Proposed hookah lounge category voted down

Bampot Bohemian House of Tea & Board Games on Harbord Street will remove shisha from its menu after a city-wide ban takes effect in April 2016. Corrina King, Gleaner News

By Dilara Kurtaran

Local shisha bar owners are scrambling to change their business model after city councillors voted 34 to three to ban shisha from Toronto’s lounges and restaurants starting in April 2016.

Toronto is the latest city to ban shisha. Peterborough, Brantford, and Barrie are three of the few cities that have already banned the public use of shisha, while Alberta, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, and Nova Scotia have already banned hookah use in public.

A hookah is a tobacco water pipe with a bowl and a long hose that is used to smoke a tobacco and molasses mixture. Shisha is the flavoured molasses mixture minus the tobacco.

“They are destroying a culture basically,” said Andrew Lopes, who owns Bloor Street West’s Sheesha Lounge, which has been open since July 2009. “It is unhealthy, no doubt about it…nothing is good about smoking, but drinking is bad for you too, and so is smoking marijuana, which they are going to legalize.”

Lopes, who said he invested $250,000 in building his lounge, has already begun remodelling it into an all-you-can-taste Italian experience.

Transforming the Sheesha Lounge into the Chicago Don — an all-you-can-eat tapas restaurant — will cost an additional $50,000.

“They are taking away our life, I have kids and my mom comes here every day to make the food,” said Lopes. “If [the new restaurant] doesn’t work, we are going to have to sell our cars and our houses.”

He added that the city should have opted to regulate the smoking of shisha rather than instituting a complete ban.

Jim Karygiannis (Ward 39, Scarborough-Agincourt) voted against the ban, and proposed a hookah lounge category that would allow licensees to serve non-tobacco shisha and limit other offerings to coffee, juice, and tea (so, no food or liquor). Owners would be required to pay a special business fee to operate such establishments, which would be open only to those over the age of 19, and feature signs outlining the harmful effects of shisha smoking.

However, the majority of councillors still voted for the shisha ban, refusing to regulate hookah smoking instead.

“Public health has been monitoring this issue for the past few years,” explained Julie Amoroso, a policy specialist for Toronto Public Health. “Over the past few years the evidence has been increasing of the health effects.”

She said that Toronto Public Health has determined that prohibiting hookah use at licensed establishments in Toronto is the most effective way to address related health concerns.

Smoking lighted tobacco (including the use of water pipes) in enclosed public places has been prohibited by the Smoke Free Ontario Act since 2006, according to a Health Risks of Indoor Water Pipe Smoking report from 2014 by the Medical Officer of Health.

Herbal water pipe smoking exposes the smoker to similar or higher levels of some cancer-causing chemicals, including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, heavy metals, as well as harmful levels of carbon monoxide and tar.

Further, the Ontario Tobacco Research Unit has determined that staff and the water pipe users in such lounges are exposed to hazardous levels of air quality.

“I’ve been smoking shisha for 15 years, and if I want to do it I can still do it from home,” said Mark Newell, who owns Harbord Street’s Bampot House of Tea & Board Games.

Thanks to the new ban, his café won’t be offering shisha to its customers anymore.

“It’s an attack on personal freedom, not cultural freedom,” said Newell, adding that society “bubble wraps” everything and people should have the right to make their own choice.

Organizations working with Lifeline Syria, Canadian Druze Society

St. Thomas’s Anglican Church parishioner Tina J. Park (right) and friend Sowon Kim serve three flavours of fruit punch during a parish hall reception following the church’s Voices of Refuge fundraising concert. Photo courtesy Julia Armstrong

By Summer Reid

The Annex is a hive of activity as members of local churches, community organizations, and grassroots groups buzz with activities aimed at raising money to support the upcoming influx of Syrian refugees. Their efforts are culminating just as the federal government has outlined #WelcomeRefugees, its plan for settling 25,000 people from the war-torn country in Canada by the end of February, and private sponsorship is critical to meeting that goal.

