The corporate insider Nigel Wright engineered Stephen Harper’s rise to prime minister and became his closest confidant. As chief of staff, he acted as a conduit between Bay Street and the PMO—until Harper thought he could make the Senate scandal go away by cutting Wright loose

By Kelly Pullen | Photo-Illustration by Sean McCabe

For well over a century, the Albany Club, a four-storey neoclassical building on King East, has served as Canada’s bastion of big-C conservatism. It’s the place where Toronto’s business crowd hobnobs with provincial and federal Tory leaders over scotch and canapés. The most anticipated event on the Albany’s social calendar is its annual Sir John A. Macdonald dinner, a black-tie affair in which several hundred of the party faithful gather to hear a candid address delivered by a prominent conservative. Past speakers have included Bill Davis, Jim Flaherty and John Baird.

This year’s event took place on a chilly evening in mid-January. The honoured guest was the employment minister, Jason Kenney, who gave a speech about Conservatism in Canada that included a spirited defence of Bay Street’s own Nigel Wright—a respected ­corporate player who, eight months earlier, had stepped down from his role as Stephen Harper’s chief of staff. Sometimes people try to do the right thing in politics, Kenney said, and it doesn’t work out the way it should. His words brought the crowd to their feet amid thunderous applause, hooting and whistling.

Wright, of course, resigned after it was revealed that he’d written a $90,000 personal cheque to Mike Duffy, to cover the senator’s inappropriate expense claims. The deed appeared, on its face, harmless enough: Wright wanted taxpayers reimbursed, and Duffy didn’t have the money to do it. At first, Harper seemed to see it that way, too. But over the following six months, he distanced himself from Wright, ultimately portraying his former right-hand man as a deceitful plotter whom he’d in fact dismissed. Kenney, who is rumoured to have his eye on the prime minister’s job, was the first MP to break ranks with his boss. Referring to Wright, he told the media, “As far as I can tell, this was an uncharacteristic lapse of judgment.”

Wright has toiled tirelessly in the backrooms of the ­Conservative party machine for 30 years. He was one of ­Harper’s biggest supporters and an unofficial advisor since the late 1990s. They were close friends who respected and trusted each other. And then Wright was thrown under the bus.

On Bay Street, Wright’s friends are legion. The list includes some of the biggest names in Canadian business—Gerald Schwartz, Peter and Anthony Munk, the Jackmans—as well as many lesser-known but no less influential corporate leaders and political organizers. Harper’s treatment of Wright—and his inept handling of the entire ordeal—has forced many of them to re-evaluate the prime minister. Not only has the crisis challenged their perception of his political infallibility, but it has made them question his judgment. As one senior Conservative said to me, “If this is going to be a contest in terms of who Bay Street values more, I don’t like Harper’s odds.”

To the public, the Senate scandal is a baffling, sometimes comical tale of greedy, hyper-partisan politicians and of backroom hacks trying desperately to protect them. But to corporate and political insiders, it’s a story of personal betrayal—and a rift that has divided the Conservative party at the highest levels.

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Elaine Lui became one of the world’s most influential celebrity gossips by exhibiting a bratty disregard for the pieties of showbiz. What happens now that she’s nearly as famous as the stars she skewers?

By Emily Landau | Photograph by Andrew Soule

Elaine Lui, who has cultivated a vast network of Hollywood sources, claims she’s never paid for a tip

Elaine Lui is 40 but has the bearing of a 16-year-old, boundless and brash, her body language filled with aggressive eye rolls, giggles and wild gesticulation. Sitting in a green room at the CTV studios on Queen West, writing a post for her blog, ­LaineyGossip, she takes a long drag from her e-cigarette, a bejewelled bauble that looks like a tube of lip gloss and emits a trail of vanilla-scented vapour. Then she resumes clacking away at her keyboard. It’s a busy day for Lui. The Golden Globe nominations have just been announced, and she’s struggling to keep up with the ­Sisyphean celebrity news cycle. In an hour, she’s scheduled to shoot an episode of her daytime talk show, The Social, and tape interviews to be banked for eTalk and CP24. She takes another hit from the e-cig as her stylist douses her with hairspray, engulfing Lui in a toxic cloud of chemicals.

That e-cigarette goes everywhere she does, doubling as a calling card and neurotic crutch. She sucks it surreptitiously at restaurants, blowing vapour out the side of her mouth. When she gets excited, she waves it around like a Canada Day ­sparkler. At parties, it dangles between her fingers while she stands back and monitors the room. She started smoking it in 2012, giving up regular cigarettes soon after. In one slender, shimmery package, it crystallizes Lui’s paradoxical persona: she’s at once a bubbly, bitchy, perma-teen gossip queen and a shrewd social anthropologist with an arch Dorothy Parker wit. She polarizes readers with her candor and celebrity partisanship.

People love Lainey, but they love to hate her even more.

When you Google “gossip blog,” hers is usually the second hit, preceded only by Perez Hilton. It’s as loud and brassy as she is, a digital Candyland of Smurf blue and Barbie pink, with a pair of smiling fuchsia lips sipping a martini in the corner of the screen. At the top of each page is her daily editorial, called “Dear Gossips,” a free-form monologue about whatever’s on her mind—the Oscar nominees, Chinese New Year rituals, Mariah Carey’s latest Instagram photos. She posts, on average, 10 or 12 times a day, roughly 3,000 words total, sassing the celebs she hates and fluffing the ones she loves, supplementing the posts with candid snaps or red ­carpet photos she obtains from paparazzi agencies. On a recent Wednesday, she speculated on a possible affair between the actors Ewan McGregor (who’s married) and Mélanie Laurent (who’s not his wife), assessed the rising star of actor Nicholas Hoult and worked digs about Rob Ford’s Steak Queen video into a post about Rachel McAdams walking her dog. It was a typical day in Lainey land: a frenetic pastiche of pop culture and politics, catty malice and fawning praise, in-depth reporting and shallow musing. Her prose reads like James Joyce as interpreted by Mindy Kaling—a sharp, girly stream of consciousness for the Internet age.

More than any other source—tabloids, glossies, even the most formidable publicists—the blogosphere controls the 2014 star system. Last year, weekly celebrity magazines suffered a steep decline in newsstand sales: People dropped by 14 per cent, Us Weekly by 12.9 per cent and Life and Style by 17.7 per cent. Bloggers like Lui report the same news, only faster and in greater quantities. Unlike the traditional outlets, the blogosphere runs in real time, operating on an infinite feedback loop of star sightings, insider tips and reader demand.

