Growing Up on the 36 Finch West
It takes me two hours on transit to visit my mom in Rexdale. Can a transit line begin to connect a neighbourhood that sometimes feels a world apart?
Toronto Needs a Mayor Who Can See Through the Smoke
Climate change is an urgent municipal issue. Here are the mayoral hopefuls taking it seriously, the deniers posing as delayers, and the long-shot candidate with the best environmental platform.
Maybe I’ll See Raymond
For years, I walked the city doing street outreach overnight—handing out socks, listening to people’s stories, always scanning the crowd for a familiar face.
Death in the Small Hours
In the middle of the night, palliative care doctor Joshua Wales drives across the city, making house calls to people during the most emotionally complex, vulnerable moments of their lives.
Why Voting Will Never Be My First Priority
For people like me, voting often feels like an easy political act that changes little. My political engagement comes in other forms.
Everything You Need to Know About School Trustees
We don’t elect people to oversee any other specific public service. But maybe we should?
The Weight of Childbirth During a Climate Crisis
I enrolled in midwifery school in search of hope and purpose. But what does it mean to bring new life into a world that's becoming less liveable?
The Greatest Mall in the World
Malvern mall has seen me through every stage of my life, from renting videos as a preschooler to wandering the empty halls during COVID. As we emerge from the pandemic, how do we keep these suburban hubs of culture and community alive?
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.
How to Keep Schools Open
None of it’s easy. All of it’s urgent.
Rebuilding the Restaurant Business, One Argument at a Time
The pandemic created a window of opportunity to change a broken industry. The challenge now is getting restaurant workers to agree on what that change should be.
Is EI Broken?
Our employment insurance system was built before the rise of temp work, gig work, and foreign labour. It’s time for an overhaul.
One Year, Fifty Cover Letters, Three Interviews, Zero Jobs
A report from the debt-ridden, desperate, increasingly despairing graduating class of 2020.
Different Schools, Different Risks
A one-size-fits-all-approach hasn’t worked at any stage of the pandemic. Why do we think it will work in schools this year?
The Missing Middle
Middle-class neighbourhoods haven’t been the focus of accelerated vaccination. Now they’re home to more than half a million under-vaccinated Torontonians.
Getting Vaccinated in the Holy Month
This year, we thought we’d figured out how to do Ramadan in a pandemic. Then the vaccine rollout began.
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.
A Neighbourhood in the Dark
What good is public health information if nobody hears it?
The 35 Jane
What a bus route reveals about race, class, and social vulnerability during a pandemic.