Toronto

Faculty of Arts & Science

Cities

Indigenous

Teaching

Woodsworth College

When Jon Johnson walks along Davenport Road in Toronto, he doesn’t see a meandering street lined with shops and crowded with traffic. Instead, he sees the trail that 13,000 years ago followed the north shore of Ice Age Lake Ontario and connected the thriving Indigenous villages of the region.

At the intersection of Yonge and Bloor streets, Johnson sees the Sandhill burial site of the Wendat and Mississauga Peoples, which in the early 1800s was buried beneath the rapidly growing city of Toronto. This was in stark contrast to the treatment of the remains of those of European descent buried in nearby Potters Field, Toronto’s first public, non-denominational cemetery. As the city encroached on that site, those remains were carefully disinterred and laid to rest in Mount Pleasant Cemetery and the Necropolis.

Johnson, an assistant professor, teaching stream, at Woodsworth College, sees the city through the lens of the Indigenous stories he has spent most of his career collecting, studying and sharing. They are part of his research into urban, land-based Indigenous knowledge – knowledge that includes not only stories, but also the ceremonies and practices of the people who live in the region that is now the GTA.

“It’s very common for people to think there isn’t much Indigenous history in Toronto,” says Johnson, who recently taught a course called Learning from the Land: Indigenous Knowledge and Storytelling in Toronto for undergraduate students in the Faculty of Arts & Science’s first-year seminars program. “The official histories were vague or they focused on the coming of Europeans, York as a colony and all the European accomplishments.”

“The goal of my work is to correct that imbalance, flesh out 13,000 years of Indigenous history, and show that people were and continue to be organized in these really complex ways that involved co-operation over vast geo-political space while maintaining the autonomy of individual nations. Some people have suggested that the relationships amongst those confederacies is comparable to the United Nations today.”

With the First Story Toronto app, users learn about the Indigenous history that lies hidden within the GTA (photo by Chris Sasaki)

Johnson is mostly of French Canadian descent, although he has a small amount of Haudenosaunee and Kichesipirini ancestry as well. He began learning and sharing these histories as a volunteer with the Great Indian Bus Tour, an initiative started by the Indigenous scholar and activist, Rodney Bobiwash. He also became involved in the Toronto Native Community History Project, a project that researches and preserves the Indigenous history of the city and which, over the years, evolved into First Story Toronto.

When asked what drives his work, Johnson quotes Bobiwash: “To get people to see the Toronto landscape and Toronto’s history with a different set of eyes. If we can accomplish that, then we can come to some truly good purpose in history: to get people to acknowledge that Toronto is a territory of Indigenous presence and design going back 13,000 years.”

He shares the history in a number of ways. He and colleagues from First Story Toronto carry on the legacy of Bobiwash and conduct bus tours in and around the GTA. They provide walking tours of the three University of Toronto campuses, as well as Ryerson and York Universities.

He has even taken MPPs and their staff on walking tours of Queen's Park, where he reminds them that Taddle Creek once flowed on the site of the legislative building and was a vital home, source of food, and transportation route for the Mississauga.

Johnson and his fellow storytellers reach even larger audiences through their First Story app and as content creators for the Driftscape app – both of which paint a powerful picture of millennia-old Toronto.

The Baldwin Steps at the intersection of Davenport and Spadina roads: Davenport Road traces the trail that millennia ago connected Indigenous communities. The trail and others like it are sometimes collectively referred to as the Moccasin Telegraph for their importance as a communication network.

For example, one story reveals that some 11,000 years ago, the shore of what today is Lake Ontario was five kilometres south of its current location and that a post-Ice Age family, perhaps returning home from a hunting camp, left their footprints in soft clay.

Over the millennia, the shore of the lake advanced northward to its present location, drowning evidence of the family’s trek under 70 feet of water. Then, in 1908, a work crew drained a section of Toronto Harbour to excavate a tunnel and discovered the lost footprints on the lake bottom.

It was an incredible archaeological find – evidence of the region’s first inhabitants. But, as with the Sandhill burial site, the footprints were not preserved and now lie at the bottom of the harbour, entombed in concrete.

The footprints and the Sandhill site are lost, but Johnson explains, “The presence of that history can still be seen and felt in the city today. The stories show that Toronto owes its existence to the fact that Indigenous peoples made this place a good place, a strategically important place before Europeans even got here. That’s why Toronto became the city it is today.”

“And, there are as many as 200,000 Indigenous people living in Toronto today,” he says. “So that presence is ongoing. Indigenous people are still contributing to the fabric of the city, to the culture, to the economy, to the knowledge of the city.”