Lui on the set of CTV’s The Social.

In the taxonomy of gossip blogs, Perez Hilton is the shit-disturber, sneering at his subjects and tagging their photos with lewd graffiti. Jared Eng of Just Jared is the suck-up, cooing at cute new couples and celebrity babies. And Lainey Lui is the philosopher queen. She deconstructs the artifice of celebrity, reveals the backroom deals and institutional ­hierarchies, and positions those pixie-dusted demigods as symbols of our values, prejudices and obsessions. Of the thousands of bloggers prowling the Internet, she’s risen to the top echelon by delivering a ­mix of gossip, barefaced opinion and trademark ­mischief that readers find irresistible. Yet her posts are so effortless, so breezily conversational, you can practically hear Lui speaking them over ­cocktails, stretching her vowels and crackling with Valley Girl vocal fry. “My goal is to have a direct discussion with readers,” she says. “I mean, I’m like they are. I just want to talk shit about these people.”

Lui has leveraged her brand into an expansive media footprint: since 2006, she’s served as eTalk’s red carpet reporter, a gig that sends her to Cannes, Sundance, the Super Bowl and the Oscars. Her first book, Listen to the Squawking Chicken, is out this month. Last year, she moved back to Toronto after 13 years in Vancouver to join The Social, a daytime talk show. Now, whenever you walk along Queen West, her face smirks down at you from a 20-foot billboard.

The post In Lurv With Lainey: Elaine Lui’s rise to the top of the gossip pantheon appeared first on torontolife.com.

When hip-hop and NBA stars want a good time, they call party queen Mona Halem. Inside a decadent world of $700 champagne, secret guest lists and hordes of beautiful women

By Courtney Shea | Photograph by Dave Gillespie

Mona Halem at Uniun nightclub in March

On a Monday night last August, half the hip-hop world showed up unannounced in Toronto: Lil Wayne, P. Diddy, Kanye West, Big Sean, French Montana, Mase, TLC. All had agreed to perform as surprise guests at Drake’s annual concert, OVO Fest, which, like all things Drake, has become wildly successful. The ability to produce a roster of acts that reads like a fantasy Grammy lineup speaks to Drake’s clout, but the secrecy involved presented a practical problem: with no advance notice, nobody had organized an after-party. For this group of career ballers, it was a rare case of all blinged out and nowhere to go. Even Drizzy, who lives in Toronto for at least part of the year, was at a loss. Then someone suggested the obvious: call Mona.

Mona Halem throws parties—the kind of parties that make regular people feel like they’re in a music video, perhaps because real music video stars always show up. The kind of parties where rich guys “lose” their wedding rings, pretty girls “forget” their wallets and everyone dances in a haze of champagne fizz and fake tan, strobe lights and hookah vapour. Halem runs a company called Lady Luck Entertainment. She is an event planner, a 24-hour concierge, a VIP hostess and a hustler. She has thousands of Facebook friends and Instagram followers who never miss her events. Notable among these regulars is a group of women—known in the city’s nightlife world as “Mona’s girls”—who are pretty and interested in meeting the high rollers who populate Halem’s parties. Over the last decade, she has amassed an enviable contact list of VIP clients—athletes and celebrities who call her up when they’re coming to town, which is why her big parties often ­coincide with visits from marquee players or teams.

The night of OVO Fest, Halem was already scheduled to throw a Caribana party on the rooftop patio of the Queen West nightclub Cube. Cube is one of nine clubs owned by Charles Khabouth, the city’s long-reigning nightlife king—its second-storey rooftop, decorated with potted palms and long, low-slung cabana-style sofas, is the site of many of the summer’s most exclusive events. Two hours after Halem found out that Drake wanted to make her party his after-party, he arrived with his entourage and immediately asked for 10 bottles of Armand de Brignac “Ace of Spades” champagne at $700 apiece. Not to be outdone, Diddy grabbed the menu, ripped it in half and ordered one of everything. Later, he literally swung from the rafters while a sea of women competed to catch his eye. Outside, a mob of 500 people tried to push past security, and cops on horseback redirected streetcars because 20 limos had turned Queen into a parking lot. Before the end of the night, the club ran out of champagne.

Last summer, Drake, Kanye, P. Diddy and other ­hip-hop royalty attended a Mona Halem party at the Queen West nightclub Cube

The party was instantly legendary—and proof that Toronto the Good had become Toronto the Good Time. American VIPs love to party here because it’s close to home but a world away.

What happens here actually stays here, since Toronto is largely free of the paparazzi and gossip media that make cavorting under the radar almost impossible in large U.S. cities.

American athletes mark visits to Toronto on their calendars because they know it’s going to be a wild time. In 2010, Jason Whitlock, a journalist with Fox Sports, dubbed Toronto “White Vegas”—Sin City with snow—and the nickname stuck. The same year, Michael Grange, a Globe and Mail writer, claimed Chris Bosh’s stats were effectively inflated because visiting teams were always hungover after attending Halem’s parties. Bosh has since moved to Miami, but the party scene that left his opponents cotton-mouthed and bleary-eyed has only escalated since his departure. The Raptors’ win-loss record continues to benefit from early Sunday games. A Saturday night in Toronto is too much to resist.

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John Greyson is the quintessential loud-and-proud gay activist—earnest, ardent and perpetually revved up about one cause or another. On a trip to Cairo last year, after being arrested, beaten and thrown into a fetid cell with 37 other men, his subversive background became a serious liability. Fifty days inside Tora Prison

By Jason McBride | Photograph by Nigel Dickson

Before he travelled to Egypt last summer, John Greyson had been arrested twice in his life. The first time was in 1983, when he happened to walk perilously close to a bathhouse that was the subject of a police stakeout. The second time was a few years later, at an Eaton Centre “kiss-in” held by the LGBT activist organization Queer Nation. On both occasions, he was held only briefly and was never charged with anything—men making out with men in public, to the chagrin of the cops, was not a criminal offence.

