Perhaps you think that I’m engaging in cynical hyperbole but I assure you that I’m not: City Hall is going to demolish the most iconic section of Yonge Street in downtown Toronto. Sure, they plan to rebuild it again afterwards but it’ll look and feel much different — the old Yonge Street of today will be gone.

The push for this started back in the summer of 2011. At the time it was considered a long shot since the concept was mainly just a pedestrian-friendly facelift put forward by gay, lefty-pinko junior Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam and Pride-avoiding, right wing, penny-pinching, newly-elected businessman Rob Ford (remember him?) who, it may surprise you to learn, wasn’t really a big fan of walking or running, wasn’t onboard. So the idea simmered on the back burner for about a decade.

At some point it was determined that a length of Yonge would need century-old water mains replaced and, since this requires wrecking and rebuilding the street anyhow, the proposal resurfaced, congealing early in 2021 into something called yongeTOmorrow. I don’t know to what extent the Wong-Tam’s plan has morphed over the years but right now City Hall is eyeing the portion between Queen Street and College/Carlton for the first phase of a Yonge makeover.

As of 2024, the most current design by engineering firm Parsons splits up the initial stretch into three themed sections.

Each of these sections are clustered around what the project calls Anchors, defined as “existing landmarks that contribute towards the identity of Yonge Street.”

While the “Green Gateway” is indeed quite green and the “Performance/Retail” portion is also aptly named, I’m hesitant to use the word “Innovation” for its designated section simply because of that area’s proximity to Ryerson/Metro University. Some of their innovations are dubious if you ask me.

Nevertheless, the practical result of the current plan would be the reduction of the street to one lane in each direction, to be shared by both motor vehicles and bikes. The design includes “Designated Short-Term Areas”, presumably short bits where the road flares out to two lanes for drop-offs/pick-ups. Along with this there’s a speed limit reduction to 30 km/h.

The resulting space will be used to widen sidewalks and include strips with greenery and street furniture, sort of like permanent curb lane cafés à la CaféTO. How much of these strips will be for public use and how much will be designated for adjoining businesses (i.e. private, à la CaféTO), remains to be seen.

Tenders for the construction are expected to begin in 2030 and construction itself is expected to take about 5 years — with the proviso that this is dependent on the progress of Doug Ford’s unspoken tribute to his late brother Rob, the Ontario Line.

If the timelines of something like Union Station Revitalization or the new St. Lawrence North Market are anything to go by, it’ll be a miracle if any projected costs haven’t at least doubled by the time shovels are in the ground, or whatever futuristic digging implements will be in use at the time, which will likely be 2040 at the earliest.

That gives us at least 14 years to experience and capture the downtown Yonge Street of future yesteryear.

The design is still undergoing public review and there’s a scheduled public drop-in event next Tuesday at the central YMCA that, “will provide an opportunity to view the project information panels and speak with members of the project team one-on-one.” In other words, if you want to meet some of the people who will eventually be responsible for astronomical cost overruns, extensive delays, and assorted disruptions to the surrounding community, this might be the event for you.

Maybe I’m just trafficking in hyperbolic cynicism. Maybe they’ll have coffee and doughnuts. Whatever the case, a “pt.2” is inevitable.

Unfortunately, further productions by Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol are no longer welcome around here.

Shame because I enjoyed Nirvana The Band/Nirvanna The Band The Show. I mean, it got a bit long in the tooth near the end but the premise was fun: two lifelong buddies try creative ways to get booked to perform at the Rivoli. The execution/production of the show was great, they had good chemistry, and the ubiquitous backdrop of Toronto circa 2007/2017 was gratifying.

Besides, they clearly worked hard on it.

However, having sat through Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie I can now confidently say that the shark has been thoroughly jumped. Aside from the quirky humour, one of the appeals of the original series was the captured reality of urban Toronto. In other words, the earlier episodes didn’t feel like they needed a whole studio production crew.

Unfortunately this feeling has been lost. The budget’s grown, the jokes feel tired and hackneyed, and then there’s the time-traveling RV with a contrived plot involving spilled Orbitz. Even the movie poster’s kinda lame.

If you’re looking to see a recorded slice of Toronto and get in a few chuckles then I can recommend (most of) Matt and Jay’s old series. The movie … not so much.

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Inspecting the safety equipment at the Western Gap, across from Billy Bishop.

It’s new been a little over a week that a number of bullets hit the US embassy here in Toronto. Although the exact number of reported shots fired ranges anywhere from two to “multiple”, it’s reported that “roughly 10 shell casings” were found outside the building (so probably closer to “multiple”). Apparently the weapon used was a handgun.

According to a Toronto Police Service news release, two people drove up to the front doors of the embassy on University Avenue at 4:29 in the morning of the 10th in a white Honda CR-V, one or both of them got out, blasted the building (cops state that both individuals were involved in the “discharge of the gun”), jumped back in, and drove off toward Queen West.

A couple of days later, @TPSOperations posted that the vehicle used had been stolen but recovered somewhere in Toronto “within hours” of the shooting.

This isn’t exactly the norm for Toronto but within this odd event are nestled some even odder details.