“It’s part of our identity as Canadians; it’s part of our identity as Christians as well,” said Father Mark Andrews, the rector of St. Thomas’s Anglican Church (383 Huron St.), of sponsoring refugees. His church hosted Voices of Refuge, a November fundraising event of performances from local choir groups that included a reception featuring soups from Soup for Syria.

St. Thomas’s choir member Julia Meadows thought it was a fantastic idea to do a concert to raise funds to sponsor a family.

“It’s really great to see communities rising up, especially around this time of year,” said Meadows. “It’d be great if more groups, even secular organizations, were doing things like this.”

In fact, Howland Avenue residents Libbie Mills and Chris Wright are doing just that.

They are participating with Ryerson University — which is working with Lifeline Syria — to raise $65,000 to support a family of 12 from rural Syria.

“They’re currently in a refugee camp in Jordan and they’ve already been assessed by the Canadian government as high need,” explained Mills during a Nov. 12 meeting held by the Annex Residents’ Association. “[The family will be] brought here within six to eight weeks as permanent residents.”

Mills and Wright have raised nearly $2,000 from selling cookies on Sunday afternoons at Bloor Street and Howland Avenue, in addition to having received nearly $1,000 from direct donations. They are also planning other fundraising events like a film night and a Jan. 8 event at the Tranzac Club (292 Brunswick Ave.).

Another local group, the Palmerston Community Welcomes Refugees, has already exceeded its fundraising goal of $35,000 and raised $45,231, which is enough money to sponsor a family of six. The neighbourhood group, which has partnered with the Mennonite Central Committee, is also “developing a settlement plan to help welcome this family, orient them to life in their new community, secure housing, employment, navigate the healthcare and education systems, and access any other necessary services”.

“It doesn’t take much for someone to push a button to donate online and we are a community that loves to give,” wrote Palmerston’s Monica Gupta in an email.

Although local residents seem to be overwhelmingly in support of welcoming refugees to Canada, some have expressed concerns that security will be sacrificed in favour of speed.

“I think, obviously, the more the better, because it’s a really dire situation,” said Evelyn (who did not provide her full name) at St. Thomas’s Voices of Refuge. “But I wrote a letter to [the prime minister] saying that national security is also very important, so not to rush to honour his election promise because I don’t think Canadians will hold him to that.”

However, by the time they arrive here, most refugees will have been vetted by Canadian government officials as well as by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR).

And, as Ellen Woolaver of the Christie Refugee Welcome Centre explained, refugees assisted by her organization are often sponsored by three distinct parties: the centre, those sponsoring the refugee(s), and a church or community organization like the Canadian Druze Society.

“The Druze are a small ethnic group within Syria, and [in Canada] they have a community group, a community, and assets,” said Woolaver. “They are willing to sign applications for [Syrian families].”

She added that there are three types of refugee sponsorship: private, government-assisted, and the Blended Visa Referred Program. For the last category, which is new, the government matches groups who want to sponsor refugees with high-need UNHCR-registered refugees, and provides half of the necessary funds.

For further information on the government’s refugee plan, please visit www.cic.gc.ca/english/refugees/welcome. Email Monica Gupta to donate to the Palmerston Community Welcomes Refugees at mongupta@hotmail.com, and Libbie Mills at libbie.mills@ utoronto.ca to donate to Howland Refugee Support.

Gleaner News was a sponsor of Voices of Refuge.

Policy favours car ownership over public transit

By Terri Chu

To say that another Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) fare hike is disappointing is a mild understatement. When the Yonge line opened in 1954 with its first 12 stations, fares cost 15¢ ($1.34 in today’s dollars). The recent fare hike puts the increase at about 2.5 times above and beyond inflationary rates.