U of T experts on what Doug Ford’s proposed changes to city council mean for Toronto

Romi Levine — Fri, 27 Jul 2018 17:22:05 +0000

U of T experts on what Doug Ford’s proposed changes to city council mean for Toronto

Romi Levine Fri, 07/27/2018 - 13:22

Cutline

Toronto Mayor John Tory and Premier Doug Ford met at Queen’s Park earlier this month. Today, they are butting heads over proposed provincial legislation to cut the number of city councillors (photo by Lucas Oleniuk/Toronto Star via Getty Images)

Topic

Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

Cities

Faculty of Arts & Science

Political Science

Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced Friday plans to cut the number of Toronto city councillors from 47 to 25 – a move he says will make the municipal decision-making process smoother and cut costs.

“We need to get the city moving,” said Ford, estimating that shrinking city council will save the city $25 million.

"I think Toronto taxpayers will be happy to trade a bunch of politicians at city hall for millions of dollars that can be reinvested in the city’s pressing priorities," he said.

The Toronto municipal election is set to take place on Oct. 22. The deadline for candidates to register was supposed to be Friday, but Ford said he will extend it until September.

Mayor John Tory reacted to the council shakeup in a news conference on Friday morning.

“What we don’t need is change being rammed down our throats without a single second of public consultation and on top of that done in the middle of election period,” he said, accusing Ford of changing the rules "in the middle of the game."

U of T News spoke with Gabriel Eidelman, an assistant professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy and director of the Urban Policy Lab, and Nelson Wiseman, professor of political science and former director of the Canadian studies program at the Faculty of Arts & Science, about the municipal and provincial implications of Ford’s decision.

Did you find this announcement surprising?

Eidelman: The timing surprised me but not the actual decision.

I thought the timing would have been too tight – and arguably still is.

If I'm a city staffer – meaning a city clerk working on the elections in part of that office preparing for the elections – wow, this is going to be difficult to pull off because they've had planning in place for months and now everything is thrown for a loop. We don't even know what the ward boundaries are, we don't know how they've been chosen, and we don't know what that means in terms of the different races and how it all comes together.

Wiseman: Not particularly. When Mike Harris was in government [as premier of Ontario], he reduced the size of the provincial legislature.

I suspect [Ford's] proposal will be quite popular especially with people outside of Toronto.

But Doug Ford is a Conservative. His father was part of the Mike Harris government. It included cabinet ministers like Tony Clement, John Baird and Jim Flaherty. When the Harper government came into power, all three of these Harris ministers were in the federal cabinet. They introduced a bill and they increased the number of politicians in the federal parliament from 308 to 338. So I would ask Doug Ford: How is this consistent with the federal Conservatives under Stephen Harper, who was your friend and came to your rallies and your barbecues. How is it consistent with the position he took?

What are the implications of these proposed changes?

Eidelman: From an academic, research perspective, we don't know if the number 25 as the number of councillors versus 47 is good or bad for democracy because we don't know what we're judging that against – we don't have evaluation criteria to say it's good or bad. In fact, there's a general dearth of that kind of research and literature.

The way I describe it is, what is the "Goldilocks" number of councillors? People pick a number the same way they pick a favourite colour. They might have a personal experience – they visited a place or studied a place, decisions were made or the general political culture in that location is to their liking. They say "I wish we had a system like that, I wish we had political parties, I wish we had a smaller city council, I wish we had a larger city council.” Doug Ford, in his press conference, said, "I visited L.A. and they had fewer city councillors so we are going to do like L.A."

That happens a lot but there's very little sound, credible research that lays out what we define as our notions of good versus bad governance and measuring actual outcomes based on some of those structural changes.

Wiseman: I'm not sure they'll go ahead that quickly. It takes time to pass legislation. The problem he has is there's going to be a lot of blowback. We're already getting it from the mayor of Toronto – and from a lot of small "c" conservatives who are planning to run in the municipal election.

Even if they were to pass it before the next municipal election, they would see it only come into force in the subsequent election. But, hey, I could be wrong.

What will this mean for those people who have already announced their candidacy for city council and will these ward changes pit incumbent councillors against each other?

Eidelman: We don't really know what the effects are on democracy. It depends on your definition of democracy and what you're measuring – what you're counting – and what you expect a high-functioning democracy to be in local politics.

On a practical level in terms of what this does for people who are challenging incumbents, but also incumbents themselves, this is, in some sense, chaos for them. It’s fair to say that the likelihood of challengers pushing out incumbents, which is already a very low likelihood, is even more difficult. It's much less likely we'll end up with a council with new faces.

When you have situations where incumbents are facing other incumbents, you're doubling the chances an incumbent will win that seat.

Doug Ford said the city will save $25 million by cutting the number of councillors, though by some estimates, that number would be a lot lower. With a city budget of billions – does this amount to a lot of savings?

Eidelman: I was trying to do a mental calculation off the top of my head during the announcement – I came up with about half. But that's making assumptions that he's doing simple arithmetic of taking 22 fewer councillors with their office budgets are in the neighbourhood of $200,000. Do the math there and you're still much lower than $25 million.

