookseller of the event. Find all book nominees for sale at our shop.

THE WINNERS

The Book Award
sponsored by Ridley Windows & Doors Inc.
Where Histories Meet: Indigenous and Settler Encounters in the Toronto Area

A groundbreaking study that combines archival records and the voices of Indigenous Elders and knowledge keepers to understand the colonial dynamics that still structure Indigenous-Canadian relationships today.
Author: Victoria Freeman, Publisher: University of Calgary Press
PURCHASE AT SpacingStore.ca

PUBLIC HISTORY: Small Project (<$10,000) Award
sponsored by Clifford Restoration Limited
Third Places: Japanese Canadian Sites of Gathering

An exhibit exploring the role of public spaces and the subjective and emotive experiences of placemaking by Japanese Canadians in Toronto.
Project Lead: Vidhya Elango, Organization: Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre

PUBLIC HISTORY: Large Project (>$10,000) Award
sponsored by Clifford Restoration Limited
Pussy Palace, an oral history project

Documenting the rise, police raid, and enduring cultural legacy of Toronto’s Pussy Palace bathhouse events.
Project Lead: Elspeth H. Brown, Organizations: LGBTQ Oral History Digital Collaboratory at the University of Toronto and The ArQuives: Canada’s LGBTQ2+ Archives

The People’s Choice Award
sponsored by Woodcliffe Landmark Properties
Practicing Heritage: Mahjong

A community partnership which through weekly mahjong programming connects multiple generations to the history and heritage of Chinese immigration and family associations in Toronto (award includes a $2,500 prize).
Organizations: All Flowers Mahjong and Wong Association of Ontario

Built Heritage category

The Adaptive Reuse Award
sponsored by Aird & Berlis, recognizes projects that meet current needs while maintaining the integrity of the original design vision….
Parliament Rooming Houses

The transformation of three heritage-listed Second Empire townhouses, reinforcing Cabbagetown’s historic character while creating a lasting social impact through new housing for some of Toronto’s most vulnerable residents.
Property Owner: Dixon Hall, Architect: ERA Architects, Contractor: HRI Group

The Heritage Planning & Architecture Award
sponsored by LiUNA Local 183, recognizes the successful application of appropriate conservation and planning principles….
Allan Gardens’ Palm House

A conservation-led rehabilitation of a rare public greenhouse, protecting its Edwardian character while improving safety, performance, and long-term public use.
Property Owner: City of Toronto, Architects: Zeidler Architecture Inc. and Architects Rasch Eckler Associates Ltd., Contractor: HRI Group, Structural Engineers: RJC Engineers

The Crafts and Trades Award
sponsored by OPCMIA Local 598, recognizes the use of construction techniques and materials that are compatible with the building’s original architectural qualities….

Lumsden Building Façade
The conservation of one of Toronto’s earliest high-rise office buildings and a defining landmark within the historic lower Yonge streetscape, focusing on material retention, compatible repair techniques, and longevity.
Property Owner: DREAM Unlimited, Architects: ERA Architects, Contractor: HRI Group, Structural Engineers: RJC Engineers

At the ceremony, the Heritage Toronto Board presented the Volunteer Service Award to Gilles Huot for his support of the organization’s Tours program and enthusiastic mentorship of emerging historians.

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A week ago, I saw a widely shared photo of a pair of cyclist demonstrators planted in the middle of the now destroyed Bloor West bike lane, staring down a phalanx of cops, and my very first thought was, wouldn’t it be great if Toronto‘s municipal leaders stood up to the author of this desecration the way these two ordinary residents did?

Alas, we don’t live in that world, do we? At no point in any of the Ford government’s repeated and obscene incursions into the city’s jurisdiction have our leaders, and in particular Mayor Olivia Chow, stood up for Toronto. Yes, I know, she gave the right quotes when asked. But the city’s response to Doug Ford’s Putin-esque invasion of the city’s territory has wavered between fruitless backroom negotiation and supine acceptance.

It’s infuriating, especially in the context of an election in which the number one ballot question should have been, “Do you, dear voter, endorse or reject the Ford government’s attempt to take over the city by bullying, stealth and coercion?” The rest of it — taxes, traffic, addicts sleeping in the subway — pales unless we’ve truly canvassed the big question.

Which we didn’t. No one did.

Just to get this out of the way, I wouldn’t expect any such political commentary to come from Brad Bradford, whose campaign has been breathtakingly venal.

But Chow missed a massive, glaring opportunity to frame this race properly, and we’ve just got to hope she doesn’t lose Monday to a candidate animated by no intention or principle other than the desire to win power.

Even more frustrating is the fact that Team Chow had a tested playbook at their disposal and chose, for reasons that surpass understanding, not to use it.

In 2003, David Miller, then a not especially well-known city councillor from High Park, launched a long-shot campaign for mayor by tethering together two festering issues and turning them into a bigger question about who runs the city.