Cairo was frighteningly, confusingly different. Greyson, a filmmaker and professor at York, was on his way to Gaza in the company of his friend Tarek Loubani, a 33-year-old emergency room doctor from London, Ontario. Greyson first met Loubani at the Toronto Palestine Film Festival in 2012. Loubani is of Palestinian descent and had travelled to Gaza before, volunteering at the al-Shifa Hospital. On this trip, he was bringing some routers to help improve the hospital’s Wi-Fi, as well as a pair of small remote control helicopters used to transport blood samples and medical tests through crowded cities. Greyson was interested in ­Loubani’s work and hoped to get some B-roll footage for Jericho, a film he was working on that was partly set during the Gaza War of 2009. He planned to stay three weeks.

The two men arrived in Cairo the evening of August 15, intending to proceed the next day to the border. After the 2011 revolution that overthrew Hosni Mubarak and led to Muslim Brotherhood member Mohammed Morsi’s election, Loubani had been able to travel easily from Egypt to Gaza. Both he and Greyson obtained the necessary transit visas. What they didn’t realize was that while they were en route, Egyptian security forces, who had overthrown Morsi in a military coup, massacred hundreds of pro-Morsi supporters at sit-ins in Cairo. When they got off the plane, the city was under curfew and their jumpy cab driver, who told them little about what was going on, couldn’t get past a barricade two kilometres from their hotel. They made the rest of the trip on foot, and when they got to the hotel and saw the news, they learned a demonstration had been planned for the next morning at nearby Ramses Square.

Cairo was at a standstill, and Loubani and Greyson were unable to get a car to Gaza. They decided to check out the demonstration. It started peacefully enough, with a crowd gathering just after morning prayers. But soon the army began to fire tear-gas canisters into the crowd, then bullets. After the first wounded body appeared, Loubani, who’d identified himself as a doctor, was directed toward an improvised field hospital in a nearby mosque. While he treated the wounded, ­his friend Greyson was asked by medical personnel to use his video camera to document the carnage. Greyson believes that artists have a responsibility to bear witness and engage with the world—what he calls a “Hippocratic oath for ­artists”—and he didn’t hesitate. He trained his camera on each bleeding protestor who arrived at the mosque, tilting in a single shot from their faces, for identification, to their wounds. Greyson and Loubani worked for six hours and watched the carpet of the mosque turn from green to red as it got soaked with blood. “It’s hard for me to remember that lay people do not deal daily with death,” ­Loubani says, “but John performed admirably in a fucked-up situation.” The field hospital became a makeshift morgue, and Greyson just kept filming. “I was having these Scarlett O’Hara moments,” he says now, recalling the famous shot from Gone With the Wind when Scarlett steps into the field hospital and sees the floor littered with dying soldiers. By the end of the day, he saw 40 people die.

On the way back to their hotel in the sweltering heat, ­Greyson and Loubani stopped at a convenience store for ice cream. Guards at a checkpoint near their hotel detected Loubani’s Palestinian accent, confiscated their passports and took them to a police station. There, they were searched and interrogated for several hours. Loubani’s nose was bloodied, the cops threatened to burn him alive, and he and Greyson were accused of being international terrorists. It didn’t help that the cops found the memory cards from Greyson’s camera stashed in an ice cream bar wrapper. Six hundred people were rounded up and arrested that night. “They kept saying, ‘You’re Hamas,’ ” Greyson remembers, “and I was tempted to say, ‘Yeah, that’s how desperate Hamas is these days, that they’re recruiting gay Canadian experimental filmmakers.’”

The next morning, still not yet charged with anything, they were loaded with about 40 exhausted, dehydrated protestors into a stifling police van—the temperature that day in Cairo was in the high 30s—and driven to the sprawling Tora Prison, notorious for its grim conditions. (Greyson learned weeks later that police threw a canister of tear gas into another van that held 45 prisoners. They locked its doors, sealing the prisoners inside; 37 suffocated and died.)

They spent three hours in the van, with some men passing out from heat stroke, others soiling themselves. And then it got worse. At Tora, Greyson, Loubani and their fellow prisoners were pushed past a gauntlet of guards who punched and kicked them. They were then thrown into a cafeteria, where they were made to kneel on the cement floor with their hands behind their heads. Greyson could hear the guards systematically beating the other prisoners behind him, slowly making their way toward him and Loubani. He was kicked with such force that he wouldn’t be able to sit up properly for days, and for a week afterward, the imprint of one guard’s boot was still visible on his back. As a final punishment, the guards doused them with buckets of urine.

Thirty-eight men were shoved in a cell that measured three by 10 metres. There were no beds or mattresses, just a concrete floor alive with cockroaches. A single tap provided water, straight from the Nile, for washing and drinking, and a wooden cubicle enclosed a toilet. Their money and credit cards were taken from them, their heads shaved, their shoes and clothes exchanged for white cotton jumpsuits silkscreened with the word “Investigation.” Greyson and Loubani were ordered to sign the same laundry list of charges—everything from trying to blow up a police station to murder—that all were made to sign. (It was not an admission of guilt but an acknowledgement that they were being investigated for these crimes.)

Greyson was certain they wouldn’t be held for long. It had been a savage day and night, but surely this was all a terrible ­misunderstanding. As he had repeatedly said to his captors, they were Canadians—he a professor, Loubani a doctor. They had no stake in Egyptian politics. “The whole time I was thinking, ‘We’ll be out in 24 hours,’ ” Greyson says. “Oh, were we ever wrong.”

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In a city where space is at a premium, tiny condos are the new family home. Learning to survive in 700 square feet

By Philip Preville | Photography by Dave Gillespie

Shannon Bury and Paul LeBrun reorganized their condo around their son, Jacob, and often use the building’s hallways as a play space

Shannon Bury was 27, with a marketing job in the 905 and her own condo in Burlington, when the big city came to fetch her. The company she worked for was acquired by a larger firm, Pareto Marketing, which moved her job to Toronto. She moved along with it and traded up, selling her place in Burlington and buying a 607-square-foot, one-bedroom-plus-den unit in Charlie, a 36-storey tower proposed for Charlotte Street near King and Spadina. She got the unit pre-construction for less than $300,000, which was a steal, because really she’d purchased much more than space: she bought the dream Toronto and its developers have been selling throughout this decade-long boom. She was single in the city, blonde and svelte, with a well-paying career-track job and, soon, a condo on the edge of clubland. Toronto would be at her feet and at her service. It was the spring of 2008.