Those numbers, regardless, on a city budget that's above $12 billion annually, are trivial. That kind of penny-pinching that was common during the Ford days at city council is not going to make a big dent in the city budget. No matter what number you come up with, it's going to be a small number per resident and those residents are not even going to pay that directly – it's not like there's a line on your property tax that goes toward staffing councillors.

How much power does the Ontario government have over municipal politics?

Eidelman: It's a bit of a grey area in terms of the ward boundaries because the City of Toronto Act does give council authority to draw its own boundaries but at the end of the day, constitutionally, the province has the powers to do so because its governing legislation creates the municipality itself and all of the bylaws that are passed by city council are really just delegated authority by the province by legislation.

Wiseman: The province can do anything it wants to municipal government as it has done in the past when it amalgamated the various boroughs with the City of Toronto to create the new city of Toronto and as it did when it increased the size of council in the past.

The provincial government can even do away with the city of Toronto. The people would still be there but they could decide, "Oh, we're amalgamating Toronto and Hamilton" or "We're changing its name to York."

Historically, is it unusual for an Ontario premier to make these kinds of decisions that will affect municipal politics?

Eidelman: The timing, yes, I think would be very rare. But just 20 years ago, under the [Mike] Harris government, the city of Toronto was amalgamated without much support from the City of Toronto and local councillors. There were protests that were staged. That was a much more drawn-out process – it wasn't in the middle of an election campaign and it certainly wasn't to influence who would be running in that election in less than three months' time.

This announcement also included the cancellations of elections for four regional chairs in Ontario including Peel where former Progressive Conservative party leader and Ford adversary, Patrick Brown, was running. Do you think this decision has ulterior motives?

Eidelman: I honestly don't know. It's hard not to read into that. It is curious – the language that was used in the press conference in explaining why only certain regional municipalities would have their elections taken away – is that the other municipal governments are more "mature,” which is an odd thing to say.

Reforming Toronto's City Hall: U of T task force says don't overhaul system, just fix it

ullahnor — Thu, 29 Jun 2017 14:30:16 +0000

Reforming Toronto's City Hall: U of T task force says don't overhaul system, just fix it

ullahnor Thu, 06/29/2017 - 10:30

Cutline

A U of T task force recommends 14 steps to fix Toronto's City Hall (photo by Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images)

Noreen Ahmed-Ullah

Sean Willet

Author legacy

Sean Willet, Noreen Ahmed-Ullah

Topic

School of Public Policy Governance

Cities

urban

A task force launched by U of T’s School of Public Policy & Governance (SPPG) is recommending a practical blueprint to reform Toronto’s City Hall – one that calls for incremental changes, not a complete overhaul.

“The task force debated whether we should go big or small,” says Gabriel Eidelman, an assistant professor at SPPG, who helped organize the undertaking. “We landed on let’s be smart and sensible rather than blow up the system.

“City Council is not functioning as well as it could, plain and simple. But the system is not beyond repair. What it needs is a push, and a sensible plan of action. That’s what we’ve delivered.”

The task force's 14 recommendations include calling for an annual mayoral address to City Council in early spring to lay out strategic priorities focused on “the big picture, not ward-level grandstanding” and encouraging an annual, rolling review of local agencies, boards, corporations, and commissions. The report advises council meetings be capped at 12 hours per day and councillors’ questions to staff be restricted to a single question period at the beginning of each council session.

See full report

Task force members also urge a more welcoming atmosphere for deputations, including increased information for newcomers. They want City Council to delegate further responsibility and decision-making authority to community councils and focus instead on city-wide priorities.

“City Council meetings frequently devolve into political theatre, which undermines public confidence,” the report states. “Items are too often amended ‘on-the-fly’ without staff analysis, leading to hasty decisions and wasted time and resources.”

The task force hopes City Council will act on the recommendations soon since they don't require any provincial intervention.

“These recommendations are about fixing the City of Toronto’s governance challenges. But the root issues they address are a familiar story for city councils across Canada struggling with efficacy, accountability, and transparency,” said Associate Professor Peter Loewen, director of SPPG.

Eidelman organized the task force along with urban public policy consultant Brian Kelcey, principal of State of the City.

