The truth behind the tales people tell about Toronto.

Toronto Harbour, 1793. Image from the Wikimedia Commons.

Hogtown, TO, The T-dot, Muddy York, regular York. This city we live in has been called a lot of things. But where does its real name come from?

To this day the most commonly known theory is that Toronto is derived from a Huron word for meeting place. This seems reasonable on the face of it; after all, the Hurons used to live in these parts and they certainly could have met here.

For every question there’s an answer like that one: logical, obvious, and wrong. This particular error can be attributed to Victorian clergyman and historian Henry Scadding, who believed the name Toronto came from the Huron word “toronton,” meaning “abundance” or “plenty” (as in “plenty of people,” from which Scadding derived “meeting place”). Scadding’s grasp of native languages was limited at best, and there was no real evidence to support his assertion, but it became firmly rooted in popular culture and is widely believed today in spite of frequent debunkings.

In fact, it’s virtually certain that the name “Toronto” is rooted in the Mohawk language and in a location about 130 kilometres north of the present city. Historical evidence tells us that the term is from the Mohawk “Tkaranto,” meaning “where there are trees standing in the water.” It originally referred to the Narrows at Orillia, where Lake Simcoe empties into Lake Couchiching and where natives had for centuries placed saplings in the water to trap fish.

Around 1680, Lake Simcoe appeared on a French map as “Lac de Taronto.” From there the name migrated southward, with the water route from Lake Simcoe to Ontario becoming the Passage de Toronto and the present Humber River, picking up the appellation Rivière Taronto. In the mid-18th century, the French updated the spelling and doubled down on their commitment to the word by changing the name of the fort at the foot of the Humber from Fort Rouillé to Fort Toronto (we may assume that had France not divested her North American holdings, everything from New Orleans to Acadia would eventually have been called Toronto).

In 1787, when British Governor General Lord Dorchester purchased most of what would become the GTA from the Mississauga nation for the equivalent of $200,000 and some dollar-store quality trade goods, he noted the name Toronto already in use and called the deal “the Toronto Purchase.”

There was a setback in 1793, when new Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe, who supposedly had an aversion to aboriginal names (and apparently to original ones as well), changed the name of the growing town to York. However, as early as 1804, with Simcoe back in England, a petition was circulated to revert back to Toronto on the grounds that there were already a bunch of better places called York, and also people were adding “Muddy” to it and laughing.

The logic proved persuasive, and when the area was incorporated as a city in 1834, it was under the name “Toronto.” We would never go back.

Images from the Wikimedia Commons.

Toronto’s casino debate earlier this week was kind of the municipal equivalent of a hippopotamus fighting a squirrel. With a baseball bat. In other words, there was a trouncin’ a happenin’. But no matter how you phrase it, you had to know that wasn’t the last you’d see of the OLG and its modernization plan in these here parts. Because there are a whole lot of towns and cities around here, and some of them would love to host a casino. And while the ones that seem to favour a casino most strongly are generally of the “where on the map is it again?” variety, Markham, Vaughan, and Mississauga are also looking into it. It’s not over yet.

Family and friends of Tim Bosma met yesterday to honour the Ancaster man’s life. He was found dead after taking two people out on a test drive of a truck he was selling. Meanwhile, Hamilton police have arrested a second man in connection with his death, who is being charged today with first degree murder.

Speaking of funerals, many of the city’s media types and political figures joined the hundreds of people remembering the life of Toronto Sun founding editor Peter Worthington. The funeral even attracted Mayor and full-time media ninja Rob Ford, who was apparently handing out magnets and cards while waiting for the funeral to end.

Ontario schools’ procedures for what to do in case an armed assailant enters the premises are totally wrong, according to a pair of school security experts from the U.S. And let’s face it, this is probably something the Americans know more about than us. But so far the TDSB isn’t acknowledging their concerns.

If it felt like last November’s Grey Cup festivities just went on and on, well first of all, you’re kind of a grump. And second, you need to understand that those few days were pure hustlin’. Not only did the home team win the championship, but Toronto also took football fans from around Canada for about $95 million.

