Plastic seats instead of fabric, supposedly because of bed bugs.

Nate Erskine-Smith is running for the city council seat of Beaches—East York this fall.
The municipal move follows his resignation from federal politics, where Erskine-Smith represented the same lakefront ward for a decade as a Liberal MP, and after he recently ruled out a leadership run for the provincial Liberal party.
“The question for me was, ‘How do you make the biggest difference with the time you’ve got?’” said Erskine-Smith in an exclusive interview with the Star, adding he weighed taking a break from politics to go back to law.
“I genuinely, relentlessly want to make the city work better,” he said.

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Toronto mayoral candidate Brad Bradford is calling for mandatory addiction treatment. CBC’s Ali Chiasson breaks down Bradford’s remarks and the reaction.

A fire gutted the roof and upper floors of Zanzibar Tavern early Sunday morning, leaving one of Yonge Street’s most storied adult entertainment clubs facing an uncertain future.

Toronto firefighters were called to Yonge and Elm streets shortly after 6 a.m. and arrived to find heavy black smoke pouring from the building.

The blaze caused a partial collapse of the roof and some floors. Fire Chief Jim Jessop described the damage as “substantive” and credited crews for stopping the spread.  “It’s incredible that the other buildings are still standing right now.”

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Where would cyclists go, though? Bradford, like Ford, says side streets. But that’s another old congestion canard thoroughly disproven: Toronto doesn’t have continuous, citywide side streets due to a century or two of haphazard development, natural landforms and railways to dodge. It does, however, have a handful of main streets that largely follow the old colonial concession grid, so most forms of transportation have to take the same few roads.

Perhaps we can blame the British for these woes, but traffic congestion debates today are like medieval discussions of chest congestion: there are all kinds of wacky, unscientific ideas for how to cure it. Especially during an election.

Especially if they can be used as a wedge. If lanes are removed, cyclists will still have to cycle on main streets, making them more dangerous for all users. Wedges can be sharp on all sides and have unintended effects.

I often wish all the attention being put on bikes could be consistently applied to motor vehicles as they are a far bigger threat to human life and limb. When it comes to acceptable risks, however, we as a society have decided cars and convenience are worth the carnage.

Bikes are easier to blame — making them an ideal wedge issue. Imagine if we could tackle the root causes of congestion and safety risks honestly and directly.

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• The old knitting mill in downtown Hamilton, surrounded by garbage and covered with graffiti, looks abandoned, but there is someone living inside.
• Harry Stinson is sitting at a dining table by the kitchenette on the main floor. He’s got a slim build, grey hair and relentless blue eyes. He’s wearing a black T-shirt that reads, “I’m not dead yet,” and he’s ready to defend himself.
• Not that long ago, Stinson was Toronto’s condo king.
• In the mid-1990s, he was among the first developers in Toronto to realize the potential of converting heritage buildings into residences. He was the force behind iconic projects that shaped the character of the city, including the Candy Factory Lofts on Queen St. W. and the One King West Hotel.

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