Then she met a guy. A great guy, Paul LeBrun, a Winnipeg native who’d landed in Toronto with a Bay Street securities job. They met at a mutual friend’s condo in February 2010, at a party to watch the Vancouver Olympics men’s gold medal hockey game. (The running joke among their friends is that Paul still doesn’t know who won; he was too busy wooing Shannon.) Before long they were living together at Yonge and St. Clair, with an eye to moving into her condo later that year, once it was finished. But the construction fell behind schedule, and their life together began to outpace the cranes. They got married in the ­summer of 2012, and when they moved into Charlie that November, they were already planning their family. “We figured it would take eight months or so to get pregnant,” she says. “Then there’d be nine months of pregnancy, so we’d have time to enjoy condo life before the baby arrived.” She conceived by Christmas.

Jacob, now 10 months old, is busy teaching his parents the true meaning of square footage. To make room for all the baby equipment, Shannon and Paul relegated to storage an armchair, an end table, a coffee table and, most recently, a loveseat. A lone couch remains from their brief childless-couple condo life. “Our time is spent in play dates, and play dates are spent with everyone sitting on the floor anyway,” Shannon says. Jacob’s playtime inevitably spills out into the hallway. The neighbours don’t complain, and neither does Shannon when, for instance, her 20-something party-boy neighbour has friends over for pre-drinks on the balcony before heading out clubbing. “I can’t hold it against him,” she says. “I’d be doing the same thing in his position. I’m jealous, really.”

Everything that happened to Shannon and Paul in the last few years is also happening to the city itself, shaped by forces greater than any of them. Toronto has been swept up in a maelstrom of human and economic migration that has swelled its population in the core. Shannon and Paul bought into the New Toronto brand: the vertical city of luxury living, cultural experience, Momofuku food and trendy boutiques. That’s how the lifestyle is marketed by politicians and developers alike, and it’s incredibly appealing to young adults in all their forms: staid professionals, graduating millennials, hipsters.

Now their lives are changing, in a wave that could turn out to be as big as the one that herded them downtown: they are becoming parents. Downtown Toronto is being reshaped by the latest baby boom. The total number of ­preschool-age kids is rising fastest where condo towers are going up, and nowhere is the demographic shift happening more intensely than in the crane-addled area south of Queen from University to Dufferin; there, the number of kids under age five has increased since 2006 by a whopping 65 per cent. Toronto is bearing witness to the birth of a new generational phenomenon: the Condo Kid.

And the city is welcoming its Condo Kids, in essence, by putting their cribs in the alcove nursery that condo marketers call a “den.” The real estate tracking firm Urbanation says that, as of last March, there are more than 25,000 condo units under construction in the former City of Toronto, and few of them will have more than two bedrooms. Only 21 of the 50 projects in pre-construction will have three-bedroom units. Even the units with two bedrooms are getting smaller: the average size of a condo in the GTA has dropped precipitously since 2009, from well over 900 square feet to 797 square feet today. Singles in the city are coupling up, having kids and looking for bigger homes, yet developers continue to flood the landscape with ever-tinier units—a situation abetted by a lack of planning and enabled by politicians. A quiet revolution is underway in how Toronto raises kids, one that was perfectly predictable but for which the city has failed to prepare. A whole generation of families are finding themselves stuck in their starter homes.

The post Stuck in Condoland appeared first on Toronto Life.

Converts to CrossFit, the extreme exercise craze, swear it’s life-changing and take pride in their self-inflicted injuries. I was a true believer—until one punishing session landed me in the ER with a shattered leg and a dislocated ankle. I still couldn’t wait to go back

By Lauren McKeon | Photograph by Markian Lozowchuk

Lauren McKeon’s CrossFit injury left her with a spiral fracture—like someone had grabbed her foot and knee, and twisted them fast in opposite directions

In early fall 2013, my husband, Andrew, and I joined a popular CrossFit gym in the city’s east end. Our first class consisted of an intensive hour of non-stop sit-ups, push-ups and squats. It left me riding an adrenalin high—I could practically feel my biceps moulding into hard nuggets. Andrew, however, threw up as soon as we got home. As he staggered out of the washroom, I danced around him, bouncing on the balls of my feet. He had barely finished telling me he felt a little better before I said, “We’re still going back, though, right?”

Like thousands of others in the city, I was hooked. Toronto is a trend-obsessed place: we gravitate toward the new and cool, tend to exhaust it into ubiquity and then move on to the next thing—be it Canada Goose parkas or gluten-free cookies. In recent years, the Instagramming generation latched onto the CrossFit motto “Strong is the new skinny,” incessantly posting workout details and close-up photos of impressive new chiselled quads and six-packs. As we encourage ourselves to live longer and stronger, CrossFit has become king of the “fitspiration” movement. Of all the trendy workouts, from booty boot camps to hot yoga, CrossFit is the one that fulfils extreme get-fit dreams best—not a slow progression toward moderate health and average bodies, but a breakneck pace to the exceptional. Joining CrossFit is like making it into the A-list world of fitness.

To an outsider, a CrossFit workout can look nuts. Participants heave 60-pound kettlebells high over their heads in repetitions of 50, slam medicine balls at a 10-foot-high target on the wall, pull themselves in a swinging arc above the bar of the CrossFit rig—a metal structure that resembles a jungle gym on steroids. Then there are the Olympic-style weightlifting movements, like the snatch (lifting a weighted barbell, up to 300 pounds, from ground to overhead in one explosive motion), the clean-and-jerk (raising a barbell to shoulder height, then overhead as legs spring forward into a lunge) and the dead lift (fast and controlled, hoisting barbell from floor to hips and back). Oh, and the intervals of intense running. CrossFitters pride themselves not on a singular expertise, like, say, mastering a marathon or becoming a rep-level hockey player, but on general physical preparedness. The regimen is designed to make everything your body does better, from stamina to strength to flexibility. If there is ever a zombie apocalypse, CrossFitters will be the ones who survive.

Andrew and I reorganized our lives around CrossFit. Each Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning at 6:50 a.m., we’d arrive at our rough, utilitarian CrossFit gym, or “box” in CrossFit parlance, swathed in layers of sweats and spandex. (It was winter, and the gym managers rarely turned the heat on.) The hour’s agenda would be scrawled on a whiteboard near a set of rowing machines. It always included, in order: a warm-up, stretching and skills improvement, then the Workout of the Day, or WOD, ending with a cool-down and the posting of your numbers (times, weights, reps) on another board. Guided by the coach, everyone followed the same workout—whether you were a 250-pound tank, like one intimidating class member, or a 165-pound, five-foot-eight woman (me).

