There is a metal box placed on the wall of the bathrooms that most wouldn’t even notice.
Intravenous drug users, though, know what it’s for.
Even the shiny new $824-million Union Station transit hub subtly offers a hint of the problem authorities have no answer for. Drug use is common on TTC and GO properties. When you have that you will also have crime, overdoses, unstable behaviour and, of course, danger.
There have been 13 more homicides in Toronto this year compared to last year’s total as police are investigating a string of shootings in the past month.
To date, there have been 74 homicides in the city, surpassing last year’s total of 61 for the entire year.
Toronto police released the latest figures on shooting and homicide rates in the city Friday morning and appealed to the public for help in providing any information that might help solve some outstanding cases.
With one year until Toronto’s next civic election, a new poll suggests Mayor John Tory is on track to cruise into a third term — if he wants it.
The Forum Research poll, conducted Wednesday, suggests Tory would handily beat select progressive challengers should he run for re-election Oct. 24, 2022.
Tory, 67, told the Star on Friday he is busy fighting the pandemic and still has not turned his mind to the election — but he will soon.
In the 2021 list, which Orkin published this month, Mississauga was ranked the second most rat-infested city and Brampton the eighth out of 25 Ontario jurisdictions.
Orkin’s ranking tracks the number of commercial and residential rat and mice treatments the rodent control company has done in those cities.
This year, Toronto remained top of the list while Ottawa was also in the top five after Mississauga.
Don’t look now but campers and tents have taken over another city park.
This time it’s Dufferin Grove Park’s turn.
Seems some people are uncomfortable staying in an all-expenses-paid, four-star hotel and they prefer the real estate experience across from Dufferin Mall.
Toronto is preparing to ask the federal government to decriminalize the possession of illicit drugs for personal use in the city, saying the move is needed as drug-related deaths reach record highs.
A public consultation on the matter wrapped up this week and the city’s top doctor said Toronto expects to send its request to Health Canada later this fall.
Toronto city council has just approved a five-year plan to deal with food insecurity in the Black community in a culturally sensitive way.
The plan, approved Friday, is the first of its sort in North America and lays out a multi-million dollar commitment to advance food sovereignty in Black communities over the next five years.
Melana Roberts, a policy development officer with the city’s Confronting Anti-Black Racism unit (CABR) who worked on the plan, said the team did not come across anything similar globally — a Black-led food plan funded municipally.
“We can’t just have a charitable approach to this,” Roberts tells the Star. “We need a human-rights-based approach that’s based in not only addressing the challenges Black communities face, but positioning them as leaders.”
It can’t just be charitable that would be racist.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government was operating within its legal powers when it cut the number of wards in Toronto in the middle of the 2018 municipal election, the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled.
In a 5-4 split decision, Canada’s top court said Ontario did not violate the Constitution when it cut the number of wards from a planned 47-ward system to 25 wards that would align geographically with provincial and federal ridings.
It has taken a Ford to call for the “end” of the ActiveTO program that frees up some Toronto roadways for runners and cyclists, but snarls traffic elsewhere.
It was like late mayor Rob Ford dropped in from heaven to drop a bomb on the woke Toronto political scene. Or to inject some long overdue, much-needed common sense into the debate.
To be honest I avoid going to downtown Toronto by any means unless compelled to so the traffic snarls are not a personal issue.
The people most inconvenienced likely voted for both Trudeau and Tory. Boo Hoo!
There are permanent Bike Lanes in front of my condo and I am not exaggerating when I say I have rarely seen a cyclist use them.
This sort of crap is so Toronto. “The few can feck over the many” should be the city motto.
On June 12, the city posted trespass notices at Trinity Bellwoods Park, Alexandra Park, Moss Park and Lamport Stadium Park, suggesting the campers could be evicted soon.
The Toronto District School Board has launched a $90 million lawsuit against city, its fire department and police services board, as well and the Ontario Fire Marshal after a blaze two years ago that gutted York Memorial high school, alleging the scene was not put under a proper fire watch which led to the “rekindling” of the initial smaller fire.
The lawsuit also alleges that incident reports were “modified in an effort to suppress evidence of negligence” on the part of the fire services in relation to the blaze at the school on Eglinton Avenue West and Tretheway Drive in May 2019.
The City of Toronto is named in the suit as it oversees Toronto Fire Services, and the province as it oversees the Office of the Fire Marshal.
A pity as York Memorial had a rich history but does the TDSB really need the facility restored when many schools operate well below capacity or in fact sit empty? Of course not, they remain arrogantly eager to play with tax payer money.
Jill lives within steps of Alexandra Park and says last weekend was the worst she has seen so far from the park’s ever-growing tent city.
She says she has noticed a big influx of “very violent and very loud” people to the encampment recently — and she feels some tent dwellers are “deliberately destroying property.”
Over the past two months, downtown resident Edwina Taborsky has watched a large blue tent structure take up residence in St. James Park, near King St.
She said the tent is so large, it seems the size of a “small studio” apartment, and it looks to be permanent — situated on a platform with a table pulled outside to use sometimes