Normally media outlets don’t report on suicides. It’s a general policy that’s there to discourage copycats—something that obviously isn’t as much of a concern when it comes to murder, rape, torture, robbery, assault, not taking your bag off on the TTC, war, genocide, and many other abhorrent behaviours. However, some cases warrant a lift of that policy. Like, for instance, when someone steals the purse of a woman who jumped in front of a subway train. Yep, that is a thing that happened in this city. Have a nice day.

Nile Séguin and Rebecca Kohler. Image by Rebecca Kohler.

• Talks: Curious to learn more about the history of The Esplanade? Now you can, in a very special evening that features a conversation between former Toronto mayors David Crombie and John Sewell, as well as architect Alan Littlewood. The talk will be moderated by the Toronto Star’s Christopher Hume. The evening will also include a photo exhibition by local youth and the Toronto premiere of Camping Royale and Nuit blanche. Berkeley Castle Courtyard (250 The Esplanade), 7 p.m., $50. Details
• Photography: Canadian indie music label, Arts & Crafts, are celebrating their tenth anniversary. As part of the celebrations, they’re showing a new exhibition from Toronto photographer, Norman Wong. The exhibition features images of various artists over the years including Feist, Kevin Drew, Emily Haines, and many more. You’ll be able to buy a book of photography there and a portion of the proceeds from the event will go to Testicular Cancer Canada and MusiCounts. 1093 Queen Street West, Unit 2 (1093 Queen Street West), 7 p.m., FREE. Details
• Comedy: Stand-up comedians, Rebecca Kohler and Nile Séguin, are performing together while also recording a DVD. As such, they need your support and plenty of laughs (which, won’t be too hard to deliver on)! Kohler has made the rounds on such things as Comedy Now and Just For Laughs, while Séguin has performed in the Halifax Comedy Festival and the Just For Laughs Festival. The Lot Stand Up Comedy Club (100 Ossington Avenue), 7 p.m., $15. Details
• Theatre: Hold Mommy’s Cigarette is a one-woman show written and performed by Shelley Marshall (who was also nominated for Best Female Stand Up by the Canadian Comedy Awards). It tells an autobiographical tale of a street kid who grew up to be a world-renowned comedian. Directed by Linda Kash. Alumnae Theatre (70 Berkeley Street), 8 p.m., $20-25. Details

