Toronto Life January 2025

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The Big Squeeze Real estate has become a blood sport in Toronto. Blame jaw-dropping prices for the tiniest of shoeboxes. Our feature on the extreme lengths people will go to extract an extra square foot of living space out of their properties tapped into the frustration residents share. “I recently read and appreciated your various articles on Torontonians making the most of their extremely cramped accommodations. It got me wondering why Canadians have to live like this. It occurred to me that, hypothetically speaking, if you divide Canada’s land area by its current population, everyone would have about a square quarter kilometre of space all to themselves. “Why do the inhabitants of the world’s second-largest country have to shoehorn themselves into spaces barely big enough for a cat? I’ve obviously…

There, nine justices heard arguments about whether Jordan’s rights had been violated and debated what “reasonably” speedy in this context meant. In a 5–4 decision, the court agreed with Jordan, and his guilty verdict was expunged. It was a stunning turn of events. But the high court went even further. The assenting judges decreed that Canadian criminal cases that go straight to trial in provincial courts should be wrapped up within 18 months, and cases that require pretrial inquiry or are tried in superior courts should take no longer than 30 months. The courts were backlogged, the justices wrote, due to a “culture of complacency” within the legal system. A strict timeline would jolt the system awake and accelerate the administration of justice. The decision received relatively little attention at…

“I want to address the stigma around renting”—Adrian Rocca, p. 18 Imagine selling an original Emily Carr for 5,000 times what you paid. That’s exactly what happened in November, when the painter’s Masset, Q.C.I., purchased just a few months earlier at a barn sale for $70, sold for $350,000 at a Yorkville auction. And it’s not an anomaly. In the past year, Toronto’s once-sleepy art market has jolted to life, routinely hosting record-breaking sales: $2.2 million for an impressionistic Petawawa painting by Tom Thomson in December of 2023; $780,000 for a glowing tribute to cottage country by A. J. Casson last May. For generations, art scholars have argued that Canadian masters could more than contend with their European contemporaries. Now, collectors and investors are catching up, spending millions on a…

Your company, Fitzrovia, just launched a $1-billion fund to build new rentals, which includes tearing down a 24-storey office tower at Yonge and St. Clair and replacing it with a 49-storey apartment building. Did you consider converting it instead? No, it would have been too expensive and complicated. Most offices don’t lend themselves to residential conversions—they’re large, with a central core, which results in either bowling-alley-style suites with very little natural light or oversized units, which drive down the rent per square foot that developers can charge. That doesn’t apply to all offices, but it does to many in the city. As a real estate man, you must be disheartened to see all that stock sitting cold. Is there business potential there? Somewhat. The trophy offices are downtown, and there’s…

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