In just one week the Toronto Mayor By-election will close the registration for candidates and that means a week more for that list to grow even longer. As of right now (while I edit this issue on Friday afternoon at 3pm) the list is currently holding at 73 candidates. I would expect that we may still see a few others join closer to the cut off on May 12th.
The competition for the top job in the city has so many people representing the diversity of this city. While there are many current and former city council members in the race, we also have a wide range of professionals, advocates, students, and former politicians from other levels of governments. Today I am going to move away from politics as I am sure we all could use a break especially as we still have over 7 weeks to go! Once the candidate list is finalized after the closing of registration I will be bringing you candidate profiles and discussions on issues right up until the election on June 26. I will watch the campaigns closely and bring you all the latest as things develop. As a side note I will be working with my friends Matthew and Philip at The Municipals as we host our own series of virtual debates in the coming weeks. So as I move away from politics talk for today, I will leave the survey link I started a few weeks ago as I am still collecting your concerns and questions for candidates. I will be reaching out to as many as I can to speak to them and find out what they will do for Etobicoke and the west-end if elected.
So for one more week you can have your say at
https://forms.gle/RuYsHNBbkT6yKvco7
Jane’s Walk Weekend
This weekend all across Toronto, local residents will be leading walks in their communities to highlight everything from food to history to infrastructure and everything in between.
This annual festival that takes place each year on the first weekend in May, celebrates local communities and the ability to take a closer look at the hidden gems in a neighbourhood that you can see while on walk that you might miss while just driving through the area. There are many places across the world who hold Jane’s Walks but this is a very special festival for Toronto as Jane Jacob’s for whom the weekend is names after called Toronto home from 1968 until her death in 2006. While many know of her as a writer on urban planning, it may not be so wide spread the work she did as an activist.
To learn more go to the fesitval website which has a great bio on Jane here https://www.janeswalkfestivalto.com/jane
With all the possible walks to choose from you really need to check out the website for details. That said I want to highlight four right here in Etobicoke that you might want to check out!
Six Points: Reconfigured
Saturday May 6 from 4pm to 5:30pm
https://www.janeswalkfestivalto.com/sixpointsreconfigured
Fording Humber Creek: Reconnecting to nature in suburban Etobicoke
Sunday May 7 from 2pm to 4pm
https://www.janeswalkfestivalto.com/items/fordinghumbercreek
Remnants of the Toronto Suburban Railway: The Humber Crossing
Sunday May 7 from 3pm to 4pm
https://www.janeswalkfestivalto.com//items/remnantsofthetorontosuburbanrailway
Explore The Shore
Sunday May 7 from 10am to 11am / 1pm to 2pm
https://www.janeswalkfestivalto.com//items/exploretheshore
Toronto History Read-Along
A couple of days ago I put out an idea to start a book club with fellow local history buffs! I know we are all busy and many like different genres so I have thought of a way for those of us who want to look at historic moments in the city but to to do so without being forced to read just one book. We choose a moment first and then find the great books to tell that story. For the first moment in time we will go back to 1933 and an event that will be remembered by the city this summer.
It has been 90 years since the summer of 1933, the summer that is known for the Toronto Riot at Christie Pits. I grew up hearing stories from my grandmother who grew up nearby the park and so while many others my age had no idea about these difficult years in the city, at a young age I was actually surprised that this nugget of local history wasn’t common knowledge. The reality was that 60 years after the events of that summer the incident was not even part of the history books used in schools. We knew about the hardships of the depression in bullet points; no jobs, little money for food, hardships for families, war was looming in Europe. That is all we were taught and the idea that anti-semitism was becoming a serious problem in Toronto during that era was unheard of in my suburban classroom.
However, I knew that one hot summer in 1933, Jewish families in our city were scared not only for the safety of relatives in Europe but they were also becoming worried about their own safety here at home. While these local residents were reading newspapers full of the stories of fascism flowing across Europe, the hateful actions taking place did not always seem so foreign.
For other groups of the city population this kind of concern hit home too. My grandmother grew up in an Italian home in the west-end of the city. By 1933 her family had been living in Canada for over 20 years. She was first-generation Canadian growing up in a city where that still very much made you an outsider in many neighbourhoods. I remember stories she told me of her school years where going to Catholic school and not being from an Irish family made you a target for name calling. That said she always told me she had it much easier than many others though for the fact that she was not the target of new clubs that were emerging, those clubs which quickly became known as the Swastika Clubs.
She told me it was such a terrible and violent explosion of hate that night of the riot. Why did it happen, because anger grew over times as one group of people decided to blame another group for all the problems of the depression; another group who were also just trying to live life and take care of their own families in an already difficult period of history. The hate that led to this riot spilled out into a park and onto a baseball diamond; a place for kids and teens to have fun. The 6-hour riot shook the city and it took time to recover, however, those who were living it would never forget.
What she did not know at the time was that her future husband was about to live through these times in even worse conditions in Europe and in two decades would come to find Toronto to be a safe haven after the war. He would witness family members being murdered because of religion and by the time the few family members who were left would make it Toronto, the riots and clubs that provoked the violent actions one hot summer of the past were already being downplayed as the focus was on growth and recovery. Toronto was a good place and the general belief was that we would never go back to those dark times.
But lets be honest, perfect we are not and a lot of problems in the city continued to go on and just was not spoken about during the years after WW2. While the city was safe for some it was not for others and at times it was not even safe for select population groups. As a society you would like to think that we are always getting better but if the last few years have taught us something, it is that if history is forgotten we can easily start to go backwards. The idea of going back is a scary thought and it is not fair to those who had to work to win the fights of the past to see the progress we take for granted today.
The books that I am suggesting for the first selections do cover this time period in Toronto and beyond. The Riot is part of a setting that then goes into deeper stories of what life was like and how we came to that point in time. One will look closer of how that period lead into the war years and another looks from a standpoint of general history and how we got there. By choosing different genres I hope to make this club open to all as we will have different opinions and views from multiple books to really allow for an in-depth discussion later this summer. While I am suggesting three main books, you need to only read one (if you want to read more then that is great too). I will look out for further suggestions and I invite all of you to make suggestions too.
To get started here are the books:
Letters Across The Sea - Genevieve Graham
(Historical Fiction - not a romance filled book but one that is a really good story about two families who live through a really dark period of history)
The Good Fight - Tom Staunton and Josh Rosen
(Graphic Novel / Middle Grade but excellent for anyone)
Toronto: Biography Of A City - Allan Levine
(Local History - for these discussions we will focus on chapters 6 to 9)
If you would like to take part in just send a quick email to theetobicokevoice@gmail.com or leave a comment that says you’re in!
If you would like to participate but don’t have the time for it in your schedule we will also have an online discussion set up so you can share your ideas and chat with others in a group only forum.
The sunshine is finally here and so whatever your plans I do hope you have a wonderful weekend! Next week we will see what a local high school is doing to raise funds for cancer research, take a look at the city council meeting updates, and I will provide a full overview of the first CivicsTO101 courses that will soon be available for those of you who want that insider education that we all missed in school!