Ongoing…

• Photography: David Kaufman’s Early Sunday Morning photography exhibit simultaneously celebrates the heritage of Toronto’s architecture, while pleading for its preservation, in the face of gentrification and condo development. The building facades and structures, rich in texture and colour, are each captured at their most beautiful—basking in the light of early morning. Twist Gallery (1100 Queen Street West), 11 a.m., FREE. Details
• Music: The Lula Music and Arts Centre’s annual Lulaworld festival kicks off on May 10 with Ethiopian jazz innovators Jay Danley and Fantahun Shewankochew. The festival travels around the world for the month of May, with performances most nights (and some afternoons) from local world music purveyors Uma Nota, Cuban player Bobby Carcasses, the Ukrainian Telnyuk Sisters, and more. (For a full schedule, prices, and reservations, visit the Lula Lounge website.) Lula Lounge (1585 Dundas Street West), 12 p.m., FREE–$25. Details
• Theatre: Delve into the world of dating, love, and marriage—sans commitment—with Angelwalk Theatre’s presentation of the off-Broadway musical I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change. Offered as a series of vignettes set to music, the show focuses on the disastrous, hilarious, and touching aspects of love and dating. Toronto Centre for the Arts (5040 Yonge Street), 1:30 p.m. and 8 p.m., $25-$45. Details
• Theatre: One of the Fringe Festival’s greatest successes, and definitely Soulpepper’s biggest post-millennial hit, Ins Choi’s corner store comedy Kim’s Convenience returns for another extended run into the the summer season. Most of the principal cast, including Paul Sun-Hyung Lee as larger-than-life patriarch Appa, are back. Here’s our review of the first Soulpepper remount. Young Centre for the Performing Arts (50 Tank House Lane), 7:30 p.m., $5–$68. Details
• Theatre: David Yee examines life’s interconnectivity in Carried Away on the Crest of a Wave. The play follows an escort in Thailand, a housewife in Utah, and a Catholic priest in India, and how their lives are simultaneously brought together and torn apart by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Tarragon Theatre (30 Bridgman Avenue), 8 p.m., $21-$53. Details
• Theatre: The 2012-2013 Buddies in Bad Times season goes out with a bang, and a growl, with the world premiere of Ecce Homo Theatre’s Of a Monstrous Child: a Gaga Musical. Bruce Dow plays legendary performer and master of ceremonies Leigh Bowery, with Kimberly Persona as Mother Monster herself. Using the music of Lady Gaga as a backdrop, the show is a crash course in the history of queer performance, celebrating everyone from Yoko Ono to Madonna, and Boy George. Buddies in Bad Times Theatre (12 Alexander Street), 8 p.m., PWYC-$37. Details
• Theatre: Ben and Gus are on a job, holed up in a basement, wondering who is in charge, and waiting for “the call” in Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter. Presented by Wordsmyth Theatre, the play ranges from tense and claustrophobic to ridiculous and surreal, while posing the question: how do you escape from a situation when there is no exit? Odyssey Studio (636 Pape Avenue), 8 p.m., $15-$25. Details
• Theatre: The Accidental Mechanics Group presents an evening of dark comedy, storytelling, and confessional theatre, all rolled into one solo performance. During El Camino or The Field of Stars, Stewart Legere assumes the role of the unnamed protagonist, recanting tales of a failed relationship, a disastrous trip to Italy, love, and the complexities of a young queer couple struggling with internalized homophobia. Videofag (187 Augusta Avenue), 8 p.m., $15. Details
• Theatre: If you’ve been paying attention to musical theatre news over the past two years, you know that The Book of Mormon has a passionate and devout following of fans who swear it’s the long-awaited saviour of the artform. The show won nine Tonys in 2011, the cast recording reached number three on the Billboard chart, and tickets for its Broadway run are rare and expensive. Princess of Wales Theatre (300 King Street West), 8 p.m., Prices vary. Details
• Theatre: The experience of watching The Charge of the Expormidable Moose is a lot like the experience of reading the play’s title. At first, it’s a little strange, a little off-putting, and very ambiguous. But eventually, its oddness becomes its appeal. Tarragon Theatre (30 Bridgman Avenue), 8 p.m., $13-$28. Details
• Theatre: It becomes clear rather quickly in the first scene of BEA, Actors Repertory Company’s North American premiere of British playwright Mick Gordon’s 2010 work, that the title character doesn’t live on quite the same level as the nervous young man she’s interviewing for a job. As Beatrice, a young but physically infirm woman, Bahareh Yaraghi begins by bounding around a bedroom set, swinging acrobatically from the four-poster bed frame and a somewhat mysterious ladder, and dancing circles around Brendan McMurtry-Howlett’s Ray, who is applying to be her caregiver. We soon learn all this physical exuberance is an outward manifestation of Bea’s busy mind, which has been confined in the bedroom, and in a bedridden body, for years. Factory Theatre (125 Bathurst Street), 8 p.m., PWYC–$25. Details
• Theatre: In 1996, Theatre Columbus premiered playwright Michael O’Brien’s “freely adapted” take on the famous Beaumarchais play The Barber of Seville, which was written in 1775. O’Brien’s version mixed in music from the 1816 opera of the same name by Gioachino Rossini, as well as original tunes by composer John Millard. The adaptation also propelled the story forward a couple centuries, with pop culture references galore. With Theatre Columbus co-founder Leah Cherniak at the helm, the musical ended the season with six Dora Award nominations (it won three) and plenty of critical acclaim.

  Seventeen years later, Soulpepper Theatre is remounting this zany reimagination of The Barber of Seville, updated once again by O’Brien, Millard, and Cherniak. But, for some reason—the change in decade, or company, or sense of humour—whatever had made the original so magical, has faded, save for a few key performances. Young Centre for the Performing Arts (50 Tank House Lane), 8 p.m., $32–$68. Details

Urban Planner is Torontoist‘s guide to what’s on in Toronto, published every weekday morning, and in a weekend edition Friday afternoons. If you have an event you’d like considered, email us with all the details (including images, if you’ve got any), ideally at least a week in advance.

Photoist is the first post we publish every weekday morning, featuring an image (or two) by a photographer in the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

Photo courtesy of Michael Christian.

