In this issue
Who’s Actually Running Ontario’s Long-Term Care Homes?
Nearly 100 of Ontario’s embattled care homes are run by third-party operators—a management arrangement often invisible to the families of residents. Now, analysis by The Local has found that COVID-19 death rates at facilities outsourced to Extendicare, the largest operator in Ontario, are 81 percent higher than the industry average.
A Long-Term Tragedy
The devastation in seniors homes during COVID-19 was the predictable result of decades of indifference and neglect. From Victorian poorhouses to sites of mass death—the shameful history of our long-term care system.
The Cost of a Stay at a Shelter Hotel
Temporarily housing homeless people in hotels was supposed to protect them during the pandemic. Why are residents overdosing and dying in the isolation of their own rooms?
A Congregation Apart
The parishioners at San Lorenzo are a tight-knit group of Latin American immigrants and refugees. When the pandemic forced the church's doors to close, Father Hernan Astudillo decided to bring faith and community to them.
The Other Epidemic in Toronto’s Schools
The problems in Toronto’s schools didn’t start with COVID-19—our underfunded education system has been in a slow-motion crisis for decades.
A Place for Those Who Raised Us
In many immigrant families, elders are the pillars of the household. With COVID-19 revealing flaws in the way we treat seniors, what can society learn from how different cultures value aging?
What’s Plaguing Toronto’s Ethnic Press?
In a city of immigrants, non-English language newspapers play a critical role in the fight against COVID-19. Can they survive the pandemic?
The Hands That Feed Us
Throughout the pandemic, temporary foreign workers have worked in cramped quarters under unsafe conditions to keep our pantries stocked. Is it time they were given a pathway to permanent residency?
Pandemic’s Labyrinth
How Canada’s secretive, byzantine, Cold War-era stockpile system left us unprepared for COVID-19.