One involved the chronic cronyism that had encrusted the pipes of city hall and produced a corruption scandal (the MFP computer leasing deal) whose tendrils extended into the bureaucracy, council and the mayor’s office. The other was a bid by basically the same set of cronies to build a bridge to the island airport in order to facilitate a huge expansion of air traffic in a waterfront zone just beginning to see new development and recreational uses.

Miller and his team bundled these political scandals together and then posed a question that allowed what seemed to be a localized project — the bridge — to become legible to voters across the city. Which was this: if council’s crony network was prepared to sell out one community (waterfront residents) to enrich its friends, is any Toronto neighbourhood safe?

Every single component of that earlier conflict is present in the unceasing turf war between City Hall and Queen’s Park today — the corruption, the big footing, the disdain for local communities. The one big difference, which I’ll get to in a moment, is that today’s conflict is inter-governmental whereas the 2003 fight over the island airport bridge involved a rogue agency (the Toronto Port Authority) in which the city had an indirect stake.

The bike lane fight, seen through the prism of that history, should have been positioned, at every moment of this race, as yet another example of Ford’s contempt for the city’s democratically supported jurisdiction. You know the list: Ontario Place, the Science Centre, the Toronto islands, the island airport, the bike lanes, the size of council, the move to cancel supervised injection sites without replacing them with adequate treatment facilities, the back-channel meddling in affordable housing projects, the colonization of the TTC.

Oh, and while we’re here: the mismanagement and cronyism within Infrastructure Ontario’s transit portfolio, the misdirection politics of highway tunnels and the like, the attacks on the city’s school boards. I could go on.

To my eye, the bike lane fiasco should have been positioned as a symbol of all of the above, but that would have required some political imagination, which was present in the circle around David Miller and is conspicuously absent from Chow’s team.

Yes, I know the public wants to hear the candidates talk about the particulars of council business. But as my colleague Matt Elliott pointed out in his Toronto Star column this week, the city’s responsibilities are much more circumscribed these days because, well, the premier has wanted to play mayor since gord knows when.

The jurisdictional elephant in this room, of course, is the fact that the provincial government has, per the 1867 constitution, a more or less unfettered right to dictate municipal affairs. But should that legal limit be the end of the conversation or the beginning of it?

Sometimes, politicians need to flex their political muscle, which isn’t quite the same thing as jurisdictional muscle. Indeed, we also have a vivid and real-time example of how a smaller power stands up to a larger one with malicious intent.

Lesson one from Team Carney’s strategy with Trump’s America: draw red lines, and then stick to them. Ask yourself: when was the last time this council, and this mayor, did something like that?

I know the answer, and I also know their answer: that there’s only so much they can do in the face of constitutionally protected provincial over-reach. But neither Chow nor John Tory did the hard spade work of ensuring that everyone, including the provincial Tories, understood the political cost of such incursions. And so one begets the next, and the next one after that, etc.

You could argue that the opportunity to stand up to the bully has passed. Too much has been given away with too few consequences. And so Ford will keep coming for our lunch money again and again until he’s voted out or retires or is taken down by a scandal he can’t contain.

Here’s the thing: if there was a last clear moment for the city to say, “enough is enough!” this election was it. But we didn’t. And now we’re going to live with the consequences.

photo by Alexa Clark (cc)

The post Election 2026: A failure of political imagination appeared first on Spacing Toronto.

In parts of the city, golf ball-sized hail damaged roofs and dented cars. Heavy rain flooded streets and basements.  Extreme winds toppled mature trees, smashing homes, cars, and hydro wires. One out of every twelve Toronto Hydro customers lost power. Rogers Stadium in Downsview was severely damaged and will be closed until next year.

After a summer of heatwaves, wildfire smoke, and torrential storms, you would think that the candidates running for mayor would be climbing over one another, trying to outflank each other on environment and climate. In council races, we are seeing local candidates in open wards battling over who has the strongest environmental record. But the words ‘environment’ and ‘climate’ have been largely absent in the race for mayor.

What’s behind this strange paralysis? Environment and climate action has been widely supported across Toronto’s political spectrum — despite some online rage-baiting. Under Mayor John Tory, council unanimously declared a climate emergency and passed a climate plan that would bring the city’s 2040 emissions down to net zero.

But in this election, the Toronto Environmental Alliance’s environmental survey results are more polarized than ever. One candidate (Mayor Olivia Chow) committed to every key priority. The other, Councillor Brad Bradford, was completely unresponsive. In past years, most candidates have responded to our surveys, even if it was to say ‘no thank you.’ Cycle Toronto, TTCriders, and the tenant advocacy organization Toronto ACORN received similar outcomes to their mayoral survey requests.

The radio silence on our city’s biggest environmental priorities from half the major candidates for mayor is not normal, and should be ringing alarm bells. Whoever is elected will be leading our city through countless extreme weather events, and we need to know how they plan to protect us. Council will also be facing big decisions on AI data centres, a maximum temperature bylaw, incineration and handling Toronto’s waste, and moving forward key planks in our climate plan. Voters deserve to know where these candidates stand.

