Nicholas Hune-Brown
Nicholas Hune-Brown is an award-winning magazine writer and Executive Editor at The Local. Follow @nickhunebrown.bsky.social, email nick@thelocal.to.
26 stories
After the International Student Gold Rush
Foreign students were harmed by the policies that brought them here, and they’re being harmed once again by the policies shutting them out.
What do Changes to Immigration Mean In a City of Immigrants?
The last year has seen sharp changes in attitudes and policies around immigration across Canada. Nowhere are those changes felt more than in Toronto.
Moss Park’s Lost Years
Grief, and hope, in the downtown eastside neighbourhood with the lowest life-expectancy in the city.
Failing Our Students
Toronto’s public education system has been underfunded for decades. Kids are paying the price.
Toronto’s Green-ish Economy
If we want to write about the environment, we need to write about business.
The Value of Art and the Cost of Losing it
Toronto’s cultural institutions are reeling and its artists are struggling. What’s lost when a city no longer supports the arts?
The Transit Boss Torontonians Love to Hate
When Phil Verster was announced as Metrolinx’s CEO in 2017, there was universal praise. But with an $856,000 salary and a tenure defined by cost overruns and years of delays to projects like the Eglinton LRT, critics want him out. How did it go so wrong?
How the City Is Failing Aging Torontonians
Toronto’s demographic shift was expected and predictable. But from housing to health care, it often feels like the city has been caught by surprise.
Meet Wency Leung, the Newest Member of The Local
The veteran reporter, who’s worked everywhere from Cambodia to Prague to Vancouver, will cover health and education
Welcome to Finch West
The LRT doesn’t open until next year at the earliest, but it’s already transforming Toronto’s northwest.
Olivia Chow is Mayor
Chow becomes the first progressive mayor in 13 years, the first female in the role since amalgamation, and the first non-white leader in Toronto history.
Where Has Olivia Chow Been?
After almost a decade out of public life, years spent training grassroots organizers, the former NDP MP is leading the polls for Toronto mayor. What does Chow’s time out of government say about what she might do if she finds herself back in?
How We Misunderstand the Housing Crisis
The “housing crisis” isn’t a crisis for everyone—for some it’s a windfall. That fact infuses every aspect of our response to it.
What is the PATH?
Below ground, the hair stylists, dry cleaners, baristas and sushi chefs are ready. But are the office workers coming back?
The First Wave of a New Era
Everyone got COVID while making this issue. Welcome to the “living with it” era of the pandemic.
A Week After Launching RAT Tracker, We’re Still in the Dark
What we learned from our participatory data project asking Torontonians to share rapid antigen test results.
The Way We Work
How decent jobs became precarious labour, and what we can do about it.
Second Doses Missing Those Who Really Need Them
With the Delta variant making second dose distribution urgent, new data reveals Toronto’s highest-risk neighbourhoods are being left behind.
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.
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.
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.
Last Week, In Review
As the first tentative positive signs emerged, it was tempting to look beyond the week—to try to trace the curve past where it flattens to the point it sinks beneath the horizon. It's too early for that.
The Toronto Basketball Powerhouse Nobody’s Ever Heard Of
The kids don’t get free sneakers. The team has to haggle for gym time. The coaches are unpaid. So what makes Toronto Basketball Academy so good?
Children’s Village Forever
Ontario Place designer Eric McMillan invented the ball pit, built the epicentre of kid-life for a generation of Torontonians and, for a brief moment, promised to revolutionize the way we play.
The Roma of Flemingdon Park
Jen Quinlan was just trying to get Roma kids to the dentist. She ended up picking a fight with one of Canada’s richest real estate companies.
Treating Toby Nicol
One percent of the population accounts for a third of health care spending. Can a program for some of Toronto’s neediest change that?