At the time the subway opened, the TTC operated under a complicated zone-based system. Suburban commuters paid a higher fare, as longer routes cost more to operate. As urban sprawl started to infect Toronto through the 1960s, suburban dwellers found more and more clout in City of Toronto politics and the “unfair” zone structure was abolished in favour of a flat fare of 30¢ in 1973 ($1.58 in today’s dollars).

This really solidified the entitlement that everyone should subsidize the cost of urban sprawl.

Transit systems depend on a large number of passengers going a relatively short distance in order to make effective revenues.

Relatively few passengers going a long way into the suburbs are a money-losing proposition.

When the new fare structure came into place, it was an acknowledgement that suburbs approved of, and wanted, government-subsidized transit to the suburbs. The TTC was no longer able to operate expensive lines to low density areas at a loss without a government subsidy.

During the recession of the 1990s, ballooning deficits made transit subsidies unpopular and, by 1996, the provincial government slashed subsidies to the TTC causing decreased service at increased prices, which dropped ridership and increased congestion on city roads.

The government of the day went as far as filling in a hole that was already being dug. While public transit has been scaled back in Canada’s largest city, in the same period we have seen roads widening.

In the 1950s, the 401 was a mere four-lane throughway compared to the 12 lanes now across most of the Greater Toronto Area.

The cost of vehicle ownership has kept pace with inflation whereas the cost of transit use has far exceeded it. In both 1954 and today, the average cost of a new car was about half of the annual household income. The cost of driving has been relatively flat in terms of earning power.

When the Metropass was introduced in 1981, it cost $29.75, about $74 in today’s dollars. Today, it costs double that after adjusting for inflation.

While Rob Ford made great headlines fighting the “war on the car”, the fact is that decades of public policy have favoured vehicle ownership and operation over public transit.

Is it any wonder that Toronto’s roads are congested and nobody feels like they get good value out of their public transit? Rome wasn’t built in a day and Toronto’s once world-class transit system didn’t turn into a laughing stock overnight either.

This is a result of decades of public policy designed to favour the car manufacturing sector and feed into a misplaced notion of “the American dream”. The result? North America’s most congested city costing the GTA an estimated $6 billion annually.

The debate at city council is infuriating to the outside observer not because of what is being discussed, but because of what isn’t. The needs of the system are largely outside of council’s control but there are steps it can take while the other two levels of government slowly decide how much money from Toronto’s own tax base it wants to give back to us.

• Raise parking prices: Toronto can’t realistically impose road tolls on its own but why is parking so cheap? Unless the marginal cost of driving is higher than transit, there is no ecnomic incentive to get out of the car.

• Bring back the car tax: this is self-explanatory. It brought much needed revenues to the city’s coffers by decreasing the subsidies to drivers for the upkeep of municipal roads.

• Bring back distance-based fares: three friends bar-hopping downtown should not SAVE money by hopping into a cab rather than the subway. If we want people to use transit, the fare system has to make sense compared to other alternatives.

• Outsource management: this isn’t about outsourcing jobs but rather outsourcing high level decision making to world renowned experts. Stockholm has done this successfully without reducing any frontline jobs. Ultimate decision making still rests with city council to ensure that the interests of Torontonians are looked after, but this can open the door for much more advanced transit technology. The comfortable modus operandi the TTC finds itself in is not working, and it’s time to leapfrog from baby steps.

While we are finally launching the state of art circa 1990s technology of Presto, places like Hong Kong have been so successful with their electronic payment systems that one can now use them to purchase one’s morning coffee. In such places the transit system is the backbone of society rather than an afterthought.

Rather than debating the cost of transit, the discussion needs to shift to what kind of society we want to build. One where transit is treated as a service to meet the needs of the poor, or one where transit is the backbone of a vibrant city?

As the provincial and federal governments decide how to direct the newly promised infrastructure funds, it will be important to look at the bigger picture.

Toronto needs help. While the city can take small steps in the right direction, it has limited reach. Toronto is so intertwined with neighbouring cities that city council alone can’t fix the problem. Leadership from Queen’s Park is needed. We are waiting.

