Vaccinating Toronto

Ongoing coverage of the largest vaccination campaign in history. In-depth storytelling, maps and analysis, and perspectives from corners of the city too often overlooked.

In this issue

Feature by Tayo Bero

Vaccinating Black Toronto

The city’s Black communities has been disproportionately affected by COVID. Now these physicians and community leaders are working to make sure they don’t also go unvaccinated.

Data Blog by Tai Huynh

Hot Spot Tracker

Weekly progress updates on vaccination efforts in the GTA's highest-risk neighbourhoods.

Feature by Tai Huynh

Behind the Sudden Drop at Toronto’s Mass Immunization Clinics

The City of Toronto clinics are well-funded operations that were supposed to be the engines of the city’s vaccination drive. Why are pop ups in parking lots delivering four times as many doses a day?

Feature by Fatima Syed

The Chaotic Race to Vaccinate Peel

Overwhelmed phone lines, frantic group texts, frustration and relief—inside the first week of pop-up clinics in a region desperate for vaccines.

Feature by Fatima Syed

“You Can’t Stop the Spread of the Virus if You Don’t Stop it in Peel”

Not enough support, not enough testing, not enough vaccines—Peel has been neglected at every step of the pandemic, and the results have been devastating.

Perspective by Radiyah Chowdhury

The Toronto Hot Spot Nobody’s Talking About

Malvern has one of the highest COVID positivity rates in the city and only got its first pop-up clinic today. People here are used to feeling left behind.

Photo essay by Yader Guzman with introduction by Nicholas Hune-Brown

Bringing the Vaccine to Where it’s Needed

Relief, joy, and no hesitancy at a pop-up clinic at Jane and Finch, the postal code with the lowest vaccination rates in the city.

Investigation by Nicholas Hune-Brown

The Vaccine Rollout is Leaving Toronto’s Hardest-Hit Postal Codes Behind

New data reveals that Ontario’s vaccine strategy is missing the most vulnerable areas of Toronto.

Investigation by Inori Roy

Plenty of Pharmacies, but No Vaccines in Toronto’s Northwest

There are 25 pharmacies in the five Toronto neighbourhoods worst-hit by COVID. Why weren’t any of them chosen to administer vaccines?

Issue 9 - Spring 2021

A Year in Toronto

It’s been 12 months since COVID-19 took over our city. The stories in this issue, published throughout the week, aren’t meant to be some grand summing up of the pandemic year that was because, in truth, it's much too soon for a retrospective. They’re snippets of lives lived over a year in Toronto unlike any other—stories about the brave, tough, and sometimes strange ways people have endured.

In this issue

Editor's Letter by Nicholas Hune-Brown

A Year in Toronto

In a year of “unprecedented times,” the world didn’t split apart in ways that were terrifying and new. It cracked along familiar seams, over and over again.

Feature by Kelly Boutsalis

A Year of Indigenous People Helping Indigenous People

In the middle of a pandemic, with multiple crises devastating their community, Nanook Gordon and Brianna Olson Pitawanakwat started a grassroots organization to bring compassion, aid, and culture to Indigenous people on Toronto’s streets.

Essay by John Michael McGrath

A Year Looking at the Numbers

For the last year, seven days a week, I’ve woken up to post the province’s COVID numbers. It turns out people don’t want data—they want someone to tell them how this all ends.

Essay by Max Mertens

A Year on Two Wheels

My father believed that biking was a way to strengthen our communities. In this strange and sorrow-filled year, I’ve tried to follow his path.

Essay by Vanessa Milne

A Year of Kids Playing Pandemic

When COVID-19 leaked into my children’s make-believe games, I worried they were being traumatized. Maybe I’ve been looking at it the wrong way.

Essay by John Semley

A Long Year

As the months stretched on and days became meaningless, I did the natural thing—turned to 800-page novels and 15-hour German movies just to feel the passage of time in all its punishing slowness.

Local voice by Derrick Black

A Year of Resistance in the Moss Park Encampment

Derrick Black, one of the original residents of the Moss Park encampment, survived a year of confrontations with the city, police raids, and extreme weather in his fight for permanent housing. His story in his own words.

Issue 8 - Winter 2021

Pandemic Fault Lines

The suffering during this pandemic didn’t begin with COVID-19 in March—Toronto's vulnerabilities have been showing for decades. This issue tells the story of how we got here. As the city goes into a second lockdown, with a vaccine somewhere on the horizon, it also provides vital context moving forward. We need to know where the cracks are before we can rebuild.

In this issue

Investigation by Inori Roy & Tai Huynh

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.