The task force is composed of:

Former city manager Shirley Hoy, who is outgoing chair of U of T’s governing council
Former city manager Joe Pennachetti, currently a senior adviser at U of T's Institute on Municipal Finance & Governance and SPPG and a senior adviser at the Global Cities Institute and executive adviser to the World Council on City Data
Former city councillor David Soknacki
Former city councillor John Parker
Adrienne Batra, press secretary to former mayor Rob Ford and currently editor-in-chief of the Toronto Sun
Western University Assistant Professor Zack Taylor
CivicAction CEO Sevaun Palvetzian
Bianca Wylie, head of the Open Data Institute in Toronto
Ange Valentini, chief of staff to former councillor Adam Vaughan

Backlash to magazine story exposes ugly side of Toronto's housing obsession: U of T experts

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 02 Jun 2017 20:39:51 +0000

Backlash to magazine story exposes ugly side of Toronto's housing obsession: U of T experts

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 06/02/2017 - 16:39

Cutline

A semi-detached house in Toronto's gentrifying Parkdale neighbourhood (photo by Cory Doctorow via Flickr)

Topic

A story in this week’s Toronto Life magazine about a so-called “reno from hell” inadvertently launched a public conversation about the impact of gentrification on vulnerable neighbourhoods and the city’s homeless population.

The story triggered a swift social media backlash – with many taking umbrage at the author’s depiction of her efforts to remove squatters from the Parkdale property, including a drug user she initially feared might be dead.

Emily Paradis is a senior research associate at the Faculty of Social Work who focuses on homelessness. Deborah Cowen is an associate professor of geography and planning.

They spoke with U of T News about the significance of the Parkdale neighborhood, reaction to the article, and who is really being hurt by Toronto’s nosebleed home prices.

Deborah Cowen, an associate professor of geography and planning:

Toronto Life writes a lot of stories about people buying and renovating houses all over the city. Why do you think this one sparked such a visceral social media reaction?

Any time I want to make sense of something, I begin by asking where we are. Every story has a context, and this one really matters. This is a moment of acute housing crisis in Toronto with some of the fastest change and aggressive displacement taking place in this very neighbourhood. Parkdale is notorious as a centre of the city’s gentrification. It is known internationally in the scholarly literature as an area where so many people – Indigenous, poor, of colour, immigrant, working class, with physical and mental disabilities, on pensions, LGBTQ, students and artists – are being pushed out. Average prices for single family homes in Toronto have soared recently to well over a million dollars. Income polarization is deepening, as are its racialized contours. Toronto’s housing crisis has become so acute that we now have an average weekly death rate of two homeless people on city streets.

This is all reason enough for outrage at a story that dehumanizes the very people facing displacement and maybe homelessness, while valorizing the problems elites face in causing it.

I take it you believe there are other problems, too?

For the last month, several hundred Parkdale residents have undertaken a courageous action – a collective rent strike. They are doing so to protest the actions of the landlord, MetCap, which is trying to raise rents above regulations for units that have egregious outstanding work orders. Today actually marks the beginning of their second month of the strike. I say this is courageous because renters are standing their ground despite facing harassment and risk of physical assault from landlords, not to mention the possibility of losing their housing.

In this context, the editorial decision to run this particular article could be interpreted as deliberately heartless. Or perhaps it is a declaration that Toronto Life locates itself on one side of a deepening divide. In fact, it is both. The article aims to elicit sympathy for one multiply propertied family with extended networks of wealth while sanctioning the eviction of so many others, not only from the house but from a common humanity.

What, if anything, can we learn from all of this?

I am heartened by the outrage. It suggests that there is widespread discontent with the status quo, and perhaps even widespread concern for the well-being of others. It suggests that there is a relationship between deepening inequality and this culture of dehumanization, and that folks are getting fed up. Attitude cannot will inequity into being, but it is a key ‘infrastructure’ of inequality.
Gentrification is not an accident – it is almost official policy. Gentrification lines the pockets of municipal government, as much as it does private ones. It is often framed as a natural process of ‘rejuvenation,’ like a garden in the springtime. But it is promoted and exploited by those who create the very regulations and policies that shape urban change. That the author’s attitudes elicited such disgust is a sign that maybe this city is ready to have some serious conversation about our collective future.

Emily Paradis, senior research associate at the Faculty of Social Work who focuses on homelessness:

What was your initial reaction to this story?

What struck me was the dehumanization of the low-income people in the story. Now, I expect to hear the triumphant pioneer narrative of gentrification – the story of brave people moving to a new neighbourhood and reclaiming it. That stuff I find irritating and offensive but not unexpected. But to hear a description of someone walking into a person’s bedroom, not initially noticing they’re there, slowly becoming aware of their presence, thinking they might be dead and then not doing anything to try and help – that was shocking to me.

You participated in a study on Parkdale rooming houses by the Parkdale Neighbourhood Land Trust. What did the researchers find?

The researchers literally walked the streets of the neighbourhood to a get sense of what’s going on. The degree of loss of rooming house units was shocking. They found that 28 rooming houses had already been lost, and another 59 are at risk – that’s out of 198 rooming houses in the neighbourhood.

Some of these houses have been used as rooming houses since the Great Depression when many of these big mansions became unsustainable for families to own and heat. So rooming houses have always been part of the picture in Parkdale, and the need for them intensified in the 1970s and 1980s with deinstitutionalization. A lot of survivors of the [mental health] system moved into the neighbourhood because they were really close to services they needed. And, of course, we know the deinstitutionalization policy was enacted without enough community support to house people and provide services. One of the root causes of the level of homelessness we see today is that lack of funding for housing and services.

