Toronto Life March 2023

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Helter Shelter Readers had strong feelings about our cover story on the rental crisis. Many shared their own rental tales: successes, failures, nightmares, other. “An interesting and timely article. All levels of government are concentrating on home ownership to the detriment of people living in rental-heavy cities like Toronto. “My husband and I live in an area that used to have a good mix of affordable rentals and owner-occupied single-family homes. In the past three years, three multi-unit rental houses within three blocks of one another have been demolished to make way for ‘luxury townhomes.’ The multiunit house I live in and two surrounding rentals have been bought with the intention of another such development. “When I contacted city councillors and MPPs, I was given a pat answer about how…

As had happened to traditional media everywhere, the Star’s revenue was hollowed out by Facebook and other tech vultures who profit from content they didn’t create, and a reversal of this trend seemed unlikely. It broke his heart, but Honderich knew it was time to move on. The buyers were relatively unknown. Jordan Bitove came from a prominent, wealthy family, but he himself was an enigma. Paul Rivett had been president at insurance and investment giant Fairfax but likewise kept a low profile. Soon, a few details trickled out. Bitove had run some profitable businesses in the city. Rivett was an ardent capitalist with a knack for financial turnarounds. Both had donated to conservative politicians and causes, which caused some Star subscribers to fear that the paper’s liberal values would…

When Ahad Bandealy moved to Canada in 2009 to pursue his PhD in behavioural health at the University of Toronto, he never expected to develop Get A-Head, an innovative platform that facilitates mental health care and training. But, as he was trying to accumulate his clinical training hours, he saw the shortcomings of the therapeutic supervision system. For disciplines related to behavioural health such as psychology, psychiatry, social work and addictions counselling, Bandealy says that doctoral students must accumulate a significant number of supervised counselling hours in a short period of time. “Often, you must gain these with little to no compensation, and you are encumbered with a ton of administrative burdens, all while balancing the rigours of your daily life and a class schedule. Practitioner training in psychology has…

“Hockey execs like to pretend that they care about diversity and inclusion”—Akim Aliu, p.20 The $20-billion marriage of Rogers and Shaw is complete, and no one is happier than Ed Rogers. It’s been a wild couple of years for the media baron. First, in 2021, he wrested control of the Rogers empire from his mother and sisters. Now, with the merger, he’s become the unassailable head of Canada’s second-largest telecom, backed by an army of loyal board members and executives. For Ed, this latest victory is business as usual, competition bureaus be damned. And for his company’s 11 million customers—who pay some of the highest wireless fees in the world and now face a shrinking pool of competing alternatives? Regrettably, it feels like business as usual for them too.…

Your new graphic novel is called Dreamer: Growing Up Black in the World of Hockey. Is it fair to call it an autobiography? It’s based on my own experiences, which were different from those of most kids in hockey. I was born in Nigeria and grew up in Ukraine. We moved to Parkdale when I was nine years old, and hockey was everywhere in Toronto—on TV, billboards—and all the kids were playing it. My parents didn’t have much money, so all of my equipment was hand-me-downs. I was always the only person of colour on the team. When I was 11 years old, I played a tournament in Quebec and got called a racial slur. Unfortunately, racism was something I would continue to experience throughout my pro career. Every sport…