• Remember Koilos? The scary, Lovecraftian steel sculpture that was suddenly removed from its spot in the Distillery District last week? The artist, Michael Christian, now tells us that its new home is “on a large dock off an island on Lake Muskoka,” where it can live out its retirement under the watchful eye of a new private owner. A picture of the beast in its new location is above.
• You know how some people are like, “oh man, what if this video of Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack is a fake?” Hazlitt points out that, if the video is as described, there’s basically no way it could be a fraud unless these alleged crack dealers have access to alien video-editing technology.
• And here’s a video of Rob Ford at a gas station, being accosted with questions about his alleged crack use. Ford still hasn’t definitively denied anything. It has been six days.
• Grid readers have voted, and now a new park in the West Don Lands will be called Corktown Common.

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Earlier this afternoon, the Toronto Catholic District School Board announced that Mayor Rob Ford has been fired from his other job: his gig as a part-time volunteer football coach for Don Bosco Catholic Secondary School.

The Star points out that the Catholic school board was already in the process of reviewing Ford’s involvement at Don Bosco before his recent drug scandal began making headlines. The review was a result of some disparaging things Ford said about his teenaged players during a March interview with David Menzies, of Sun News.

This is the unceremonious end of a political saga for Ford. He was frequently criticized in the press for devoting time to his football team at the expense of some of his official duties. He also took heat for using paid City staffers to help with some of his coaching duties, in apparent violation of City rules. On one occasion, he was also criticized for apparently commandeering two TTC buses to carry his players home from a game, though police and TTC officials claimed, at the time, that the mayor was not directly responsible for the incident.

Ford has been coaching for over a decade, and even heads a foundation dedicated to helping Toronto schools start their own football programs. His involvement at Don Bosco was a continual point of pride for him, even when it caused him political problems. The board hasn’t specified a reason for his dismissal, but no matter the cause, it’s undoubtedly personally painful for the mayor.

The full text of the TCDSB’s press release is below.

The Toronto Catholic District School (TCDSB) thanks Mayor Rob Ford for his contribution and many years of service to the Don Bosco Eagles Football Program. The Board has informed Mr. Ford of our decision to pursue a different direction with a new volunteer head coach for the Don Bosco Eagles senior football team.

Mr. Ford’s passion for football, his commitment to the Don Bosco players and their success speaks for itself. The Board is very grateful for the Mayor’s contribution.

“This is an exciting game that helps to develop strategic thinking, strength and agility while also fostering values such as teamwork, perseverance and good sportsmanship. Mr. Ford has helped our students rise to the challenge and realize their potential as both football players and young men,” says Bruce Rodrigues, the Director of Education. “This decision was based on what is best for our students, our school and the Don Bosco community.”

The Board’s primary responsibility is to ensure a positive learning environment for all our students and promote our school’s ongoing commitment to academic achievement, well-being and excellence. We recognize and respect that the Mayor’s first commitment is to the priorities of the taxpayers and citizens of the City of Toronto.

The football program will continue at Don Bosco and at all other TCDSB high schools that have teams. The TCDSB is appreciative for the thousands of volunteers who augment the work of our dedicated staff for various athletic and academic school programs and events throughout the school year.

On Wednesday afternoon, six days after news first broke that two separate publications had reportedly seen video of what appears to be Toronto mayor Rob Ford smoking out of a crack pipe, his brother and city councillor Doug Ford held a press conference to address the allegations.

Sort of.

In a bizarre, nine-minute appearance in which he read from prepared remarks and refused to answer any questions, Doug Ford spent most of his time giving a campaign-style speech extolling the administration’s economic accomplishments. Though the mayor has only devoted about three sentences in total to the allegations Doug proclaimed: “Never has the mayor been so accessible.” As for the allegations themselves, Doug said his brother told him they were untrue, and added that they were the result of questionable journalism. He targeted the Toronto Star for persistently targeting the mayor, and told Gawker its actions in starting a crowdfunding campaign to buy the video in question “disgusting.”

The full text of his remarks:

First off, I’m here today because you’ve been asking me for my comment. I’m here to give you my comments. I’m not speaking for the mayor. The mayor is my brother, I love him, and he’ll speak for himself.