There are some who don’t see what the fuss is about – a family spent a lot of money and time fixing up a crumbing old house, improving the neighbourhood. What do you say to them?

The whole issue is much broader than this particular family or this particular writer. The issue is systemic. It doesn’t come down to whether one family buys a rooming house and renovates it into a single family home. That’s been happening in Parkdale since the 1980s. The issue is there’s nowhere for folks who rely on rooming houses to go. Public attitudes toward low income housing in general tend to be that it’s an eyesore that degrades the neighbourhood. But why is making a neighbourhood more exclusive and less able to accommodate all its residents seen as an improvement?

What can be done to improve the situation?

We need adequate funding for social housing and affordable housing. We need stronger regulation for the private housing market so that tenants living in a building that’s purchased aren’t displaced with nowhere to go. In the case of a neighbourhood like Parkdale and rooming houses, we need planning about how that very unique form of affordable housing will be maintained into the future so that the population it houses isn’t rendered homeless when all rooming houses disappear. That requires looking ahead. As neighbourhoods change, we have to think about how we can have development without displacement.

Recipe for resilience: U of T cities experts talk housing, transportation, growing disparity in GTA

Romi Levine — Thu, 04 May 2017 16:16:51 +0000

Recipe for resilience: U of T cities experts talk housing, transportation, growing disparity in GTA

Romi Levine Thu, 05/04/2017 - 12:16

Cutline

U of T cities experts say initiatives like the Regent Park redevelopment are a step toward building a more resilient Toronto (photo by City of Toronto via Flickr)

Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work

Author legacy

Romi Levine

Topic

Faculty of Arts & Science

Toronto's rising housing prices are just one symptom of the city's struggles with rapid growth.

On Tuesday, a group of U of T cities experts explored Toronto's challenges and proposed solutions for making the city more resilient at The Inclusive and Sustainable City of the 21st Century, an RBC-sponsored conference organized by the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work and the Faculty of Arts & Science.

Toronto’s growing inequality is undeniable, said Professor David Hulchanski, principal investigator of the Neighbourhood Change Research Partnership, which has documented the shrinking of middle-income neighbourhoods, greater disparity between high-income and low-income residents and released research showing that low-income families can no longer afford to live in the city.

“We've always had a gap between rich and poor, and we always will have it – only it is much larger today,” Hulchanski said.

If Toronto continues on this trajectory, it could become a city like Chicago which has almost no middle-income neighbourhoods, Hulchanski warned.

“We're not Chicago, but we're going in that direction.”

Speakers also included Daniyal Zuberi, RBC chair and associate professor of social policy, Shauna Brail, U of T’s presidential advisor on urban engagement and director of the urban studies program, and Mark Kingwell, author and professor of philosophy.

From left, conference speakers included Associate Professor Shauna Brail, Professor David Hulchanski and Associate Professor Daniyal Zuberi (photo by Romi Levine)

Zuberi has been studying how inequality plays out in different cities.

“For many people who don't have resources, they're increasingly left behind, socially isolated, simply pushed out into either the least desirable parts of these cities or into the suburbs, or they are forced to move to other cities,” he said.

But it’s not all bad news, said Zuberi.

“We do see a growing recognition that mixed-income zoning and development is probably better than single-family homes on farmers' fields two hours from downtown, and there's a growing push for these kinds of more inclusive communities to be built,” he said

He commended the federal, provincial and municipal governments for supporting more affordable housing initiatives like in Regent Park and the proposed Rail Deck Park, which are opportunities to improve the lives of Torontonians living in highly dense neighbourhoods downtown.

But change can also take place in small ways in underserved neighbourhoods, said Zuberi.

“Doubling the number of buses that come to a neighbourhood can dramatically improve life in these communities but doesn't cost that much.”

Kingwell emphasized the need for acceptance as cities and the people within them change (photo by Romi Levine)

For Brail, it’s the research conducted by academics like Hulchanski and Zuberi, and the university’s community partnerships that drive change in the city.

“We really need to think, not just about the university as a physical city builder…but also as an institution that creates a social infrastructure, that helps contribute to communities whether it's by working with particular groups, whether it's by identifying ways of developing infrastructure that actually supports groups outside, or whether it's about thinking how to connect and bring other groups into the university,” she said.

This can also be done through service learning placements for students, joint programs in neighbourhoods like Regent Park and collaboration between the Toronto universities through initiatives like the StudentMoveTO survey of student transportation woes and a recent call for proposals addressing Toronto's affordable housing challenge, said Brail.

While Kingwell spoke of the need to embrace people’s differences as the key to becoming an inclusive city, his final message was much more simple: “Don’t be a jerk.”