As a newbie, I wasn’t strong or skilled enough to do everything the agenda prescribed. What the strongest man or woman in the box could lift got posted too—so you could see how far you had to go.

As a teen, I’d competed in kick-boxing fights but had slowed down after I’d popped ligaments in my left knee. I was wary of reinjuring that same knee in CrossFit and had to remember not to push myself too hard. For upper body exercises, I didn’t have any such excuse. Our workout almost always included at least 30 pull-ups (the chin-up’s slightly tougher cousin) but more often double or triple that number, which turned my arms and shoulders to jelly. When it came to weights, I fell even further behind.

Some coaches were great; others seemed unsure of how much weight I should be lifting. At times, the workouts made no sense to me, more a random testament to machismo than a targeted program. People occasionally complained when a WOD felt particularly cruel—like the time we had to run 800 metres, then do 30 ­kettlebell swings, followed by 30 pull-ups, five times in a row—but not very loudly and usually with a tacked-on chuckle. As long as we were killing it, most of us didn’t care. There was a cultish groupthink at work: I was caught in a flux of being cheered on and trying to beat the person next to me so I wouldn’t finish last in a timed WOD. After class, we’d all collapse on the black rubber floor, sweating and utterly spent.

My love affair with CrossFit ended abruptly on January 6. That day, we had one minute to do 12 burpees, hitting the bar of the CrossFit rig. Next came 12 box jumps—launching yourself onto a wooden box from a two-footed stance, no running starts allowed—also in one minute. We had to do both over and over again, a dozen times. I’d waffled over what size box to use, and was unhelpfully instructed to try “whatever felt comfortable.” I chose a two-foot box—slightly smaller than everyone else’s. Midway into the workout, my left knee began to feel wobbly every time I landed on top of the box. When I told the instructor, he swapped it out for another that was four inches lower. I should have stopped—but stopping was unthinkable. Two sloppy jumps later, my left knee gave out and I fell. I could hear my leg bones shattering—it sounded like gunfire.

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David Mirvish wants to dismantle his famous father’s empire to build two giant Frank Gehry towers and a gallery for his personal art collection. He thought Toronto would be grateful. He was wrong. A behind-the-scenes story of mega-monuments and monumental egos

By Leah McLaren | Photograph by Markian Lozowchuk

At the end of 2011, David Mirvish was itching for a new venture. He wanted to take on something grand, something unprecedented, a legacy project that would bring together his twin passions: business and art. He wanted to build the greatest piece of architecture Toronto had ever seen.

He went to his friend Peter Kofman for ideas. Kofman, who is an engineer by training and a developer by trade, had worked with Mirvish on two earlier condo projects, One King West and a revamp of the old Westinghouse building at 355 King West, which both men considered modest successes.

Mirvish was looking to do something with the buildings he owns on King, between John and Simcoe. His father, Ed, had bought up most of that chunk of real estate in the ’60s and ’70s, and David had spent the better part of his career developing it into Toronto’s theatre district. The Royal Alexandra Theatre, the original jewel in Mirvish Productions’ crown, borders the site to the east. To the west is the Princess of Wales Theatre, which the family built in 1993. In and around them are four century-old warehouses, one housing Mirvish Productions’ offices.

Kofman proposed a radical solution: why not tear it all down and start fresh?

The idea seemed crazy, but once Mirvish started thinking about it, he came around. With the exception of the historically designated Royal Alex, which he wouldn’t touch, the rest of the properties were expendable. Yes, the warehouses and the Princess of Wales functioned well for their purposes, and held some sentimental value, but the area could be so much more. With the new TIFF condo tower nearby, his strip of King was well positioned to become a creative hub for the city. He imagined an entire block devoted to modern art, architecture and design. He’d build a gallery to house his enormous collection of modern art, and a second OCAD campus, which the university sorely needs. The project would be extravagant, but he would recoup his investment by including thousands of residential condos in the design. If things went well, Mirvish stood to make a killing.

For a development of this scale there was only one man for the job in Mirvish’s mind: Frank Gehry. The Toronto-born, L.A.-based architect is the greatest of his generation—the world’s original starchitect and a man known for single-handedly revitalizing B-cities like Bilbao with his over-the-top designs.

Gehry and Mirvish first met in 1971 at a dinner party and bonded over their shared interest in abstract expressionism. Over the years, the two men stayed in touch—Mirvish visited Gehry during the construction of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles in the late ’90s. As someone who had spent years luring tourists to his theatres, Mirvish fantasized about what effect Gehry might have on Toronto. Now he had an opportunity to find out.

He contacted Gehry, who was immediately enthusiastic about the project’s possibilities, if wary of its potential complications. His initial concern was whether a complex of such ambitious scope and scale could get built in Toronto. He didn’t want to spend years developing something only to see it shut down by regulation-obsessed bureaucrats at city hall. Gehry is 85. Even if the project went perfectly according to plan—and no project ever does—he would be in his 90s before it was completed. “He needed to know that we would stick with it and in turn he would stick with us,” says Mirvish.

Over the next several months, Gehry’s office produced a plan for three 80-plus-storey condo towers sitting on a six-storey base that would house high-end shops, restaurants, an OCAD ­campus and Mirvish’s gallery. The proposed towers were pure Gehry: precariously stacked and bulging, like buildings in a sci-fi epic. They were beautiful yet almost unnerving to look at.

Mirvish expected the brilliance of Gehry’s design—­combined with the promised campus and art gallery—to be enough to convince the city to let him break every rule in the official city plan. He wanted permission to rip down the Princess of Wales theatre as well as the four warehouses. The design would also significantly exceed the area’s 49-storey height standard. And he was proposing to more than double the residential population on that stretch of King (the city’s last count, in 2011, put it at 3,610). In order to give Mirvish what he wanted, the city would have to make a slew of exceptions, effectively opening the door for other, perhaps less visionary, developers to demand the same.

Mirvish exudes a very Toronto sort of niceness, but there is flint beneath that gentle surface—the determination of a rich and clever man who is accustomed to getting precisely what he wants without ever having to raise his voice. He knew he was asking the impossible when he went to the city with his proposal, but he also felt that he earned their indulgence. When Ed Mirvish bought the Royal Alex in 1963, he saved it from becoming a parking lot. He refurbished the theatre and opened its doors to the public instead. Given how long his family has owned this particular block, David Mirvish seems to think he knows what’s best for it. It’s a position of astonishing ­entitlement—and not altogether wrong.