He has already addressed these allegations three times on Friday; I don’t know how much more he can say.

My brother is an honest and hardworking man with integrity, a man who has dedicated his life to serving others. He is the people’s mayor. Never has the mayor been so accessible or cared so much for the issues facing residents. His attention to the needs of his constituents is what has made Rob Ford mayor of Toronto. Now our mayor faces yet another accusation, an accusation driven by questionable reporting from a news outlet that has proven they would do anything to stop the mayor’s agenda. Rob is telling me these are untrue, that these accusations are ridiculous, and I believe him.

I will always support my brother as the mayor of this city, because I believe in his track record. Under his leadership we have reined in out of control spending and turned the fiscal ship of this city around. We have successfully eliminated the budget gap. For a decade Toronto relied on prior year surpluses and one-time found money to balance its operating budgets. In 2013, that ended. Our 2013 budget was balanced for the first time ever, without using any prior year surplus.

We are the only government, the only government in North America, to pass a budget that spends less money year than it did the previous year. Because of our fiscal discipline, international bond rating agencies like Moody’s and DBRS have kept our credit rating strong—even while they lowered the rating of the province of Ontario.

Over the next 10 years we’re reducing our debt by $804 million that we inherited, while spending $1.2 billion more on infrastructure needs. We are investing $2.3 billion over 10 years to maintain our hard infrastructure. We have privatized garbage collection east of Yonge, saving the taxpayers $88 million while improving service to our residents. This mayor negotiated historic labour deals—and I say historic, that’s never been done—that are helping us improve efficiencies and save hundreds of millions of dollars without a single day of labour disruptions. We have changed the culture of entitlement and improved efficiencies and services for our residents. We have seen record years of development. We have more cranes in the air today, more than New York, L.A., Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta, Miami combined—that is combined, 184 cranes, in our city. We’ve had three consecutive years of job growth. Folks, that’s three consecutive years of job growth. And Toronto is currently seeing the highest employment numbers since 1990. I’ll repeat that: we have seen the highest employment numbers since 1990. We’ve almost created…40,000 jobs have been created since this mayor took office.

As mayor of Toronto Rob Ford has put more funding into arts than any other mayor, Toronto is a vibrant and beautiful city were people want to live, work, and play. We are seeing tourism in Toronto with over nine million hotel rooms sold last year—again, another record broken with 9 million hotels rooms sold last year. This mayor is fighting for the little guy, to keep taxes affordable and low. 136,000 in Toronto will get rent reductions this year ’cause we reduced property taxes for their landlords last year, and we are holding the line on their taxes this year as well.

We have come a long way in the past two years, we are turning the corner, and we are now on the right path.

All of this is overshadowed, of course, by the constant stream of accusations coming forward against this mayor. This situation reminds me of a story the Toronto Star, during the election—a story written based on credible sources—that the mayor hit his football players. What could be worse than abusing an innocent child? It turned out that there credible source was disgraced as a serial plagiarizer. The young man himself came forward and said these accusations were completely fabricated and false. Never, never has a Canadian politician or his family been targeted by the media this way. They zealously, and I say zealously, stalk my mother, my children, the media hides in the bushes at my cottage as they did this weekend [so] that my kids couldn’t even enjoy the weekend cause they were in the bushes taking video of them, and harasses our family at home. They have shown that they have no regard, absolutely no regard, for what they are doing to our family, who should have no part of all of this.

I am asking all of you today: please stop. Please stop harassing my children, please stop harassing my mother. Please leave them out of this.

People ask me why did I get into politics? I got into politics to give back my time, donate my salary, and do what I thought was right for Toronto. I never, ever expected that these were the rules of engagement, that we would go through this abuse and my family would suffer.

To the folks at Gawker: what you are doing is disgusting and morally wrong. Giving away prizes to try to give away money to drug dealers and extortionists is disgraceful. When the mayor faces serious accusations, by no means will we be pressured by the Toronto Star to answer their questions on their timeframe. We spoke to our family and our lawyers before deciding how to proceed. If the mayor stopped and held a press conference every time the media made up a story about him, we would never have accomplished anything that we have. If the mayor wants to make a statement his press secretary will notify the media. There is no reason for you to be staking out his house and following him around town.

