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Explore Topics

  • Health
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  • Education
  • Built Environment
  • Inside The Local
  • Housing
  • Labour
  • Climate
  • Culture
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  • All Topics

Recent Issues

  • The Cost of Care
  • The Higher Education Issue
  • School Board Takeover
  • Wild Wild City
  • Federal Election 2025
  • All Issues

Follow

  • Subscribe
  • Apple News
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The Local

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Shawn Micallef

Shawn Micallef is the author of Frontier City: Toronto on the Verge of Greatness, Stroll: Psychogeographic Walking Tours of Toronto, and The Trouble With Brunch: Work, Class and the Pursuit of Leisure. He’s a weekly columnist at the Toronto Star, and a senior editor and co-owner of the independent, Jane Jacobs Prize–winning magazine Spacing.  Shawn teaches at the University of Toronto and was a 2011-2012 Canadian Journalism Fellow at University of Toronto’s Massey College. 

4 stories

Feature by Shawn Micallef

A Summer Without Tourists

We don't usually think of Toronto as a travel destination. But when the tourism industry imploded overnight, the effects rippled across the city.

Feature by Shawn Micallef

Where the Spadina Expressway Didn’t Stop

Defeating the Spadina Expressway is a celebrated story of urban resistance. Less told is the story of the neighbourhood that has lived with a freeway running through its heart for the last fifty years.

Photo essay by Shawn Micallef

The Swimmer

Our intrepid beach correspondent swims his way across the city over one week to answer the question: what is Toronto beach culture?

Feature by Shawn Micallef

Bubble Tea, Dollar Stores, and Dialysis?

When Target closed in Canada, it left a crater in many suburban malls. In Thorncliffe Park, a group of health care providers stepped in.

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