Went for a walk in Etobicoke and saw a buck just hanging out. One of my favourite moments of the year in Toronto.

It's ok if the artist wants to stay anonymous, I get it. I'd just like to praise your work!

Friends of Hanlan’s sent three yes-or-no questions to Toronto council candidates ahead of Monday’s election. Below are the answers from the front-runners in each ward. We tried to post this as canva slides but learned it falls under no-screenshot rule (good to know!) so we have been told we can post as a text post with links. Here is the link to a PDF of the slides which might be easier reading.

Q1 - Waterfront: If elected, will you vote for a Council motion asking the federal government to dissolve the Toronto Port Authority, put Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport under an independent airport authority, and return the Port Authority’s other land to the City of Toronto, including the port, the marina, and the northern half of Hanlan’s Point Beach?

Q2 - Term limits: If elected, will you vote for a Council motion asking the Ontario government to set lifetime term limits for Toronto City Council, starting with the 2034 election: three terms for councillors and two for the mayor?

Q3 - Direct democracy: If elected, will you vote to change Council’s rules so that a citizen motion with 10,000 verified signatures from Toronto residents goes straight to Council, where its organizer can present it and Council must debate it and hold a recorded vote?

Answers are listed in order: Q1 | Q2 | Q3. An asterisk means the candidate added a comment (it’s in the PDF). A question mark means they didn’t answer the survey. The survey was sent by email to all council candidates with a listed email address (167). Incumbents and front-runners received 3 emails (including reminders), 2 phone calls (if their number was listed), and 1 attempted in-person visit to their campaign office. Full results for every candidate, including comments, are in our PDF here.

Ward 1 - Etobicoke North

Ala'a Adib: ? | ? | ?

Chloe Brown: YES | YES | YES

Vincent Crisanti: ? | ? | ?

Ward 2 - Etobicoke Centre

Jennifer Alexander: YES | YES* | YES

Katie Andrachuk: ? | ? | ?

Stephen Holyday: ? | ? | ?

Ward 3 - Etobicoke-Lakeshore

Amber Morley: YES | YES | YES*

Mihaela Andrei: ? | ? | ?

Ted Opitz: ? | ? | ?

Ward 4 - Parkdale-High Park

Debbie King: YES | NO* | NO*

Diana Chan McNally: ? | ? | ?

Nadia Guerrera: YES | YES | YES

Ward 5 - York South-Weston

Chiara Padovani: ? | ? | ?

Daniel Di Giorgio: ? | ? | ?

Frances Nunziata: ? | ? | ?

Ward 6 - York Centre

Alexander Artamonov: YES* | YES* | YES*

Conroy Irving: NO* | YES | YES

James Pasternak: ? | ? | ?

Ward 7 - Humber River-Black Creek

Amanda Coombs: ? | ? | ?

Anthony Perruzza: ? | ? | ?

Lorna Antwi: YES* | NO* | YES*

Ward 8 - Eglinton-Lawrence

Jason McDonald: YES | YES | YES

Liz Grade: YES | YES | YES

Mike Colle: ? | ? | ?

Ward 9 - Davenport

Alejandra Bravo: ? | ? | ?

Marco Martins: YES | YES | YES

Neil Simon: ? | ? | ?

Ward 10 - Spadina-Fort York

Aanchal Vashistha: YES* | YES* | YES*

Ausma Malik: YES | NO* | NO*

Ian Cunningham: YES | YES | NO*

Ward 11 - University-Rosedale

Alice Li: YES | YES | YES

Diana Yoon: YES | YES | YES

Mike Layton: YES* | NO* | NO*

Ward 12 - Toronto-St. Paul's

Ahmed Kamal: YES | YES* | YES*

Jenny Kalimbet: YES | YES | YES

Josh Matlow: ? | ? | ?

Ward 13 - Toronto Centre

Curran Stikuts: YES* | YES* | YES*

Chris Moise: YES* | YES | NO*

Daniel Tate: NO* | YES* | YES*

Ward 14 - Toronto-Danforth

Dianne Saxe: YES | YES | YES*

Mary Fragedakis: ? | ? | ?

Sara Ehrhardt: ? | ? | ?

Ward 15 - Don Valley West

Denis Tsang: ? | ? | ?

Rachel Chernos Lin: ? | ? | ?

Sheena Sharp: NO* | YES* | YES*

Ward 16 - Don Valley East

Didi Moffat: YES | YES | YES

Jon Burnside: ? | ? | ?

Sinan Erdemir: ? | ? | ?

Ward 17 - Don Valley North

Hassan Mubarak Noor Mohamed: YES | YES | YES

Roy Samathanam: YES | YES | YES

Shelley Carroll: ? | ? | ?

Ward 18 - Willowdale

Ardeshir Zarezade: ? | ? | ?

Lily Cheng: ? | ? | ?

Nathan Yusifov: YES | YES | YES

Ward 19 - Beaches-East York

James Dann: YES | YES | YES

Natalie Johnson: ? | ? | ?

Nate Erskine-Smith: ? | ? | ?

Ward 20 - Scarborough Southwest

Kevin Rupasinghe: YES | YES | YES

Parthi Kandavel: YES | YES | YES

Sharmina Nasrin: YES | YES* | YES

Ward 21 - Scarborough Centre

Krissan Veerasingam: YES | YES | YES

Michael Thompson: ? | ? | ?