I also want to say that the story wrongfully generalizes and tarnishes the reputation of Toronto’s Somalian community, a hardworking community of good people, thousands of whom I represent in Etobicoke North.

Lastly, I want to thank the thousands of supporters out there who believe in the job Mayor Rob Ford and this administration is doing. Without your support, encouragement, and kind words, this would be even more difficult than it already is.

Folks, please remember that we will continue fighting for the taxpayers, and remember one thing: we’re down here to work for you.

One of the great things about local punk band Careers in Science is its sense of humour. The band does an amazing job of writing songs that are funny, but not zany or wacky. This isn’t Weird Al or Blink 182. Instead it’s wry, often self-depreciating wit set to a soundtrack of buzzsaw guitars.

“Back to Business” uses business buzzwords to talk about a failing relationship, and turns the should-be-dull line “I want to reinvest” into a shout-along gang chorus. “All Our Birthdays” is a frank discussion about the feeling that your youth is passing you by, using the phrase “really, really, really old.”

The highlight of the EP, at least lyrically, is “When We Have Money.” It’s a classic high-energy, Southern California-style pop-punk anthem about life in the service economy. The band members envision striking it rich and returning to their current places of employment to seek vengeance. (In this case, vengeance looks like closing a restaurant to take everyone bowling.) If you’ve spent any significant portion of your life holding down a crappy job, it’s pretty much guaranteed to strike a chord. (You can listen to “When We Have Money” by clicking on the sample above.)

Musically, Cowards is an impressive leap ahead. While the band is still firmly rooted in Descendents-style pop punk, there are some interesting post-punk influences that peek through here. “Back to Business” and “The Shape of Punk That’s Left” both have a sort of herky-jerky angularity that reminds us a little of Wire.

Careers in Science is made up of smart, funny guys who write smart, funny songs, but it’s also a band that’s not afraid to colour outside the lines in a genre that tends to be, somewhat ironically, bound to tradition. Cowards furthers our longstanding belief that this is one of the local acts worth watching.

A screenshot of the Draft John Tory website, as it appeared earlier today.

With all the craziness surrounding Mayor Rob Ford in recent days—did he smoke crack or didn’t he?—it’s not a stretch to imagine that some of Toronto’s conservative-leaning voters are starting to wish, if they weren’t already wishing, that there were another candidate who could take up their banner in the 2014 municipal election. Right on cue, here’s a website called Draft John Tory, aimed at convincing the one-time mayoral hopeful to put his name on the ballot once again.

Samuel Greene, one of the founders of Draft John Tory, denies that the website, which launched last week, was a direct response to Ford’s latest scrape. “This is certainly an idea and a cause that has been brewing for some time now,” he says. “Because the distractions that we’ve been seeing at City Hall are by no means new. People, I think, are looking for experienced and serious leadership at City Hall.”

Greene, who is 22 years old and about to start law school at the University of Toronto, says the group behind Draft John Tory consists of about six core members, some of whom have had some past involvement in city politics (he declined to name them), but none of whom have any direct link with Tory. Tory himself isn’t involved. The goal, at this point, is only to twist his arm, and maybe provide a forum for a broader discussion about leadership in Toronto.

As of the weekend, the site had collected the email addresses of about 100 supporters.

Tory, now a conservative radio host on Newstalk 1010, ran for mayor in 2003, but lost to David Miller. He also lost two provincial races while serving as leader of the Ontario PC party between 2004 and 2009. Even so, he’s respected by people of all political leanings, and he’s certainly, at any rate, a lot more level-headed than Mayor Ford. There were calls for Tory to run for mayor in 2010, but he ultimately decided not to.

Greene doesn’t think Tory’s past defeats should deter him from trying for the mayoralty a second time. “John Diefenbaker lost elections time and time again before eventually becoming prime minister,” Greene says. “Previous setbacks aren’t an impediment, I think, especially for someone as distinguished and with the attributes that Mr. Tory actually has.”

It’s entirely possible that an early work by the next Atom Egoyan or David Cronenberg will screen on Wednesday night at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. With the 2013 Student Film Showcase featuring the best from post-secondary schools around the country and the Jump Cuts Young Filmmakers Showcase kicking off the evening with Toronto-area high-school students’ films, the night will be a coming-out party for a new crop of talent. Judging by the polished creativity of some of the entries, it’s safe to say that young people are more prepared than ever to start telling stories on film from an early age.