Terri Chu is an engineer committed to practical environmentalism. This column is dedicated to helping the community reduce energy use, and help distinguish environmental truths from myths. Send questions, comments, and ideas for future columns to Terri at terri.chu@whyshouldicare.ca.

A local literary line-up for the holidays

By Annemarie Brissenden

Annex publisher Coach House Books, which celebrated its 50th anniversary this year and operates out of bpNichol Lane, boasts a bevy of award-winning reads: Fifteen Dogs gain human consciousness and language in André Alexis’s Giller Prize- and Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize-winning novel; editors John Lorinc, Michael McClelland, Ellen Scheinberg, and Tatum Taylor curate a jumble of stories from The Ward (reviewed October 2015); and Carl Dair writes about his travels in Europe in the mid 1950s in Epistles to the Torontonians, a first and limited edition that reproduces Dair’s letters in manuscript form.

Also from Coach House, RM Vaughan explores how sleep competes with our desire to stay connected in Bright Eyed: Insomnia and its Cultures, while an academic goes from too much to not enough Sleep (Doubleday Canada) in Nino Ricci’s latest, and recently sworn-­in University-Rosedale member of Parliament and international trade minister Chrystia Freeland chronicles the rise of the new global super-rich and the fall of everyone else in Plutocrats (Anchor Canada).

Former mayor John Sewell explains How We Changed Toronto (James Lorimer & Company Ltd.), writing of civic life from 1969 to 1980 and those, like Jane Jacobs, who led the fight against the Spadina expressway. Editors Nancy Williams and Marie Scott-Baron also explore the fight to Stop Spadina! and recount other Huron-Sussex stories in Recollections of a Neighbourhood (Words Indeed Publishing), which was recognized by the Independent Publisher Book Awards.

Get out your crayons for United Colours of Kensington Market (City Blocks Culture Collective and Keep Six Exhibits) and celebrate this unique neighbourhood with illustrator Shengyu Cai and writer Bruce Beaton.

Retired restaurateur (of Mama Rosa fame) Rose Grieco remembers The District: Growing up in Little Italy (The Gypsy Press) and the friends and family of her childhood in her beloved neighbourhood, while Barbara Abdeni Massaad makes Soup for Syria (Interlink Publishers), which inspired a November fundraising reception at St. Thomas’s Anglican Church for Syrian refugees.

One of Westbank Project Corp.’s Honest Ed’s Alley consultants, Jeb Brugmann, explains how cities are changing the world in Welcome to the Urban Revolution (Bloomsbury Publishing USA), while the company’s Mirvish Village architect Gregory Henriquez co-authors Citizen City (Blueimprint) with Marya Cotton Gould about the potential of public, private, and not-profit partnerships. Explore the Woodward’s redevelopment, which also resulted from a Westbank/Henriquez partnership in Body Heat (Blueimprint) by contributor Henriquez Partners and editor Robert Enright.

Don’t miss the final memoir in Catherine Gildiner’s trilogy, Coming Ashore (ECW Press) (reviewed January 2015), or Jane Fairburn’s exploration of Toronto’s waterfront heritage along the Scarborough shore, the Beach, Toronto Island, and the lakeshore in Along the Shore (ECW Press). And Ismé Bennie comes of age in apartheid South Africa in White Schooldays (self-published) (reviewed May 2015).

Finally, Margaret Atwood imagines a dystopian future in The Heart Goes Last (McClelland & Stewart). You didn’t think we’d skip the Annex’s most famous author, did you?

Campaign marked by strong candidates

By Annemarie Brissenden

Take a moment and indulge in a thought experiment.

Imagine a room filled with people engaged in the business of politics. It could be in Parliament during question period, a human rights hearing at the United Nations, or a G8 meeting. Do you have the image? Now, take away the men.

How many people are left?

