Toronto Life September 2023

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Sick Transit The sorry state of the TTC ranks high on readers’ priority lists. Reaction to our July cover story—which outlined everything wrong with Toronto transit and how things got so dire—was fierce. “This was an infuriating tale of incompetence and gross misspending across all levels of government. How can we call Toronto a world-class city when it has a transit system that doesn’t compare to those of smaller towns?” —laumichelleo, Instagram “Forget who broke it. Who’s going to fix it? Let’s get our shit together.” —somekindof_dark183, Instagram “A surprisingly insightful and well-researched article. Well done.” —loonapaulooza2112, Instagram “The TTC nowadays is the hot mess express. We have daily stabbings and shootings and no security to be seen. I had a dentist appointment today and took my chances walking for…

Inside the AI Crisis on Campus Until recently, AI was known as that useful, benign thingy that optimizes Google searches and finishes text messages. Then, late last year, the San Francisco company OpenAI launched a public version of ChatGPT, and everything changed. It was faster and smarter than anything we’d seen. These days, with a few keystrokes, we can create a believable anything. Deep-fake videos. Audio recordings. A photo of that time Albert Einstein played harmonica at Glastonbury. (Wait, did that happen? Exactly.) The implications were potentially catastrophic. In a world where anything can be faked, how does anyone know what’s real? This question landed thunderously in the academic world, where the subject of cheating became urgent. With the oceanic depths of the internet at its disposal, ChatGPT could crank…

“I married young—that saved me from being an ass”—Bob Hallett, p.28 Ontario’s population will hit roughly 22 million by 2050, with half of those people living in the GTA. The province requires massive amounts of clean energy to meet demand, and Premier Doug Ford has placed his faith in nuclear power. Darlington Nuclear is ground zero for the coming revolution. Prep work has begun on the construction of four small modular reactors, which should power 1.2 million homes by the mid-2030s. The project has plenty of detractors, who point out that wind and solar are far cheaper to build than nuclear and produce no toxic waste. Of course, Ford cancelled almost 800 renewable-energy projects upon being elected in 2018, proclaiming that he was saving taxpayers $790 million in the process.…

What is a son of Newfoundland doing buying a theatre in Toronto? This all started in 2018, when Walter Schroeder—a Canadian philanthropist who loves supporting Newfoundland artists—and I formed our theatre company, Terra Bruce. My band Great Big Sea hadn’t been active for a few years, so my plan was to run the company in St. John’s since there’s so much talent there. But we realized early on that, to do the kinds of shows we wanted to do, we needed a presence in Toronto. So we bought the Regent in early 2022. Toronto has a lot of beautiful old theatres. Why the Regent? That was just fortuity. In recent years, the Regent had become a down-at-the-heels venue. Covid crushed any shot at business, so the owners were ready to…

“It doesn’t bother me that I’ll probably never own a home” SOPHIE ROGOWSKA, 35 WHAT SHE DOES She’s a lawyer for the federal Department of Justice WHAT SHE MAKES $103,000 WHERE SHE LIVES A one-bedroom apartment in St. Clair West Village REGULAR EXPENSES RENT: $2,089 a month. “When I moved here in 2018, I fell in love with this unit. I’ve never felt the desire to own a home, so it doesn’t bother me that I probably never will.” CELL: $39 a month. “I’m stingy about mobile, so I use SpeakOut Wireless from 7-Eleven. I also buy refurbished phones instead of new ones, since they’re just as good and you get to divert a phone from the landfill.” GROCERIES: $280 a month. “I live right beside No Frills. That helps…