Frontier City: U of T’s Shawn Micallef takes on populism and potential in Toronto

Romi Levine — Thu, 09 Mar 2017 17:00:32 +0000

Frontier City: U of T’s Shawn Micallef takes on populism and potential in Toronto

Romi Levine Thu, 03/09/2017 - 12:00

Cutline

Shawn Micallef's new book ‘Frontier City: Toronto on the Verge of Greatness’ explores what's behind the rise of populism in Toronto (photo by Romi Levine)

Author legacy

Romi Levine

Topic

Before Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, before the United Kingdom voted in favour of Brexit, there was Rob Ford.

The late former mayor of Toronto made it clear that populism was alive and well in Canada. But what drew people to become loyal followers of Ford Nation?

That’s what Shawn Micallef is exploring in his new book Frontier City: Toronto on the Verge of Greatness.

Micallef is an author, co-founder of Spacing Magazine, a Toronto Star columnist and a lecturer at University College and Innis College at University of Toronto.

“When you're downtown, it's very easy to be seduced by the prosperity of this place with cranes in the sky,” Micallef said at a book launch on Tuesday at Innis Town Hall. “There's a lot of Toronto that doesn't get to participate necessarily in all of that prosperity and all of that Sesame Street urbanism.”

Micallef was joined by Shauna Brail, U of T’s presidential adviser on urban engagement and director of the urban studies program, who moderated the event, as well as Jennifer Pagliaro, Toronto Star city hall reporter and former city council candidates Alejandra Bravo and Keegan Henry-Mathieu – who were both interviewed for the book.

Frontier City tells the story of Toronto’s neighbourhoods often neglected by downtown-centric politicians through conversations with 12 former non-incumbent City Hall candidates on walks around their wards.

“What was great about underdog candidates – people who were challenging power – was they were critiquing power. They’re not trying to hold on to it,” said Micallef. “They're a lot freer to come up with ideas, to talk about the future potential of the city – what’s wrong with it and where it's going. That kind of liberation of thought was a fun thing to explore.”

Panelists at the Frontier City book launch, from left to right, Jennifer Pagliaro, Alejandra Bravo, Keegan Henry-Mathieu and Shauna Brail (photo by Romi Levine)

Henry-Mathieu, a Ward 7 candidate, said he enjoyed reflecting on his neighbourhood with Micallef.

“It was the first opportunity for me to really walk around and see the neighbourhood differently – to be able to make that connection between the greatness of our people and the potential of our neighbourhoods.”

It’s important for all Torontonians to remember that different people experience the city in different ways, said Bravo, who was a candidate in Ward 17.

“It's important to challenge our generalized assumptions about how inclusive and diverse our city is,” she said.

“For so many people, they've only ever known low wages, high unemployment, really expensive housing – this generates a sense of insecurity and fear about the future. That's what a lot of our neighbours are contending with.”

The danger comes when we think we’re immune to the discourses the United States has been confronted by, she said.

“We have a tendency to mythologize Canadian exceptionalism,” she said.

If City Hall continues to brush these issues aside, Toronto runs the risk of electing another Ford-like leader, said Micallef.

“These looming crises of being left out of the prosperity that a lot of people in the city enjoy means it's going to come back,” he said. “There's no one on the radar yet, but if a populist leader with the magical charisma that Rob Ford had...if another person like that comes along, they'll be unstoppable.”

But Micallef’s message is also hopeful, said Pagliaro who cited an exerpt from the book that reads: “We're always longing for a city we don't allow ourselves to have.”

“It is both an urgent callout but also something that's very hopeful,” she said.

Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders discusses modernizing the police force, carding at U of T event

Romi Levine — Fri, 24 Feb 2017 20:53:20 +0000

Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders discusses modernizing the police force, carding at U of T event

Romi Levine Fri, 02/24/2017 - 15:53

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Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders spoke today at U of T's Black History Month Luncheon (photo by Romi Levine)

Author legacy

Romi Levine

Topic

Police Chief Mark Saunders told U of T faculty, staff and students that change will take place in the Toronto police force, but it will be gradual.

“When I'm talking to my men and women, I tell them it's not like the scene in The Matrix where you get the blue pill or the red pill and away you go,” he said during U of T's Black History Month Luncheon. “It doesn't happen that way. It's going to take a long period of time to do certain things.”

During the annual event organized by the Division of University Advancement and the Black History Month Organizing Committee, Saunders talked about modernizing the police force as well as challenges like carding.

“The old methods of policing aren't necessarily the best methods or the right methods in today's environment,” Saunders said at the luncheon, held at U of T’s Woodsworth College.

Saunders was invited to speak at the event, and he took the opportunity to talk about this week's release of a report aimed at improving and modernizing the police force. It was authored by the Transformational Task Force, which he co-chairs alongside Andy Pringle, chair of the Toronto Police Services Board.