The post David Mirvish on the Edge appeared first on Toronto Life.

For three years, Ian Borbely told everyone that his girlfriend, Samantha Collins, had abandoned him and their young son. Then a cottager found a mysterious crate hidden beneath his floorboards

By Zander Sherman | Photograph by Eamon MacMahon

Samantha Collins met Ian Borbely at a mutual friend’s party in 2003. They came from different worlds. She was 25 and striking, with long black hair and fair skin. She’d been raised by a single mom in Mississauga and never knew her father. She got pregnant in high school, dropped out and gave up custody of her baby. After that, she started selling drugs and working as a stripper at a club near Pearson to earn a living. ­Borbely was three years ­older, a body­builder from Bracebridge, the son of ­doting ­middle-class parents. His friends describe him as a gentle ­teddy bear—the nicest guy in the room. He’d moved to ­Toronto to work as a personal trainer, taking a fence-building gig on the side. He was attracted to Collins, and after that first hookup he invited her to move into his place.

The early months were a blur of booze and coke and all-night parties. They spent so much money on drugs, they usually didn’t have enough to make rent. Borbely was eventually charged with possession of stolen property from a construction firm next door to the fencing company. Terrified of how hard the judge would come down, and late on rent, he skipped his court appearance and left town in the middle of the night. He and Collins packed everything they could fit into his car and headed to his parents’ house. The police issued a warrant for his arrest, but nothing came of it.

Bracebridge is in the heart of Muskoka. In the summer, the area is a pleasure playground, the Malibu of the north, ­attracting the likes of Goldie Hawn, Martin Short, Justin Bieber and Tom Hanks, along with hockey stars, media moguls and ­captains of industry. Cottages start at roughly a million and skyrocket from there. The rest of the year, Muskoka’s small towns and its permanent residents are notably less flush—the median annual income in Bracebridge is $30,000. Many of the town’s 15,000 residents know each other by name. Identify yourself as a Hammond or Miller or Boyer and you’ll be asked if you’re Brad’s cousin or one of Norm’s kids or any relation to ­Patrick, whose family helped settle this place when its trees were still ­being felled, the logs floated downriver to be used in ship­building. Everyone knew that Ian Borbely was back in town and that he’d brought his new Toronto girlfriend with him.

George and Cindy Borbely were happy to have their son home, but they didn’t like Collins. George, an OPP administrator, was too polite to speak up, but Cindy, who worked for the Ministry of Government Services, immediately saw Collins as a bad influence and told her son as much. Ian ignored her. Shortly after they moved in with his parents, Samantha got pregnant. Their son was born in May 2004.

They eventually found a small apartment in Bracebridge and moved out. He took construction jobs, but they struggled to pay rent and look after their son. They also fought ­often—loudly and violently. When their son was four months old, ­Collins was arrested for punching Borbely, who had threatened to report her to Children’s Aid. Another time, she threw a plate of spaghetti at his head. Their landlord was so disturbed by the fighting that he paid them $900 to vacate their apartment.

They moved to another apartment on the outskirts of ­Bracebridge. Soon they were evicted for not paying rent and moved into an apartment in a bungalow near the Muskoka River. ­Borbely started working for a contractor named Jeremy Crease, mostly doing cottage renovations. Collins found work as a waitress at a family restaurant called the Purple Pig and sought counselling for her addiction. But she was fed up with Boberly and started having affairs with other men—some of whom Borbely suspected and confronted. Collins would take off for days at a time, come home and crash, then ­disappear again.

She formed a vague plan to break up with Borbely and take their son with her. On March 19, 2007, she told her doctor she was going to leave town. Two days later, she asked her addiction counsellor to write a letter that testified to her progress in the program, which she may have intended to use to apply for sole custody of her son.

Collins and Borbely were months behind on their rent—some $3,000 in arrears. If this landlord evicted them, they’d have to move back in with his parents. On March 22, they were scheduled to appear at 9:30 a.m. at a rent tribunal. Borbely got up early to take their son to daycare, while Collins stayed home and got dressed. She made a series of phone calls, including one to their son’s daycare centre, telling the staff not to let George or Cindy pick him up later that day. She’d decided she was ready to leave Bracebridge.

But Borbely returned home before Collins could leave. He found her on the phone with Jeremy Crease. Borbely had told her that Crease would give him a loan to help them with rent and maybe even save them from eviction. Borbely grabbed the phone and told Crease he’d just made something up to get ­Collins off his back.

After he hung up, they got into another raging fight. ­According to the theory later advanced by Crown prosecutors, Borbely attacked Collins, bashing her head four times with a blunt ­object until her skull shattered. Collins tried to protect her head with her right hand, but Borbely pounded her with such force that her fingers broke too. So wham—hand goes up—wham, wham, wham.

Collins went limp and slumped to the ground.

The post Murder in Muskoka appeared first on Toronto Life.

The death of Sammy Yatim unleashed a torrent of anti-police outrage. For most Torontonians, the video was the verdict. But what really happened on the Dundas streetcar that night? The untold story of the cop who pulled the trigger—and why

By Mary Rogan

(Image: John Hanley)

Just before midnight on July 26, 2013, Sammy Yatim boarded a westbound Dundas streetcar and made his way to the back. He was wearing the standard teen trifecta of baseball cap, black T-shirt and jeans that hung loosely off his slight frame. Despite the late hour, the streetcar was filling up. It was a Friday night in the middle of the summer, and Toronto was hopping: Justin Bieber at the ACC, Kiss at the Molson Amphitheatre, a beer festival at the CNE grounds and the Jays hosting the Houston Astros at the Dome.

Four young women got on around Spadina and found seats in the back, near Yatim. Soon ­after, he unzipped his fly and pulled out his penis. The other passengers heard a piercing scream and turned around to see one of the women jump out of her seat. Yatim had a stiletto switchblade and had tried to slash the woman’s throat. The panic onboard was instantaneous. The crowd surged forward on the streetcar, some rushing down the steps to the back exit, most pushing toward the front to get as far away from Yatim as possible. Frantic passengers were screaming to get out as Yatim inched up the aisle toward them, but the doors wouldn’t open on the moving streetcar and the steps quickly clogged with people. Yatim shouted, “Nobody get off the fucking streetcar.” All the while, he had the knife outstretched in one hand and his penis in the other.