The good news is that many environmental issues are hidden in plain sight. During the mayoral debate at the Toronto Region Board of Trade, there was no apparent mention of the word “climate.” But the candidates faced questions about AI data centres, transit, and their favourite tree. These issues all have a huge impact on making our city greener, even if some of them get labelled as debates about the economy, development, or traffic congestion.

Perhaps we’ve entered an era when environmental issues aren’t identified as environmental, even though they clearly are. With Torontonians trying their best to get through an affordability crisis, the trade war, and rampent political polarization, many view traditional environmental priorities as being far away. All the while, they still start conversations with “wow, what about this crazy weather we’re having?”

That’s why TEA’s candidate survey focused on a few key areas that will show up directly in people’s lives next term. Let’s break these down.

Extreme heat protection

With climate change bringing more extreme heatwaves and floods, this next council will need to protect Torontonians from these dangers. Europe’s heatwaves this summer killed an estimated 35,000 people. And experience from BC’s 2021 heat dome shows that the majority of fatalities occur indoors — too often in victims’ own homes.

Some tenants in high-rise buildings are particularly vulnerable, and have been calling for a bylaw to set a maximum temperature in rental units of 26 degrees to help them stay safe. Council has requested a draft bylaw before summer 2027, so we asked candidates whether they will vote for it if elected.

Funding trees and shade

Trees are some of the most cost-effective tools we have to cool our streets and homes, especially in dense cities where large patches of pavement can cause temperatures to soar.  But local data shows that many low-income neighbourhoods are measurably hotter with less access to shade.

Toronto is aiming to increase its tree canopy from 28% now to 40% by 2050. But every year we have to fight for funding to make sure trees are planted and cared for – and that these trees don’t just end up crammed into neighbourhoods that already have more access to shade and green spaces. That’s why we asked candidates to commit to voting at budget time to fund planting more trees in hot neighbourhoods.

Reducing waste from single-use disposables

We’ve all noticed more single-use coffee cups and takeout containers spilling out of garbage bins along Toronto’s streets. It turns out fixing this problem could also significantly cut down the amount of waste getting sent to landfills or burned in toxic incinerators.

TEA has advocated for many years to get the City to adopt a Single-Use Reduction bylaw to cut growing waste from plastics and other disposables, which happened in 2021. But the second stage of this plan, with impactful measures to cut single-use waste from large events and support reusables in restaurants, has been delayed and needs strong champions at City Hall. We asked candidates to commit to moving this strategy forward.

Pausing and assessing AI data centres

AI data centres are already being proposed and built in Toronto. However, the environmental impacts of large AI data centres remain unclear, including electricity use, water consumption, fossil fuel emissions, rising local temperatures, and air and noise pollution. City Council requested that staff develop a framework to assess the impacts of these facilities on communities, the environment, and jobs, but this isn’t expected until 2027.

We asked candidates to commit to following Oakville and Mississauga’s approach and pause new approvals for large AI data centres while the City develops and adopts a policy that guarantees strong environmental protections and community benefits, including good local jobs and community investment.

Greening buildings

More than half of Toronto’s carbon footprint comes from existing buildings. City staff have spent years developing new standards and programs to gradually cut emissions from large buildings and make them more energy efficient and climate resilient. These programs will be even more critical now that Ontario premier Doug Ford has cancelled the award-winning Toronto Green Standard and Toronto’s Green Roof bylaw as the impacts of climate change are escalating. That’s why we asked candidates to commit to supporting new policies and programs to cut emissions from buildings and make them more energy efficient.

Moving forward

Municipal governments play some of the most important roles in protecting the environment. They the most control over buildings, transportation, trees, and waste. And while candidates haven’t been using the phrase ‘environment’ much in this campaign, it doesn’t change the fact that these environmental realities have a significant impact on Torontonians.

photo by Duncan Rawlinson (cc)

How-Sen Chong is the climate campaigner at Toronto Environmental Alliance. Born and raised in Etobicoke, he’s been a climate justice advocate for over two decades.

The post Election 2026: Why are mayoral candidates ignoring the climate crisis? appeared first on Spacing Toronto.

In the book I recently co-edited, Messy Cities: Why We Can’t Plan Everything, we didn’t get any contributions about public transit. The book explores the role of improvisation, randomness, and variety in creating a vibrant city. On the face of it, public transit is a highly structured system, so messiness seems inappropriate and unwelcome. We want ordered schedules and routes – the most frequent complaints about public transit come when arrivals are irregular or when there are constant detours. Another frequent source of complaints is a lack of cleanliness that makes transit stations and vehicles disagreeable – and garbage on the tracks can cause subway delays.

So I was interested to discover that my Messy Cities co-editor Zahra Ebrahim was hosting a final plenary panel discussion at the recent Mpact “Transit and Communities” conference in Toronto (Spacing was a media sponsor). I was curious about what the panelists would see as positive messiness in relation to transit.