Research for the report involved consulting community groups, said Saunders.

The task force found that Torontonians were interested in issues around transparency, accountability, trust, inclusiveness and affordability but were also keen on creating closer ties between the police force and the communities they serve.

“We're good at what we do, but sometimes what we do doesn't really identify or isn't defined as public value,” said Saunders. He added that the police force is hoping to create “more value and...stronger relationships right across the city.”

When asked about the controversial practice of carding, he said that it’s a unique issue.

“If you define carding as the random stopping and gathering of information of people, I do not support that. That is unlawful policing,” said Saunders.

But when a person is approached for the purpose of gathering information regarding a specific crime, it’s lawful, he said

“When we used it in an intelligence-led way, it was enhancing community safety. It took us a while to learn this,” said Saunders, adding that this is now the standard practice for police information gathering.

Saunders said the Toronto police have come a long way in the 34 years he has been a part of the force.

“When I got on, the thought of becoming a sergeant was an impossibility because the very few black people that joined the service before me – and I do mean very few – had made it very clear that I didn't fit a certain demographic for promotion.”

As a black police chief, Saunders said he brings a different perspective to the job.

“As early as six months ago, I had an incident south of the border where it was definitely a racist encounter,” he said. “The fact that I am black, I come with a different lens. I've lived a different journey. I've experienced different things,” he said.

He hopes his journey can inspire young people to follow their ambitions.

“If I can serve as a role model, that's a bonus package,” he said. “If I have the ability of giving anyone hope, then I'm proud of that. I think that gives me an opportunity to represent myself to the best of my ability so that others can be inspired to be whatever they want to be.”

The U of T alumni behind Honest Ed’s big farewell bash

Romi Levine — Wed, 22 Feb 2017 21:03:43 +0000

The U of T alumni behind Honest Ed’s big farewell bash

Romi Levine Wed, 02/22/2017 - 16:03

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Toronto for Everyone co-producer Hima Batavia poses with a cutout of Honest Ed's namesake, Ed Mirvish (photo by Romi Levine)

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The bash hopes to celebrate Toronto’s diversity and advocate for inclusivity

Hima Batavia remembers making the trek to Honest Ed’s as a kid once a month from Scarborough with her family.

As a first generation Canadian, the U of T alumna knows firsthand how the iconic department store and Toronto’s immigrant story are so closely intertwined.

“This place was really a community hub in so many ways, and it was a place for everyone,” she says.

So when she was asked by the Centre for Social Innovation’s (CSI) Executive Director Adil Dhalla to co-produce a giant, multi-day goodbye party for Ed’s with her best friend Negin Sairafi, she jumped at the opportunity.

“Our eyes just lit up,” says Batavia.

The big send-off is being organized by CSI’s brainchild Toronto for Everyone – a city-building group made up of community leaders and volunteers from all over the city with the aim of celebrating Toronto’s diversity and advocating for inclusivity.

“An Honest Farewell” runs from Feb. 23-26, kicking off with a gala and continuing throughout the weekend with a number of free and ticketed events including a giant art maze, a town hall and a buy-local market.

Honest Ed's has been more-or-less cleaned out, but there are a few quirky remnants of its department store past (photo by Romi Levine)

Stefan Hostetter, one of Toronto for Everyone’s community directors, says the event is a reflection of the city’s relationship between old and new.

“It's simultaneously that tension between the loss of something important to people and the need for something new. That's what exists everywhere,” says Hostetter, who is working alongside fellow U of T alumnus Erin Kang at the Community Hub.

The Hub provides a space in Honest Ed’s for businesses and community groups from all over the GTA to create a diverse range of programming.

“It's for the people. It's by the people. And, it's free,” says Hostetter. “Community organizations are the lifeblood of our city so we wanted to get them to be able to feel like they're not just attending but involved.”

"Ed's was a first landing ground for new immigrants and for people just coming into the city because it was cheap, because they respected you and because of Ed's love for the community itself," says Stefan Hostetter (photo by Romi Levine)

Pulling off an event that’s truly “for everyone” has been challenging – and expensive, says Batavia.

“It's trying to make a 70-year-old building accessible,” she says. “It's thinking about art for all different demographics and abilities. It's thinking about pricing for different demographics and socio-economic statuses but still trying to pull off an event that breaks even.”

The Toronto for Everyone team knew true inclusivity was not easily attainable, but they felt it was important to be held to that standard.

“One of our plans is to release a report to illustrate where we succeeded and where we failed, and how we can do better as an organization and as a city and community,” says Batavia.

She says the report will be a healthy and meaningful exercise in accountability.

“I think that as a society, we can often not be forgiving. We haven't yet created a culture where it's OK and important to fail,” Batavia says. “By naming our failures it gives us the opportunity to learn and to do better.”