Launched last month, #MoreWomen is a social media campaign that does the work for you. Designed to demonstrate the scarcity of women in political leadership roles, it takes iconic pictures of political gatherings and removes the men. The resulting images are unsettling: women barely able stretch their arms from one to another in a cavernous House of Commons, a seated woman surrounded by emptiness, and still another woman standing alone in a board room.

It illustrates a stark reality: there aren’t enough women in politics. And in University-Rosedale, where two very accomplished women were the front-runners in a highly competitive race, that reality had many voters wishing they could cast their ballots for more than one candidate.

In the end, the Liberal Party of Canada’s Chrystia Freeland took the seat over Jennifer Hollett, who ran for the New Democratic Party (NDP). Freeland was previously the member of Parliament for the old riding of Toronto-Centre.

“Chrystia Freeland brings knowledge and experience that will put Canada on the map internationally in terms of being compassionate and engaged,” said Jo-Ann Davis, Toronto Catholic District School Board trustee (Ward 9, St. Paul’s/Toronto-Centre/Trinity-Spadina). “I really like [Jennifer Hollett] as well. She’s a wonderful candidate. It’s unfortunate that they couldn’t win in different ridings.”

Sarah Armstrong, a Freeland supporter, echoed the sentiment.

She described Hollett as an “amazing candidate”, and said she wished the women had run in different ridings so “I could vote for both of them. I hope it says something about women in politics generally.”

“A lot of people are ready for a woman in office,” said Aliya Bhatia. The NDP volunteer — who conceded that if Hollett couldn’t take the riding, “I’m glad [University-Rosedale] got Chrystia Freeland” — was shocked by the enormity of the Liberal win.

“By the end, I knew the Liberals had momentum,” said Hollett, admitting she was also surprised by the results, “but I don’t think I expected a majority. I am disappointed for my loss, [and] devastated that we have lost so many great MPs.”

Although Freeland wasn’t expecting such a victory, she said she was “cautiously optimistic from the very beginning”.

“Some people forgot that three new downtown ridings had been carved out of two ridings held by Liberal MPs elected in recent by-elections,” she explained, lauding the riding’s field of candidates, which included Karim Jivraj for the Conservative Party and the Green Party’s Nick Wright.

“I really respect them; it was an honour to run in the same contest,” said Freeland, noting that University-Rosedale chose from a “strong, smart, [and] committed group of candidates”.

Hollett agreed, describing the race as exciting and highly competitive.

Ten-year old twins Felixe and Julian Pellizzari celebrated Chrystia Freeland’s win at the Liberal candidate’s election night party at the Gardiner Museum on Oct. 23. Annemarie Brissenden, Gleaner News

“It was an honour to run against Chrystia,” she said. “One of the reasons we got into politics is to see more women in office. I see a future where this is the norm, where impressive women are running against each other.”

With this election, Canadians have sent 88 women out of a possible 338 to the House of Commons. At 26 per cent, that’s up slightly from 24.6 per cent in the last general election, and behind at least 50 other nation-states when it comes to the number of women represented in national assemblies. Among them are the United Kingdom, with 29.4 per cent, Mexico (42.4 per cent), and Sweden (43.6 per cent).

“We do need more women running,” said Davis.

As Freeland puts it, “half of our population are women, [so] half of our politicians should be women.”

Despite her disappointment at the outcome for her party, Hollett is excited about the newly-elected prime minister’s promise for gender parity in the cabinet.

“We have to invite women to the table,” said Hollett. “We have to make space for women and make sure there is room for women in other roles.”

Freeland is rumoured to be up for consideration for a cabinet position, and if chosen, she’d bring a lot of experience to the role.

“Chrystia Freeland is an international figure, a national figure, as well as a local figure,” said Bill Graham, who represented Toronto-Centre from 1993 to 2007, during which time he served as the foreign affairs minister and minister of defence. “She has a big brain and a big capacity to be important in our country.”

Scott Dullen, a Justin Trudeau staffer who came to Toronto to work on Freeland’s campaign, added that “she’s one of the better MPs on the Hill: she cares about her constituents, has accolades after her name. She’s incredible.”

