ArchiveJuly 2013

By: Matt Elliott Metro, Metro Published on Wed Jul 31 2013 Tomorrow, Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday will square off against Coun. Peter Milczyn. Both members of Mayor Rob Ford's executive committee, they're the two leading contenders in a race to fill a vacant provincial seat in the riding of Etobicoke-Lakeshore. They're basically the same guy. Politically, I mean. Politics aside, there...

By: Matt Elliott Metro, Metro Canada Published on Fri Jul 26 2013 In 2007, a couple of Toronto politicians announced a plan for seven light rail lines that that would criss-cross Toronto, bringing rapid transit service to virtually all the city's “priority neighbourhoods.” Called Transit City, it was a pretty good plan. Council endorsed it in full or in part at least seven...

By: Matt Elliott Metro, Metro Canada Published on Wed Jul 24 2013 So now we play the waiting game. But, unfortunately, as scholars tell us, the waiting game sucks. After Toronto city council's vote last week to move forward with a plan for a subway extension to Scarborough, there's been no real word on what might happen next. Maybe we'll learn more after the provincial byelections...

By: Matt Elliott Metro, Metro Canada Published on Tue Jul 16 2013 It shouldn't have been any kind of milestone. The mayor of Canada's largest city should have always known that you can't build transit infrastructure without money, and that money comes from taxes. But this is Toronto. And our mayor is Rob Ford. So when Ford stood up at his Scarborough subway press conference on...

By: Metro Toronto Published on Mon Jul 15 2013 The weekend before the storm hit, I spent an afternoon at Corktown Common, the city’s newest and maybe best park tucked snugly next to the Don River on the east side of downtown. Waterfront Toronto — the tripartite government agency tasked with making the city’s waterfront actually good — just opened the park a few weeks ago. And so I lay on a grassy...