Sarah Ross, Vice President, Planning & Policy, at the Vancouver regional transit provider TransLink, came up with some interesting insights. One message she had was: have fun with your riders. Translink has an art and culture program that aims to “surprise and delight transit customers using the transit system every day.” The program includes both permanent public art and temporary art installations, as well as a busker program. It’s a reminder that transit agencies occupy significant amounts of public space, and can use that space to create variety and interest for urban residents. Buskers, public art, poetry on the way, and other similar programs contribute to a positive messiness that reflects the city’s creativity.

At a larger level, this can apply to creating individual designs for subway stations. While standardized design is considered more efficient, taking the trouble to create individual designs for these significant public structures can make the streetscape and the transit experience more visually engaging (think Dupont Station).

At a deeper level, Ross noted that transit is a place where we mix with the full variety of our fellow urban residents, including people we wouldn’t normally come across. It’s where we “see our city.” In our other interactions, we may see the people in our neighbourhood, in our workplace, and those who share our entertainment interests. But in a crowded bus, streetcar, or subway, we see people from all parts of the city, who we might otherwise not encounter. Experiencing the full range of who we share the city with is valuable for building our civic consciousness, for helping us fully understand the city we all belong to. (It’s a characteristic, transit expert Jarrett Walker has noted, that was present from the very beginning of mass transit.)

What Ross did not mention is that it can also be challenging, when we share an enclosed space with people who are disturbing in some way – shouting, high, unwashed. Yet they are a reminder of the work we need to do, as a city and a society, to address the problems of which they are a symptom.

Ross and James Perttula (Director, Transportation Planning, City Planning Division, City of Toronto) both made the point that transit provides the skeleton on which positive messy urbanism can be built. It enables communities to grow and increase in density, and for a wider variety of people to live in and get around the city conveniently. But Perttula noted the challenge of having better transit infrastructure create displacement, as it makes living near rapid transit more valuable and thus expensive. He saw the idea of positive messy urbanism as a useful lens through which to find ways to address that concern and ensure that new rapid transit infrastructure does not trigger displacement.

At a more abstract level, Ross pointed out that the governance of transit is inevitably messy. Vancouver’s Translink incorporates 23 different governments. In Toronto, transit is overseen by two different agencies (TTC and Metrolinx), each with its own complex governance, and is in constant negotiation with both provincial and federal governments for funding, which inevitably comes with additional direction. There is, as she said, “a lot of convening.”

While I was at the conference, I also attended a session called “Beyond Average: Designing Transit for All,” which itself addressed the messiness of the range of people transit needs to serve. The aim was to get beyond the concept of an “average” user, since users bring many different needs and bodies to public transit. Even individuals, architect Philip Claghorn noted, will change in their needs over the course of their lifetime, from children to adults to seniors, often with specific episodes along the way that affect their mobility. Zahra Tavakoli in fact focused on children, pointing out that their needs and desires are often interpreted through adults (parents, teachers, etc.). In a delightful example of the appeal of urban messiness, while adults assume children’s primary destinations are school, parks, and libraries, the destinations that children (aged 8-12) give when asked are abandoned yards where they can play freely, the street in front of their home where they can play, and friends’ homes.

All three speakers put a lot of focus on designing for access. Cleghorn talked about designing for the riders who had the biggest challenges for access, which will inevitably help access for all riders. Lisa Josephson from Vancouver’s Translink shared how the agency partners with cities to fund improvements to walking infrastructure (PDF) that connects to transit. It’s a remarkable contrast with the TTC and Metrolinx, which tend to ignore any issues with access to transit stations and stops. On the other hand, Translink has independent sources of funding beyond fares, which the TTC lacks. But the TTC could still make an effort to partner with the City on access to transit, even if it cannot provide funding.

At heart, the message from both panels was that public transit has to find ways to serve and support the widest variety of people.

The post Messy Transit? appeared first on Spacing Toronto.

This past week, the two leading mayoral candidates, Brad Bradford and Olivia Chow participated in another mayoral debate at the Rotman School of Management. Moderator Steve Paikin began with the following question:

“Neither of you have the power of a Prime Minister or a Premier. How can a Mayor actually put a dent in housing affordability?”

This question is even more important for a City like Toronto. While candidates promise better transit, infrastructure, and affordable housing, who has the power to make decisions?

The situation during the COVID-19 pandemic was unprecedented for municipalities. As government protections ended, Toronto was confronted with approximately 15,000 individuals experiencing homelessness. In 2020, the Toronto Transit Commission, which once relied on fares for two-thirds of its revenue, was losing $20M weekly.

By 2024, the City of Toronto faced a projected $1.5B operating shortfall. Lower transit ridership and higher shelter use placed enormous pressures on the City. As a result, Toronto and the Province of Ontario negotiated a New Deal: $1.2B split between transit and emergency support. Ontario also agreed to take over the Gardiner Expressway and Don Valley Parkway and the City negotiated for new subway cars on Line 2.