The streetcar driver saw the stampede behind him and stopped the car at Bellwoods Avenue, opening both sets of doors. Passengers pushed and stumbled their way out. Some landed hard on the pavement before scrambling away. Inside the streetcar, one more rider was backing up the aisle, dragging his bike in front of him like a shield as Yatim advanced with his eyes wide and his jaw clenched. By the time the passenger reached the front door, Yatim had switched gears and was telling everyone to get off the streetcar, so the passenger jumped out, bike in tow.

Behind Yatim, the car looked to be deserted. Suddenly, a male passenger who had been hiding between two seats popped his head up and crept over to the back doors. He stood there for several seconds, as if trying to guess whether Yatim was going to stay on the streetcar or go out the front, probably to avoid running straight into him. He decided to take his chances and ran out the back.

Then it was just Yatim and the driver, who’d waited ­until all the passengers were off ­before trying to make his exit. By this time, several ­people outside had phoned 911, inc­luding one of the women from the back of the streetcar, who was crying hysterically into her phone, saying, “A man tried to kill me.” The police were seconds away. Yatim and the driver seemed to see the flashing lights through the front window at the same moment. The driver bolted just as Yatim lunged at him with the knife.

Yatim was alone at the front of the streetcar when ­Constable James Forcillo and his partner, the first cops on the scene, rushed to the open doorway. The only information Forcillo had when he arrived was that a man had tried to stab a girl on the streetcar. As the “roll-up” cop, Forcillo was the de facto officer in charge until a division sergeant got there. He pulled out his gun, a police-issue Glock 22 with hollow-point bullets, and stood roughly 12 feet away from the door, legs splayed, aiming squarely at Yatim. Like all Toronto police, Forcillo had been trained to take out his weapon only if he believed lethal force might be necessary. In other words, when a cop pulls his gun, it’s never a bluff. He’s prepared to use it.

“Drop the knife,” Forcillo ordered.

“No. You’re a fucking pussy,” Yatim replied.

Forcillo asked his partner to radio for a Taser to subdue ­Yatim. In Toronto, only division sergeants are allowed to carry Tasers. Normally, there are two road sergeants for each shift, but that night there was only one on duty for 14 Division, which covers seven downtown neighbourhoods—the Annex, Kensington-Chinatown, Palmerston–Little Italy, Christie-Ossington, Trinity Bellwoods, South Parkdale and the waterfront. Forcillo’s sergeant could have been in any one of them.

Over the cacophony of competing sirens as other officers arrived at the scene, Forcillo and two other cops shouted at Yatim half a dozen times to drop his weapon. Every time a cop barked, “Drop the knife,” Yatim’s answer was the same: “You’re a fucking pussy.”

Behind Forcillo, passengers were talking about what had just happened on the streetcar, some of them crying. It was Forcillo’s job to contain the scene and make sure Yatim didn’t get off the streetcar wielding a weapon. He could have reached Forcillo in one leap. If he jumped out into the crowd with his knife, Forcillo wouldn’t have been able to use his gun without endangering bystanders. He warned Yatim, “If you take one more step in this direction, that’s it for you, I’m telling you right now.” Yatim turned away and stepped back into the interior of the streetcar, then appeared to make a decision. He turned to face Forcillo and took a step toward the exit. Another cop shouted “Drop the—” but didn’t get to finish his sentence before Forcillo fired three quick shots. Yatim crumpled to the floor of the streetcar, still holding the knife. Cops were yelling “Drop it” when Forcillo squeezed off six more shots. He was the only officer to fire his gun. The cop standing on his right had his gun drawn but didn’t fire. His partner, standing a few feet to his left, never took her gun out of her holster.

Almost a dozen cops raced over. Yatim was still moving, still clenching the knife, when the division sergeant arrived, darted through the front doors and Tasered him. The crackle of the stun gun was unmistakable. Several more officers boarded the streetcar. One of them kicked the knife away from Yatim’s hand, and it hurtled into the air, clattering against the streetcar window. ­Another began CPR. Forcillo, ­standing in the ­middle of the crush of cops clustered at the front door, abruptly wheeled away and stood alone for a few seconds. An officer walked over and put his hand on Forcillo’s shoulder, leading him from the scene.

Police continued to do chest compressions on Yatim until the paramedics arrived and took over. He was pronounced dead at St. Michael’s Hospital early in the morning of July 27.

Within an hour, a cellphone video was posted to YouTube and quickly went viral. It was reposted on Facebook and ­Twitter and led every newscast across the city. Toronto was transfixed by the last 90 seconds of Sammy Yatim’s life. A city-wide consensus quickly formed: this 18-year-old didn’t have to die. The police could have held their fire and waited for the ­Taser. They could have tried to talk Yatim down instead of working him up, or shot the knife out of his hand, or used ­pepper spray. There had to be a non-lethal option available. And the question on everyone’s mind was, what kind of cop shoots a troubled teenager nine times?

The post The Killing of Sammy Yatim appeared first on Toronto Life.

The rich and powerful want to keep their pretty rural getaway for themselves. The suburban developer Benny Marotta had other plans. A bizarre tale of smear campaigns, hired thugs and small-town vengeance

By Kelly Pullen

From left: Caledon mayor Marolyn Morrison blocked Marotta’s planned suburb (Image: Derek Shapton); Developer Benny Marotta threatened to sue Caledon for $500 million (Image: CP Images)

Marolyn Morrison’s first meeting with Benny Marotta, the man who would become her nemesis, didn’t get off to a good start. It was spring 2004, shortly after Morrison was elected mayor of the leafy, sprawling town of Caledon. “Town,” in this case, is a bit of a misnomer, since Caledon encompasses many towns and hamlets scattered across its 700 square kilometres of mostly rural land. That morning, Morrison arrived at her office at the town hall with a sense of unease. She asked her chief planner to accompany her to the meeting so she wouldn’t be on her own.

Morrison is 67 and has short, brass-blonde hair and a folksy air that masks the hard determination of a woman who takes pleasure in ruling over her fiefdom. Marotta, who is 63, is a slick and self-assured Woodbridge developer. He strutted into Morrison’s office as though he owned it—and in a sense, he did. Marotta’s company, Solmar, was a major investor in Caledon. He was in the early stages of developing an ambitious 61-hectare business park in Bolton—a town in the eastern corner of Caledon, near Vaughan. He’d submitted the development proposal under the town’s previous mayor, and he was eager to ensure Morrison was on board. But he also wanted to tell her about another new project he had in the works. Marotta had his eye on a swath of farmland just west of the business park. He planned to acquire 850 hectares, and he was dreaming big.