For now, Freeland — who said one of her immediate priorities is rail safety — is concentrating on getting to know her new riding, and connecting with University-Rosdale’s other elected representatives.

She hopes the Liberals’ congenial “sunny ways” approach, with its focus on “what we can build together, rather than tear down”, will get more people engaged, including women and young people.

Freeland also has a special message for all women and girls who are contemplating entering politics.

“Do it!”

Subsequent to this writing, Chrystia Freeland was sworn in as the Minister of Internatinoal Trade.

Project Hope hits home for Bathurst Street parish

St. Peter’s Church (shown above) parishioners have to date raised $10,000 towards sponsoring a refugee family to come to Canada. Summer Reid, Gleaner News

By Summer Reid

Local Roman Catholics are answering Pope Francis’s September call to European parishes in which he asked them to open their doors to Syrian refugees fleeing war-torn homes. Shortly after the Pope’s call, the Archbishop of Toronto, Cardinal Thomas Collins, launched Project Hope, a refugee resettlement campaign that aims to raise $3 million in 100 days to bring 100 families to Canada and to settle them within the region of the Archdiocese of Toronto.

“All we want to do is help people get out of Syria,” said Reverend Michael McGourty, the pastor of St. Peter’s Church on Bathurst Street, north of Bloor Street West. “It does not matter what religion they are, we just want to keep them safe.”

“We figure it costs about $30,000 to sponsor a family for one year,” he added, explaining that the 220 parishes across the archdiocese are working together to address the crisis. “If a church such as St. Peter’s, which is in a great neighbourhood and in a perfect position to get refugees set up with health benefits and language classes, does not have the financial resources to sponsor a family, they can partner with another parish that may not have these benefits and pool their funds with one another.”

McGourty said his parish is working with the Office of Refugees for the Archdiocese of Toronto (ORAT), which, according to an ORAT press release, is prioritizing “families coming from war-torn countries. These include Syria and Iraq where we have set up hundreds of families to date.”

“We can’t send people into Syria because it’s too dangerous,” said McGourty. “[But ORAT] has sent a team of people to Jordan, to one of the refugee camps, where there are families that are already out of Syria, but unfortunately they are trapped in refugee camps and they have nowhere to go. So the teams have gone over to try and identify families that we can help and bring them over as quickly as we can. We’re hoping that the process will be sped up by the fact that we’ve made contact with them directly.”

The term “refugee” has been muddled for a very long time; a lot of people assume that an immigrant and a refugee are the same thing. However, the 1951 Refugee Convention defines a refugee as someone who, “owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to, avail himself of the protection of that country.”

So far, St. Peter’s alone has raised around $10,000 to sponsor just such a family.

Local parishioner Sheila Conlin is part of the 12-member committee that is working with the local parish to help sponsor a family. She explained that the committee is just getting started, but they are looking forward to helping those in need.

“I think we’ve been given so much here in Canada, our parishioners want to be able to reach out and to help people who are in need,” said McGourty. “[The call] came around Thanksgiving, and this was a way that we could show our own thanks for all that we’ve been given.”

St. Thomas’s Anglican Church on Huron Street, which sponsored a family during the Vietnamese refugee crisis in the 1970s, is also raising funds to help sponsor a refugee family. On Nov. 20, it will host Voices of Refuge, a concert featuring six choirs that will be followed by a reception featuring soups from Soups for Syria, a fundraising cookbook raising money for the United Nations High Commission on Refugees that collects soup recipes from international chefs and food writers.

Voices of Refuge will be held on Nov. 20 at St. Thomas’s Church at 383 Huron St. at 7:30 pm; admission is free with donation. For further information on Project Hope, or to make a donation, please visit www.archtoronto.org.

A 40-year-old archaeology professor at the University of Toronto has been awarded a MacArthur “genius grant”. Dimitri Nakassis, who studies Late Bronze Age (Mycenaean) Greek society, will receive $625,000 over five years to spend however he chooses, but is still not sure how he will use the grant.