And yet, the Province is only one part of the equation when it comes to helping the City with its plans. Property taxes, for example, cannot on their own fund and attract multi-billion-dollar housing development projects. For that, the City needs to rely on the federal government.

Federal funding creates a different tension. In December 2023, Toronto secured a $471M commitment through Ottawa’s Housing Accelerator Fund (HAF), linking financial support to if the City increased its housing supply. Part of the conditions from the federal government, however, included for the City to expand the types of housing it allowed (e.g., fourplexes, sixplexes). Because the City did not permit sixplexes fast enough, the federal government directly penalized the municipality by cutting its HAF by $10M.

This financial help can also determine how neighbourhoods and communities look, which muddies how much say the municipality has in the actual city design. City planners may be examining how to build affordable housing units, but will need to consult CMHC’s definition of ‘affordable’. Developers, likewise, would have to use national metrics on affordability before a shovel is in the ground, instead of looking at metrics specific to the City. Federal funding also designates affordable housing units for priority populations (e.g., seniors, refugee claimants) and how much rent can be.

And this is the challenge presented to voters as we head into the municipal election: while the City manages its own operations, it lacks the financial backing for the plans ahead. After all, the Province possesses the authority to override city zoning, have a say in environmental assessments, and expropriate land if the City refuses cooperation. Layer in the New Deal and the City can find itself in a challenging position when negotiating on its own behalf.

What does Toronto need in a Mayor?

And maybe, this is what the Mayoral race is about: not who has the most ambitious plans for the City, but who is the better diplomat-in-chief – a person who can work with all levels of government, with competing political agendas, under a shared vision. The role of the Mayor is to be chameleon-like in their approach, understanding federal demands on housing, facilitating fast transit expansion by the Province, and bringing forward real concerns from City Council and local residents on issues like density and affordability. Likewise, revisioning what zoning bylaws look like to facilitate greater investment from the federal government would make the City an even more indispensable partner.

The next Mayor must also not lose sight of this simple fact: Toronto is the economic engine of Canada and its success is the nation’s success. The City must start negotiating with this as its core premise. When residents complain of gridlock, entire supply chains are being put to the test. When there are not enough housing options, high-priced talent begins to leave and so does a potential tax base. Securing long-term funding for Toronto is a national act of economic self-preservation.

But the blueprint for the design of the vision of Toronto’s future must be left to Toronto. The next mayor must bring these concerns into subsequent agreements and explain these clearly to the electorate. Voters deserve to know what a candidate intends to deliver, whose support is needed and what compromises may follow.

Paikin’s question therefore belongs beyond the debate stage: how will the next mayor use their powers to draft a long-term vision and make meaningful advancement on fulfilling it?

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

The post Election 2026: Who Has the Power to Deliver? appeared first on Spacing Toronto.

Across Toronto, millions of people rely on the TTC daily. Whether it’s for commuting to work or school, exploring the city, or visiting friends, subway trains are a vital part of urban life. For some autistic children, however, subway trains are much more than that.

In 2020, documentary filmmaker Ian Daffern came across an article in the New York Times titled: “For Autistic Boys, the Subway is Actually Soothing.” The piece showcased Travis Huggett, a fine-art photographer based in New York, and his portrait series about autistic kids and their profound love for trains. After reaching out and speaking to Travis a couple of years later, Ian realized that there was a story waiting to be told.

Prior to Railfan, Ian had worked on two award winning documentary films, Stitched Glass and A Bullet Pulling Thread. In both films, Ian explored the connection between artists using their work to engage with the world at large, in order to connect and meaningfully make change through their creativity and interests. However, Railfan has allowed Ian to approach connection through a different angle — by examining the intricate relationships autistic kids have with both trains and the world.

Railfan is a documentary feature film set in New York that follows Travis as he recreates his portrait series with six of the children originally featured in his photo series. Throughout the film, we explore the intimate connection these children have with their love for trains and how each child participates in their passion in their own special way. However, Railfan also explores the coming-of-age story of Orson, Travis’ son, as he balances his interest in trains with growing up into the real world.

Although filmed in New York, Toronto played a big role in Ian’s inspiration for the project. As a Toronto native, Ian’s introduction to railfanning was initially through his son, Ted, who is also obsessed with subways and trains. The father-son duo would often travel across the TTC, and Ian and his wife would “take him to every street car barn in the city [and] every TTC open house” for fun. Ian credits Ted’s passion for railfanning as an inspiration for much of his creative work.

On September 15th, Railfan held a launch party at the Spacing Store for the film’s crowdfunding campaign, in collaboration with Spacing magazine and Wei Yi (@theonlyweiyi), a local transit-based artist in Toronto. Nestled beside the puzzle section, Ian set up his monitor to display a looping track of Railfan’s trailer, while Wei Yi exhibited her artwork and trinkets for sale. The store was lively with conversation, as Ian happily described the project to any curious passersby.

