A silent group gathered on Thursday night outside the ROM. They were there to mourn the loss of bike courier Darcy Allan Sheppard and to protest the former provincial politician, Michael Bryant, who was making a public appearance inside. Sheppard was killed three years ago, in an incident involving Bryant, not far from the ROM, [...]

“It’s a beautiful day for a demonstration,” Amnesty International Toronto Chair Shanaaz Gokool said to an RCMP officer as a group of protesters gathered, Wednesday morning, across the street from the U.S. Consulate on University Avenue. The protest, which was organized as part of an international solidarity movement by Amnesty International, marked a decade since [...]

Dear old Auntie Nuke would have been busy in 1980. Public concern about the nuclear industry was heightened by the accident at Three Mile Island a year earlier. This, we suspect, would in turn have increased support for Greenpeace and other anti-nuclear groups campaigning against Ontario Hydro’s plan to build four reactors near Bowmanville. As [...]

February 5, 1981, 11 p.m. Patrons of four bathhouses in downtown Toronto (The Barracks, The Club, Richmond Street Health Emporium, and Roman Sauna Baths) were surprised by 200 police officers in a series of coordinated raids. Law enforcement officials claimed that the raids were the result of six months of undercover work into alleged prostitution and other “indecent acts” at each establishment. Those inside the baths were subjected to excessive treatment by police, especially when it came to verbal taunts about the sexuality of those assembled at the four bathhouses. The raids marked a turning point for Toronto’s gay community; as the protests that followed indicated, people weren’t willing to endure derogatory treatment deriding their lifestyle from the police or from any others in spheres of influence.

Dedicated reformers even rally in the rain. As the last federal election day drew to a close and the spectre of a Stephen Harper–led Conservative majority that had been haunting many in the country for years suddenly became real, one tweet best summed up what so many Canadians were thinking: “The Conservatives are like Nickelback. [...]

This past Saturday was the first truly beautiful day of the season. The sun was out, the temperature was high, and up to 10,000 Torontonians decided to go for a walk from Yonge-Dundas Square to City Hall. “Hey hey, ho ho, service cuts have got to go!” the crowd chanted down Yonge Street during the [...]

Toronto’s Tamil community comes together for an evening vigil along University Avenue. Their large rallies have come and gone, but Toronto’s Tamils have yet to vacate the downtown core. Permanently located on the corner across from the U.S. Consulate, they continue to protest for all but fifteen minutes each day. During their only break at [...]

A demonstration at City Hall yesterday by the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty forced the Speaker to halt proceedings after the protest spilled onto the chamber floor. The action by OCAP was called after the discovery of a homeless man frozen to death in a downtown stairwell February 27. A statement by OCAP called the death [...]