As more people move in, more green space needs to be considered 

Spring is my favourite time to get outside and enjoy what park spaces this city has to offer. Sadly, there really isn’t that much of it. In the Annex, we have a few strips north of Bloor where homes were taken out for the subway, there’s Taddle Creek Park, and then there’s Jean Sibelius. It really is scant green space for the 14,000 people who call this area home. In case you haven’t noticed, the Mirvish Village development on the old Honest Ed’s lot is near completion, and it won’t be long before 1000s more call this area home, competing to use the green space that’s available. The little green space we have is also losing its beautiful canopy coverage.   Read more

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ARA to resurvey all the trees in the Annex 

By Terri Chu

There’s a lot to love about the Annex: cultural vibrancy, a wide variety of local independent businesses, walkability and trees. 

Can you imagine this place without the big, beautiful maples? The streets would feel empty and dystopian.   Read more

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A vote for the oil men is a vote for genocide; it is actively acknowledging our ambivalence about the suffering of others

By Terri Chu

We live in a sea of green, red, and orange signs here in University-Rosedale, and for all the things we might disagree on, our neighbours agree on a few key points: climate change is real, vaccines work, science can move us forward.  Read more

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Examining the interconnectivity of consumption, labour, and the environment

By Terri Chu

The richest among us earned record profits during another COVID-19 year while the poorest among us are risking their lives in understaffed service jobs.   Read more

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Do it for the planet, and for yourself

By Terri Chu

As an environmentalist, few things make me cringe quite like Christmas does. We are heading into the season when Canadians will each discard a staggering 50 kg of trash over the holidays.   Read more

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Let’s not go back to unhealthy “normal”

By Terri Chu

While we all wait for vaccines to bring us back to some sense of “normal” (don’t hold your breath as the variants might beat us at this game), let’s take a moment to reflect on how much normal really sucked: for so many Torontonians, “normal” meant sitting in the car for hours just to get to work.   Read more

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Reconnecting with our green thumbs is good for us all

By Terri Chu  Read more

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You won’t find true happiness inside a box

By Terri Chu  Read more

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It’s time to focus on survival

By Terri Chu

India’s population of 1.3 billion people is in a state of “lockdown” until May 3. One of the initial impacts was a massive wave of migrants, suddenly jobless, walking hundreds of kilometres to their home-communities. In the country’s most populated state, Uttar Pradesh, state officials have instructed village councillors not to allow returning labourers in. In India and around the world, Coronavirus is laying bare a capitalistic hard-truth: the poor are expendable.   Read more

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Silence on Hong Kong and climate crisis has parallels

On November 11, Canadian leaders extolled the virtues of soldiers who lost their lives defending the ideals of democracy. On that day, we might have told the story of the nearly 2,000 Canadian soldiers who fought to defend Hong Kong against Japanese invasion in 1941. Five hundred of those soldiers did not come back, and many others returned deeply scarred after living as prisoners of war.   Read more

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Let’s stop celebrating symbols of destruction

Bling bling! Jaws dropped and the media was bedazzled by the newly unveiled Toronto Raptors championship rings on October 23. For the team’s opening game, each player was awarded a golf-ball of 10 karat gold covered in 14 carat diamonds, and the nearly 20,000 fans watching at Scotiabank Arena were given replicas. Instead of being star struck, I feel sick. Instead of celebrating the making and baring of those rings, we should be denouncing them and the culture that clouds the story they really tell.  Read more

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No unity of purpose from arms of the city

By Terri Chu  Read more

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Act local to address the reality of climate change

By Terri Chu  Read more

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