Members of the Canadian Somali Congress have condemned the Toronto Star for repeated references to “Somali drug dealers” in its initial story about mayor Rob Ford’s alleged drug use. The Star‘s first article on the subject originally used the description “Somali” 10 separate times to refer to the men who apparently were involved with Ford in this case [PDF]. There seems to have been second thoughts among Star editors about this: even before CSC president Ahmed Hussen contacted the publication they edited the article, which now contains five uses of the word [PDF].

Hussen says the repeated use of an ethnic identifier is both unnecessary and damaging to the Somali community.

“This description is not relevant to anything,” Hussen told us by telephone on Monday. He points to the Canadian Association of Journalists’ ethics guidelines, which states that members “avoid stereotypes of race, gender, age, religion, ethnicity, geography, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, or social status,” particularly regarding crime stories. “I think the Star made a huge mistake, and now our communities have to suffer the stigma,” Hussen said. “Ethnicity has nothing to do with individual acts.”

Hussen says that after the article appeared he mobilized his membership to file complaints with the Star, and eventually spoke with editor Michael Cooke. “We got a good response from Cooke,” Hussen said, and added that the editor assured him the term “Somali” would not be employed in similar fashion in future stories on the issue. We called Cooke to confirm this, but he did not respond to our request for comment.

Star reporter Robyn Doolittle, who co-authored the article with investigative journalist Kevin Donovan, stands by her descriptions. “I think it’s material to the story,” Doolittle told us during an interview at City Hall. “If you accuse the mayor of smoking crack, you have to provide as much detail as possible.” Doolittle declined to directly address the relevance or frequency of the “Somali” identifier, and referred us to the Star‘s public editor Kathy English. (We had received no reply from English at press time.)

Susan Eng, a former Toronto Police Services Board chair and longtime activist regarding media equity, says the references to ethnicity are irrelevant, because even the Star is protecting the identity of the men in question—in contrast to something like a police search, the goal isn’t to provide a physical description so the public can help locate the individuals. Star reporters “are not suggesting that anyone should go and find these people, and unless that’s your motivation as a reporter, you have no reason to use this language,” Eng told us by phone. She added that journalists often become defensive when they are told their descriptions might stereotype specific communities. “You don’t have to be a racist to make this kind of mistake,” she points out.

U.S. website Gawker, which broke the story about the allegations, made no references in its story to the ethnicity of the individuals who claim they dealt crack cocaine to Ford. Outlets like the New York Times and the Guardian have similarly reported on the issue without describing the ethnicity of the presumed dealers.

CSC communications director Ebyan Farah, who we also spoke with on Monday, emphasizes that Somalis in Toronto are Canadians first, and must not be held responsible for the drug dealers’ alleged conduct. “It’s the responsibility of the police to find them,” Farah said. “The job of the community is to educated our boys not to go down the wrong path—but a criminal is a criminal.”

UPDATE, 3:14 PM: A few hours after publication we received an e-mail from Kathy English, public editor of the Toronto Star. She wrote that in her view some reference to the men’s background was appropriate: “I think it was relevant to provide as much information as possible about who these people are.” However, English continued, she also understands the concerns that have been raised about how often the description was repeated. “I think the Star did overdo this in writing the deadline story (some of this was a result of team writing and editing).” She also added that reporters and editors have scaled back in this regard in subsequent stories on the subject.

American late-night hosts who first discovered Rob Ford as a result of some of his more innocent blunders are falling in love with Toronto all over again thanks to the latest allegations against our mayor. Last night, both the The Daily Show and Jimmy Kimmel Live had lengthy segments about Ford, and about the video that supposedly shows him smoking crack.

If you missed it all, the Daily Show video is embedded above. The Jimmy Kimmel clip is below.

(For what it’s worth, we liked Jon Stewart’s take on this a lot better than Kimmel’s. The latter relies on a lot of lame, Canadian Bacon–level jokes, though it does win some points back by casting Jim O’Heir, from Parks and Recreation, as ersatz Ford.)