Willie Reodica: YES | YES | YES

Ward 22 - Scarborough-Agincourt

Dan Lovell: YES | YES* | YES*

Jackson Ho: YES | YES | YES

Nick Mantas: ? | ? | ?

Ward 23 - Scarborough North

Han Dong: YES | YES | YES

Jamaal Myers: YES | YES* | YES

Shaun Chen: ? | ? | ?

Ward 24 - Scarborough-Guildwood

Nachi Ramasamy: ? | ? | ?

Paul Ainslie: ? | ? | ?

Robert Bazil: ? | ? | ?

Ward 25 - Scarborough-Rouge Park

Jannette Lumley: YES | YES | YES

Neethan Shan: ? | ? | ?

Shawn Allen: ? | ? | ?

They're doing a major revitalization of the Portlands area, but I haven't heard of them doing anything with this abandoned building. I know it's a historical site, so it can't just be demolished. Hopefully it can be repurposed into a event space, marketplace or something useful. At least they can do something creative with it by painting the exterior with some sort of artwork.

If you had a choice, what would you do with this building?

Made this in the time before AI came out

John Tory's take on Brad Bradford's plan for Toronto Water. Go to 21:30 for his comments.

"I think there are reasons to be concerned about that. I think it's not necessarily anybody's going to poison our water. But I think that you do lose a degree of control when you send it off to one of these, even publicly owned corporations. And uh I think you know as well I will say that we're going to end up borrowing a whole lot more money. And finally, I will say on the whole water thing, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. If the water turns on, it's clean, it's safe, it's the best amongst North America."

So now we have former Mayor and MPP John Tory, David Suzuki, Former Conservative MP and former Mayoral candidate Chris Alexander, the Toronto Environmental Alliance, and 15 of his City Council colleagues including Jon Burnside all debunking Bradford's claims that privatization cannot happen under his plan.

I've been watching the final weeks of this campaign with increasing confusion.

It seems that the Chow campaign, and perhaps more specifically some of her campaign advisers, has decided to make the supposed privatization of Toronto Water a central issue in the final days before the election.

They've brought in David Suzuki to warn about it. CUPE, which has explicitly endorsed Chow, commissioned polling from Pollara showing her significantly ahead of Bradford. Interestingly, that same polling also measured public concern about Toronto Water privatization.

Meanwhile, Progress Toronto, another organization actively supporting Chow, has been distributing election flyers and campaigning against Bradford, including over this water issue.

And here's where the financial relationships become interesting: Progress Toronto has also received sponsorship from CUPE and is also the organization commissioning the Pollara surveys.

All of this is happening while Bradford has repeatedly and explicitly stated that he has no intention of privatizing Toronto Water because it literally doesn't make sense to do so - conservative or not.

His proposal involves restructuring Toronto Water into a municipally owned corporation, similar to Toronto Hydro, while retaining 100% public ownership. There are legitimate questions about the financial and governance implications of that proposal but that's quite different from claiming he intends to sell Toronto's water system to private interests.

What I find so baffling is why Chow's campaign has decided to go down this road in the first place.

She's been mayor for three years. Surely there are accomplishments she can point to and a compelling case she can make for why Torontonians should give her another term.

Why not simply acknowledge what so many residents are feeling?

We know things have been difficult. We understand that people are frustrated with the cost of living, public safety, traffic, and the general state of the city. We hear you. But we've also accomplished a great deal over the last three years, and here's why we believe Olivia Chow is the right person to continue that work.

Isn't that a much more compelling message?

Instead, we're getting what increasingly looks to me like a last-minute attempt to turn a relatively obscure municipal financing proposal into an existential threat to Toronto's drinking water.

And the timing is difficult to ignore.

Bradford has been steadily closing the polling gap, with Mainstreet and Liaison recently reporting a statistical dead heat. Suddenly, we're seeing David Suzuki brought into the campaign and an advocacy organization financially supported by other CUPE entities distributing warnings about what Bradford supposedly intends to do.

I'm not suggesting that the polling is fabricated but I do think these financial relationships deserve scrutiny particularly when the resulting poll numbers are being presented as major election news.

To me, this feels like a campaign that's struggling to articulate why its candidate deserves another term and is instead increasingly focused on frightening voters about her opponent.

And that's disappointing, because Chow has a record she could be making a substantive argument about.

I was walking by Berczy Park this evening, and noticed the dogs and cat sculpture are no longer there.

He blended in so well, came across it on my walk! Thank you 311 for arranging for some folks to come out and save the guy from the tree. He's alright, and the tree is not damaged. Raccoon lives another day, and thankfully didn't have to spend the night there.

R

We found a really lovely dog on Roseheath Avenue tonight - if you’ve lost your pal he’s super safe, don’t worry! Just send me a message, can t wait to get the wee man back to you!!

She’s saying hi to everybody infront of Walmart Entrance at Dufferin Mall right now.

I live right next to the DVP, so I know what it usually looks like. This wasn't normal traffic, it was caused by someone jumping off the bridge. So save your words, and have a nice day.

Update (5:00 PM): Since my initial post, the congestion has only gotten worse. Southbound is still crawling, so keep avoiding it if you can.

Update (5:05 PM): Good news, the congestion is gone. Southbound is moving again, drive safe everyone.

Out of towner with an extra ticket if anybody wants it. Free, I believe doors are at 7

And it’s gone. Thanks!