Torontonians attending “An Honest Farewell” will be able to access parts of Honest Ed's that were previously off-limits, like Ed Mirvish's former office (photo by Romi Levine)

The weekend’s events are a way for Torontonians to say goodbye to Ed’s, but it’s also an opportunity to move its narrative forward with the launch of the Toronto for Everyone Fund, a charitable initiative that will support inclusivity education in Toronto.

“This will be a chance to make a big splash and bring that intention throughout the city whether it's allyship workshops or helping other organizations working on similar issues,” says Hostetter.

Batavia hopes Toronto for Everyone will push the city to set an example for the rest of the world.

“Toronto is in this really unique position. We're all talking about how we're moving out of our adolescence, we're growing up, and we're ready to take a seat on the world stage. I think where we can really shine is being a model for inclusivity – locally and globally – and show our neighbours what that looks like.”

This weekend is your last chance to say goodbye to the interior of the iconic Honest Ed's building (photo by Romi Levine)

Former Toronto mayor David Miller says municipal governments must look beyond monetary incentives to make cities greener

Romi Levine — Tue, 21 Feb 2017 19:20:05 +0000

Former Toronto mayor David Miller says municipal governments must look beyond monetary incentives to make cities greener

Romi Levine Tue, 02/21/2017 - 14:20

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The city has a responsibility to tackle environmental issues, says David Miller (photo by SJ Elliott via Flickr)

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With political turmoil in the U.S. driving environmental challenges to take a backseat at the federal level, cities need to take the lead on green issues, said David Miller, former mayor of Toronto at an event last week at U of T.

“Urban green spaces are a very important way of demonstrating that the city is there for everyone,” said Miller, speaking at an event hosted by the Hart House Debates Committee and the U of T Foresters' Club.

Miller, a U of T alumnus, is now the president and CEO of World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Canada but has long been interested in sustainable cities. As mayor, he introduced city-wide sustainable programs like the green bin initiative.

“The urban forest is a huge responsibility of a city. Parks and water are a responsibility of the city. Transportation, social justice and public health – all of those things together force a city government to actually think about environmental issues,” said Miller.

David Miller works on conservation efforts across Canada for World Wildlife Fund (photo by Romi Levine)

But for cities to become greener, municipal governments must look beyond monetary incentives, he said.

“I sometimes worry that we've fallen into this trend of trying to figure out what the economic value of everything is, as if it's a cost-benefit analysis” Miller said. “Having a great place to live with a free public resource isn't a cost-benefit analysis. It's actually a Canadian value.”

This kind of resource is crucial to creating equity in the city, he said.

“If you think about Toronto, if you go to Toronto Island on a weekend in June and talk to people there who are having picnics, you will discover they are from northeast Scarborough and northwest Etobicoke just as likely as they are from downtown or living on the island,” he said. “And why is that? A lot of those people are low-income, and they desire green space, nature and contact with nature including the urban forest, and they don't have the economic means to buy a cottage in Muskoka. They go to the Toronto Island, and they're passionate about it.”

As one of the city’s largest public institutions, U of T has a role to play in promoting this kind of progressive thinking, Miller said.

“The university has incredible capacity on environmental issues, social justice issues and issues that relate to it like transportation. It would be really interesting to see the university try to do some integrative thinking about how these things come together.

The event was moderated by Shauna Brail, associate professor-teaching stream and the director of the urban studies program at Innis College.

As one of the largest land-holders in the city, U of T is always looking to incorporate sustainable thinking into its development plans, Brail said.

“There’s always room for thinking more broadly about what else can be done for our impact.”

One of the ways the city and the university can work together is around conservation of urban biodiversity, said Miller.

“The city government can play a really helpful role working with academic institutions and not-for-profits in helping build a strategy for citizens on what we can do.”

As cities continue to grow, urban habitats become more at risk, he said.

“Our studies at World Wildlife Fund internationally show that we're on track if we don't change our behaviour to lose two thirds of the populations of wildlife in the world since 1970.”

Madeleine Bray, an undergraduate student in the Faculty of Forestry and secretary of the Foresters Club, the faculty’s undergraduate students’ union, said a multidisciplinary approach to conserving the city’s green spaces is vital. So, planners or foresters or architects can’t work alone – they need each other.

“It was interesting to hear someone such as David Miller talk about issues like this,” she said. “They're very familiar to me as it's what most of my courses are based on, but it's nice to hear it from a Toronto perspective, taking it back to the city itself. It really puts things into better context.”

Jazzing up winter in the city: U of T students to build winter station at Toronto beach

Romi Levine — Thu, 26 Jan 2017 19:03:10 +0000

Jazzing up winter in the city: U of T students to build winter station at Toronto beach

Romi Levine Thu, 01/26/2017 - 14:03

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"Midwinter Fire" is the U of T installation for the upcoming Winter Station design competition in Toronto (photo image courtesy of U of T/Winter Stations Design Competition)

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