Railfan’s World Premiere will be at the Rendezvous With Madness Festival 2026, on Saturday October 24th at 3:30 PM at the CAMH Auditorium, 1025 Queen Street West. Railfan will also be available at special event screenings across North America in April 2027 as part of Autism Awareness Month.

To support Railfan’s crowdfunding campaign you can find it here on Backerkit. It runs until October 30th, 2026. Find out more information at www.railfanfilm.ca

The post The story behind the transit doc Railfan appeared first on Spacing Toronto.

During every election season, a question on most political scientist’s mind is whether the voter turnout will finally increase. Over the years, there has been a steady decline in voter turnout at the municipal level, with the lowest being 29.7% in 2022, a drop from 40.9% in 2018.

Without the electoral participation of citizens, the idea of democracy loses meaning and legitimacy. There are different theories as to why voter turnout is dropping. According to political scientist Anthony Downs’s Rational Model Theory, before going to the polls, citizens perceive voting as an activity with a high personal cost. These hidden costs can include the polling station being too far for those who live in rural communities, bad weather, long lines, and so on.

Turnout is even more of a challenge for persons with disabilities (PWDs). Elections Canada has been conducting national post-election surveys among respondents with disabilities over the past 25 years that suggest a pattern of low voter turnout. For the 2021 national election, of those who responded to the survey, “electors with disabilities were less likely to report having voted (90%) than those without disabilities (94%).”

As to why their voter turnout is low, political theorist Michael Prince argues that PWDs are “absent citizens” due to the accessibility barriers they face while navigating society as a whole. This inaccessibility affects their electoral participation as well.

Over the years, there have been a series of complaints about the inaccessibility of elections in Canada. One of the earliest was about the 1984 federal election, in which the Canadian Paraplegic Association Manitoba branch submitted a successful complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Commission about Elections Canada’s lack of level access for wheelchair users at polling stations. As a result, Elections Canada was forced to provide level access to all polling stations. It has been keeping to that promise, making it mandatory that polling stations are physically accessible.

Weather can also play a role in the accessibility of an election. In 2022, Ontario experienced its lowest voter turnout rate, at 44%. Due to a major snowstorm, in 2025 many assumed the voter turnout would be reduced; instead, it rose to 45.5%. Yet the snowstorm prevented many people with disabilities from voting. In response to this situation, some advocates, such as David Lepofsky and Rabia Khendr, called for political leaders to consider not calling a snap election during the winter, or even for legislation to that effect.

Other barriers can be found within the electoral process itself: In 2021 Lepofsky, who is blind, submitted a complaint that he was unable to mark his ballot independently on the mail-in ballot for the federal election. In an interview with Global News, Lepofsky stated: “The basic right we’re all supposed to enjoy is the right to mark our own ballot in private and to mark it independently, ourselves, and to be able to verify this mark the way we want. And I currently don’t have that as a blind person at the federal level.”

Despite these issues regarding electoral accessibility, it should be acknowledged that electoral bodies in Canada have made strides in ensuring the electoral process is accessible for Canadians with disabilities by providing alternative methods of voting and accessibility services at polling stations.

Looking at Toronto specifically, in response to my inquiry, the Toronto Elections media relations team provided some insights into its commitments to accessibility. “Toronto plans and delivers municipal elections in accordance with the requirements and authority of the Municipal Elections Act, 1996 (MEA). Accessibility is one of the key principles of the MEA…. The 2026 Election Accessibility Plan outlines the practices and initiatives Toronto Elections will use to support Toronto voters, candidates and residents with disabilities during the current municipal election cycle. Accessibility is built into various aspects of Toronto’s election operations, including (but not limited to) the selection of voting places, the recruitment and training of voting place staff, and our website, communications and marketing services.”

This upcoming fall, Torontonians with disabilities can expect to vote in different ways: while voting in person is the better-known option, voters can vote by mail, by proxy, and at Voter Assist Terminals (VATs) at advance voting places and on election day.

To vote by mail, voters should submit a request online starting on the first of September. Voting by proxy allows “voters who are unable to vote in person or vote by mail to appoint another eligible voter to vote on their behalf.” A VAT is an accessible voting device that allows voters with disabilities to “mark a paper ballot privately and independently.” VATs include “touch screen, audio function, a braille keypad, sip/puff tube device, a rocker pad, and zoom features to adjust font size and colour contrast.”

New this year is the provision of “braille ballot overlays and braille candidate lists [that] will be available at all voting places.” This new feature, which was a collaborative effort with the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB), will ensure voters can vote independently.

Toronto Elections also created the Accessibility Outreach Network in 2014, a network of accessibility advocates, consultants, and groups. As a member of this network, I had the distinct pleasure of presenting my research findings on electoral accessibility during a lunch-and-learn in January of this year. I found the staff to be attentive and willing to brainstorm solutions to issues I raised. One of these was considering the use of the Sunflower Lanyard Program from the Hidden Disabilities Network. The sunflower lanyard, usually used within the context of public transportation and international travel, provides a way for persons with invisible disabilities to get the support they need without the added burden of disclosure.