First, it’s reported that embassy staff didn’t contact the police until an hour after the shooting. Although there’s no explanation of why they waited so long, the media consensus (as primed by the cops), seems to be that because the embassy is heavily fortified, the people working in the building probably didn’t even notice anything amiss.

What’s odd about this claim is that the building is indeed heavily fortified and surveilled (the image near the top is from one of numerous embassy cameras). Based on the embassy’s amount of obvious and public-facing surveillance equipment, not to mention being chock-full of spies, I find it difficult to believe that not a single person, security or otherwise, noticed anything amiss for an hour.

Second, according to a CTV report the incident was reported to an officer that “was flagged down in the area”. Yeah, someone (presumably) from the embassy literally went outside to look for a cop on the street to report the shooting instead of picking up a phone or walking to the nearest police station (52 Division), which would’ve taken about 5 minutes.

Third, in the same report it was stated that, “witness evidence shows that a white Honda CRV was spotted heading west on Dundas Street before turning onto University Avenue and stopping in front of the U.S. Consulate”. That’s a distance of about 190 meters (623 feet). You can see how far this is by taking a trip down University from Dundas in Google Street View:

With good eyesight it wouldn’t be impossible to spot the vehicle from Dundas but it would require standing in the middle of the southbound lanes, perhaps in the crosswalk, as the lines of sight on both sides of University are obstructed. The other possibility is that the SUV was followed by the “witness” in a vehicle but this begs the question of why anyone would’ve remembered a car pulling over for a few minutes — and nothing else.

For context, the shooting happened at around 4:30 a.m. and it was reported on by the media at around 6:30 a.m. at the earliest. Global News had already included this “witness” information in an article just before 8 a.m. yet a press conference held by the police, in which they asked for witnesses to come forward, didn’t happen until 10:30 a.m.

Going by this timeline, the “witness” saw the white SUV drive west on Dundas, turn south on University, then stop in front of the embassy. For some reason the “witness” remembered this commonplace detail but ostensibly didn’t see or hear any shots fired since the cops didn’t receive any report until an hour after it happened, and then only because embassy staffed ventured out into the street to flag down a passing cop.

Standing in front of the embassy, it would’ve been equally difficult to spot the vehicle turning south from Dundas. And was this “witness” just hanging out for the hour before police showed up? The whole thing strains credulity.

Unfortunately, this event has been designated a “national security” issue which means that we may never know the full story. Still, with all of these intriguing little details I’m eager for a follow-up. Rest assured that if/when there are any updates they’ll be promptly posted here.

A Cooper’s hawk perched outside the living room window and finishing off his meal (another bird). Personally, I prefer to start my day off with a coffee.

We seem to be approaching the 6-month mark since the previous installment so, ladies and gentlemen, without further adieu I bring you a bespoke version of the most elegant:

Toronto Sunday World, 21st of May, 1922

Despite its obvious advances in everything from fashion to medicine, one may perhaps be tempted to dismiss the Toronto of over a hundred years ago as an inconsequential anachronism in the context of the modern metropolis. For example, one may point to the seemingly ubiquitous springtime intestinal troubles experienced by locals, as evidenced by the apparent popularity of certain products that appeared in advertisements of the period.

Pish posh, I say! Can one honestly claim that we don’t have to deal with different types of shit in Toronto every season?

Besides, perhaps their physical ailments were related to the introduction of inferior arsenic and strychnine into various products, or perhaps the complete absence of such healthifying ingredients in fake products (shame on the flim-flammers!), but I’m certainly no doctor so we can just go ahead and file that under “speculation”. Moreover, such an analysis fails to take into consideration the countering health benefits provided by certain yeasty tablets which, along with vitamins A, B, C, and calcium, contained only the finest and most refined naturally occurring strychnine.

There are, it must be said, many traditional concepts that we should like to dispense with but that have held through to the modern era due to their enduring aptness. Is it for me to say that they’re wrong?

Why, even non-scientific, which is to say artistic, endeavours from bygone years have stood the test of time. Should I claim that my tastes in decorative motifs are the sole and correct ones?

It’s precisely for these reasons that one should occasionally glance to the past and say, “Gee whiz, that sure was something.”

tl;dr — the story’s far from over.

Long version — yup, it’s done.

Let me explain.

Technically, /sectionb was done well over a month ago but I wanted to give it one more thorough read/edit before officially calling it a day. I suspect that an error or incongruence or two snuck in regardless but, at this point, I’ll just have to live with it or them.

That being said, I welcome you to read the first /sectionb novel online but as someone who spends time ingesting content on an ageing offline tablet, I though it might be useful to produce a few offline versions as well. You can download them, in full and for free, here:

https://www.torontocitylife.com/sectionb/download

With my bona fides in place, I wish to assure you that the dedicated /sectionb website will continue to be a place to catch up on updates and to get extra content. I make no promises but as work on the second part continues, you may find some other there stuff too.

… in which the mercenaries are subdued, Section B et al. set out for a fateful rendezvous, and the first part of the story is concluded.

Little Norway Park isn’t specifically what I had in mind when I was writing “Brush Pass” but it has a similar feel: damp, deserted, and seemingly benign — until it isn’t.

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In loving memory of my dad.