“My interpretation of the award is that the foundation thinks that the work I’ve done so far is productive, interesting, and innovative, and the money gives me the opportunity to continue to do that kind of work,” said Nakassis in an email. “But I only have one shot at getting this right, so I need to proceed carefully and thoughtfully.”

Nakassis added that there is still so much to be found and studied in Greece.

“Greece is a country that’s been the focus of a lot of archaeological exploration, for sure, but amazing new discoveries are being made all the time — a new Mycenaean palace was recently found near Sparta, for instance — and scholars studying ancient Greece are increasing our understanding of it constantly,” he said. “It’s a really exciting field, and I hope that my award can bring some much-needed attention to it.”

Although the professor spent most of his childhood vacationing in Greece and was fascinated by it at a young age, it wasn’t until he got to university that he became convinced that he wanted to study Greek archaeology.

An initiative of the American independent John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the MacArthur Fellows Program awards no-strings-attached grants that “celebrate and empower the creative potential of individuals”. Grant winners, called “fellows”, come from a broad range of professions.

—Summer Reid/Gleaner News

The community had its first formal opportunity to review Westbank Corp.’s plans for Mirvish Village at a public consultation at the Bickford Centre Cafeteria hosted by the City of Toronto on Oct. 7. The area includes Markham Street, Honest Ed’s, and the adjacent properties on Bathurst Street. Many of those in attendance expressed concerns about adding density to the neighbourhood, and the project’s lack of green space.

“I don’t see any green space around and I see the entire site covered by buildings,” said a Euclid Street resident. “We’ve got a few things here: we’re talking transportation, we’re talking massive density, and we’re talking lack of green space.”

Paul Unterman, who has been on Markham Street for over 30 years, believes the project is “way, way too dense for the neighbourhood”.

“I hope that some of the heritage properties, if not all of them, are kept,” he added. “And I’m very concerned about the parkland. We have so little in our area as it is, and to add a thousand units with God knows how many people is concerning for us.”

“The issue is not the fact that they are modernizing,” agreed Brunswick Avenue’s Kevin Lim. “The issue is this: you’re bringing congestion into an area that’s already congested.”

Other residents are trying to remain open to the proposal, even as they express their reservations.

“I don’t like how big it is. The size seems kind of out of place,” said Toni Papa of Spadina Road. “But I like the concept, and I like how it looks in the renderings. But renderings is one thing, what it actually is in reality is another.”

City Planning received Westbank’s proposal on July 10, and presented its preliminary report on the application at the Oct. 6 meeting of the Toronto and East York community council. It has developed a detailed website that includes the application and its accompanying materials: www.toronto.ca/planning/mirvishvillage.

—Annemarie Brissenden with files from Summer Reid/Gleaner News

An argument between two men in the College Street and Spadina Avenue area escalated to a stabbing Oct. 27 at 12:16 pm. The men were seen arguing, with one attempting to walk into a store when the other stabbed him in the back and fled the scene. The suspect is described as white, approximately six feet, with a medium build and a black beard. He was wearing a dark toque and winter coat, as well as a grey hooded top.

In an unrelated incident on Sept. 18 at 12:45 am, two unknown men approached a victim and attempted to rip a gold chain off his neck in the Brunswick House bar on Bloor Street West. The 20-year-old victim was stabbed when he tried to retrieve the chain. The Toronto Police Service has released security footage of the suspects from outside the bar: one man is black, tall, and slim, and was wearing glasses, a grey zip-up sweater, and a plain white T-shirt. The second man is black, tall, and slim, has a goatee, and was wearing a grey and white baseball-style graphic T-shirt and cargo shorts.

Anyone with information about these or any other crimes is urged to contact the police at 416-808-1400, or anonymously via Crime Stoppers at 416-222-8477.

—Summer Reid/Gleaner News