While Toronto Elections does not plan to adopt it for this upcoming election, it has been dedicated in ensuring all electoral staff are trained to treat all persons with disabilities with dignity and respect and that all information regarding electoral accessibility is easy to access so that voters can explore options to vote.
Despite all this work on electoral accessibility, many disabled Canadians assume the electoral process is more inaccessible than it really is. When comparing Elections Canada post-election survey results for the 2019 and 2021 federal elections, only 40 to 60% of disabled respondents assumed it would be relatively easy to access the polling station before they actually voted, whereas after they voted, 90% of disabled respondents stated that it was easy to access the polling station (see chart).

Note that “accessing the polling station” only covers the physical accessibility of the electoral experience, and does not consider other barriers such as attitudinal, informational, technological, and systemic barriers. Most Canadians will be familiar with the need for level access and elevators when talking about accessibility but are usually less familiar with alternative voting methods such as VATs and voting by mail.

While this lack of electoral participation could be a result of apathy or inaccessibility, Canadians with disabilities still participate politically through advocacy, consulting, and lobbying the government. Thus, one must wonder whether non-physical barriers are also acting as a deterrent and whether there are possible solutions to this low voter turnout.

One potential solution is the adoption of online voting. Online voting has been adopted by some Ontario municipalities in the past 20 years, with Markham being the first city to use the method, in 2003. Since then, the number of Ontario municipalities using online voting has risen to 178 municipalities (42%) according to 2018 data.

Toronto does not offer online voting, however. Within the province of Ontario, no legislation or regulation dictates acceptable methods for each municipality, leaving what Goodman calls “a patchwork of adoption across the province.” This is how we end up with Markham having both in-person and online voting methods, Ajax having only online voting, and Toronto having no online voting.

Asked why they do not use online voting, the Toronto Elections media team stated: “Toronto Elections uses tabulators to quickly, securely and accurately count paper ballots cast in person, by proxy or by mail. We are not confident that online voting can provide the same combination of security, transparency, scrutability, audibility, and public confidence as voter-marked paper ballots.”

The effectiveness of online voting as a means to tackle the low voter turnout issue has been mixed. In an interview with the CBC, Political Science professor Jon Pammett from Carlton University said: “It’s been a method of convenience for voters … but it’s not really the kind of thing that gets people out to vote.” Even though many cities and towns that ended up using online voting for the first time experienced a bump in voter turnout that year, that novelty does not last long.

Online voting raises security concerns that have prevented any adoption of the method at the provincial or federal level. There is also the issue of a “digital divide” that can cause a problem regarding consistent internet access. There are some accessibility concerns as well, since the internet and applications are not automatically accessible, leaving most people with disabilities to encounter at least one type of barrier. Yet it could still have the potential to improve voting accessibility by eliminating physical barriers.

In recent years, there has been a significant effort to improve electoral accessibility in Toronto. My hope for this October is that PWDs will have an accessible experience that will encourage them to vote in greater numbers.

The post Election 2026: Making elections accessible appeared first on Spacing Toronto.

Since 2018, Spacing has hosted election night watch parties on the 2nd floor at Pauper’s Pub. The 2026 election will be our fourth gathering of local urbanists who want to commiserate, debate, and celebrate the city council and mayoral races. A few activities and free copies of our new issue will be available to all that attend. 

The post Election Night Watch Party! appeared first on Spacing Toronto.

I spent some time in the past couple of weeks in London and Paris, and there’s an emerging point of contrast between these two alpha-cities that has become impossible to ignore. Similar in size, population and density, both are extremely well served by rapid transit. And like many ancient river cities, they have gnarly street networks.

London’s traffic is still terrible despite years of central area congestion charges and massive investments in transit.

In Paris, except for the tourist zones near Notre Dame and the Louvre, traffic just…flows. There are still lots of cars and trucks, but they move easily, despite the fact that the City has replaced hundreds of kilometres of vehicle lanes with an extensive network of dedicated bike and bus lanes, and swapped out countless street parking spaces for bike parking racks.

Wait. Strike the “despite” in the previous sentence. Paris’ traffic is so uncomplicated because of the City’s enormous recent investment in bike mobility (€250 million for its 2021-2026 cycling plan). Bikes are literally everywhere, both in and out of mixed traffic. Velib, Paris’ bikeshare, competes with private firms in a lively market for rentals. You don’t see any road rage because, well, if you’re in a car, you’re not waiting.

In London, by contrast, there are new-ish dedicated bike lanes, and lots of lines on the asphalt. But the mobility transformation that occurred in Paris since the pandemic didn’t happen in London. Hence, unending snarls, gridlock and anger.

Here in Toronto, of course, we are hurtling back toward the stone age — a regression that formally began yesterday, with the Ford government’s uniquely disqualifying move to begin uprooting the Bloor/University/Yonge bike lane network. (A large demonstration by cyclists prevented construction crews from commencing the work.)

The obvious contrast is infuriating, not least because Toronto taxpayers at some point will pay tens of millions to put back all the cycling infrastructure the province is now removing, at tremendous expense and dislocation, and with no justification whatsoever.

Justice Grant Huscroft, who wrote the Ontario Court of Appeal ruling that shot down CycleTO’s bid to defend bike lanes against Ford’s culture war, articulated the perplexing wrong-headedness in the thinking that informed the campaign. “Common sense,” he wrote, suggests that “increasing the number of lanes available for motor vehicles must, at least to some extent, and for some period of time, be capable of contributing to reducing traffic congestion.”

It doesn’t!

“Common sense” says nothing of the sort. The truth is precisely the opposite, as every urban planner familiar with the phenomena of induced demand has known for decades, and as Paris’ bold move proves (dare I say) beyond a reasonable doubt.

While CycleTO yesterday announced it is seeking leave to appeal to the Supreme Court, the City, for now, has no choice but to move beyond litigation. After all, whoever prevails in this dreary mayoral election will, or should be, thinking about how to manage the near-term mess Ford has wrought. Certainly, the city’s congestion will only get worse, especially now that cyclists will be again competing for space in the demolition derby of mixed traffic.

A consequence I haven’t seen canvassed so far in the campaign has to do with the now cloudy future of Bike Share. In recent years, the number of users has soared to almost eight million rides as of 2025, as cyclists take advantage of the growing number of docks.

Mapping generated from Toronto’s open data portals suggests that almost half the users rely on the lanes now being removed. What happens if those numbers begin to fall, as seems likely? Does the next mayor roll back Bike Share to reflect declining demand, turn to council for more funding, or, search out other business models?

In fact, the City recently released an RFP looking for “industry insights regarding potential future operating models, service delivery approaches, technologies, performance measures, commercial structures, and risk allocation considerations for Bike Share Toronto.”

Also: what happens with future planning for cycling infrastructure? We know the Tories gave themselves a veto when it comes to proposed new bike lanes, so it’s safe to assume that City staff will tread ever so gingerly, knowing they’ll get little by way of political cover from a council that’s disinclined to take on Queen’s Park publicly.

My argument is that the City, for the duration of this nightmare, needs to turn its attention away from supply side policies (infrastructure) and focus more on demand-side moves. Meaning, look for every opportunity to make Bike Share more financially attractive to users, e.g., by bundling Bike Share and transit passes, and even potentially opening up the market to private firms, such as Lime. Yet the City also needs to significantly step up the replacement of arterial on-street parking spots with permanent bike racks and accelerate the deployment of more docking infrastructure.

As for the provisional cyclepaths not on Ford’s hit list, the next mayor must accelerate the transformation of these lanes into permanent ones instead of retaining the concrete-curb-and- bollard versions that only exist here, telegraphing their impermanence to culture warriors.

Finally, this fiasco — which has revealed to the world just how backwards we’ve become — marks, in my view, a moment of reckoning for on-street arterial parking. For way too long, the City and members of council have been in the thrall of business improvement areas that are hardly the progressive urban actors they once appeared to be. (A case in point: the Queensway Kingsway BIA that lobbied Tory MPPs and the premier for the anti-bike lane legislation.)

Metered street parking is, without peer, the least productive use of road allowance. Yet the City and council are terrified of replacing these luxuries, or at least most of them, with amenities that contribute constructively to the urban economy.

Especially along the Yonge/Bloor/Danforth corridors with abundant Green P lots created by the cut-and-cover subway, there’s no reason busy arterials should have on-street parking in this day and age. It’s long past time for council to devise a strategy to phase them out as a means of preparing for the day when a more progressive government arrives at Queen’s Park.

Point is, the removal of the bike lanes is a disaster, but the crisis won’t last forever. In the interim, the City and council must figure out how to defend what remains while doing everything in its power to boost demand. Supply will return once the political insanity passes.

The post London, Paris, Toronto: A tale of three biking cities appeared first on Spacing Toronto.

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

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

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

The post PODCAST: Spacing Radio 096, Toronto Election Council Races appeared first on Spacing Toronto.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

photo by Asthon Emmanuel (cc)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All photos courtesy of Park People.

The post Election 2026: For a joyful, resilient and connected Toronto, let’s start at the park appeared first on Spacing Toronto.

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

In an hour.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Image screen captured from September 22 mayoral debate.

The post Election 2026: Can candidates debate in depth? appeared first on Spacing Toronto.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo courtesy of Rob Zaichowski

The post OP-ED: It’s not just about bike lanes appeared first on Spacing Toronto.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The post NEW ISSUE: Issues & Influencers appeared first on Spacing Toronto.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photogallery

All photos © Peter MacCallum unless otherwise specified.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

photo by rawpixel (CC)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

photo by Wylie Poon (cc)

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