“Look what I’m going to do for you—and for the town of Caledon,” Marotta said as he unrolled a blueprint and laid it across a table. It was for a massive development he’d called Humber Station Village. The project was like a whole new town—a mixed-use, mixed-income community, with up to 8,000 residences (detached homes and townhouses and low-rise condo buildings) and five million square feet of commercial space. It was a speculative play, but one he was quite confident about. The site consisted of 111 properties, many of them struggling or out-of-commission farms. Marotta’s plan was to gradually buy up the land and build Humber Station Village over 20 years, at a rate of about 300 homes a year.

“It was basically a subdivision,” Morrison told me. “I looked at the plans, and I thought, Excuse me?” She claims she told Marotta that the development looked like Brampton, only with a few more trees, and that as long as she was mayor, Caledon would never look like Brampton.

Marotta recalls the meeting a little differently. He says that Morrison didn’t voice any objection to the plan at the time, that she told him she thought the business park was a good thing for Bolton and thanked him for investing in the area. Based on that meeting, Marotta carried on with the development of his business park and with his plans for Humber Station Village.

Toronto’s growth has reached outward in all directions. One hundred thousand people are moving to the GTA every year, and they need to settle somewhere. Until recently, ­Caledon has largely remained a rural oasis, untouched by the creeping crescents of identical brick houses approaching from the south and east. But now the barbarians are at the gate, and Caledon’s most influential people—both politicians and wealthy ­residents—are manning the ramparts.

The province saw the urban-rural clashes coming and laid down some ground rules: the Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan, the Greenbelt Act and the Places to Grow Act all served to both protect rural land and contain urban sprawl. Places to Grow, the mother of all planning legislation, had scope and ambition but lacked teeth­—the province routinely grants exemptions to municipalities that aren’t abiding by the law. All around the GTA, once-peaceful rural zones are turning into battlegrounds on which preservationists defend against dogged developers.

Morrison has spent her entire political career in Caledon. Before she became mayor she was a school board trustee and a regional councillor representing a ward in western Caledon for 15 years. She often describes Caledon as a “community of communities,” a special place that, in her words, should dare to be different. “Caledon will be planned by the people of Caledon,” she likes to say, “not by developers.” Marotta was exactly the kind of builder Morrison was determined to keep out, and her resolve prompted one of the fiercest, most bizarre development fights in the GTA.

The post Battleground Caledon appeared first on Toronto Life.

A new generation of parents are refusing to vaccinate their kids. They’re convinced the shots are far more dangerous than the diseases they’re meant to prevent, and they’re willing to become social pariahs to prove it

By Lauren McKeon | Photography by Anya Chibis

Ananda More, a Toronto homeopath, treats her daughter with alternative therapies instead of vaccines

Jennifer was adamant that Franca not be vaccinated. As a teen, she had a bad reaction to a flu shot that kept her in bed for a month. In her 20s, she read horror stories about parents whose children had adverse reactions to routine vaccines that contained things like mercury and formaldehyde.

Five months after Franca was born, her parents divorced. Frank only agreed to give Jennifer custody if she had their daughter vaccinated. So, in late 2012, Jennifer reluctantly took Franca, then 10 months old, for her first round. Jennifer says Franca developed cold and flu symptoms within hours, picking at her ears incessantly. Then, after Franca’s second and third sets of immunizations at 18 months, Jennifer thought she noticed her daughter’s speech and mobility development regressing.

She blamed the vaccines, though her doctor vehemently disagreed with her. She asked a homeopath to perform a metal test on Franca. When it came back showing high mercury content in Franca’s blood and urine, Jennifer confronted her GP, who told her it was only one spike and that it could have been caused by something Franca had eaten. Jennifer, unconvinced, has sworn she won’t allow her daughter to be injected with any more chemicals and persuaded Frank it’s in the child’s best interest. But her extended family is furious with her, saying she’s risking Franca’s safety and their own. Though Franca’s next set of vaccinations isn’t due until she turns four, Jennifer’s sister and mother have told her that the moment Franca misses a vaccination is the moment she can’t be around her cousins. Her daycare centre has also warned her that Franca won’t be welcome.

None of this has shaken Jennifer’s resolve—she’s convinced she’s right to avoid vaccines, and she’s not alone. A recent Ontario Ministry of Health survey concluded that roughly half of young moms have serious concerns about vaccines. Meanwhile, pro-vaccination parents understandably don’t want their kids exposed. “Vaccination is the segregation issue of our time,” Jennifer told me. “It’s not about blacks and whites anymore. It’s about the people who vaccinate and the people who don’t.”

The post The Vaccine Truthers: why parents shun life-saving shots appeared first on Toronto Life.

Like hundreds of other Hungarian Roma, Jozsef Pusuma and Timea Daroczi came to Toronto seeking asylum. The refugee board believes they’re bilking the system. The Pusumas say they’re avoiding certain death

By Nicholas Hune-Brown | Photography by Aaron Vincent Elkaim

For the last three years, the Pusumas—Jozsef, Timea and their daughter,
Lulu—have evaded deportation by taking sanctuary in this church

Until 2008, Jozsef Pusuma and his wife, Timea Daroczi, had a relatively peaceful life in Budapest. The Pusumas are Roma, the ethnic minority sometimes known as gypsies. They lived with their toddler, Lulu, in a small house on Jozsef’s grandmother’s property, a nice place with a few chickens in the yard. Jozsef worked as truck driver, Timea as an office administrator at the Ministry of Education. On weekends, friends and family would come over to barbecue and drink beer, turning a Saturday night into a small party.

Every once in a while, Jozsef would get a call from the office of Viktória Mohácsi, Timea’s sister-in-law and a former member of the European Union parliament. For years, Mohácsi had been documenting the surge of anti-Roma violence that was spreading across Hungary. When Mohácsi needed help, she often asked Jozsef. He would take addresses from her and drive into the country to visit Roma families who had reported attacks. He would listen to their stories of violence and take notes while they told him, a fellow Roma, things they would never tell the authorities.

In the late 2000s, with Hungary deep in recession, parties on the far right made the Roma a convenient scapegoat, spouting virulent anti-gypsy propaganda that helped them gain popularity. In 2010, the Jobbik party—a far-right group with anti-Semitic and anti-Roma views—won 12 per cent of the vote. In 2013, Zsolt Bayer, one of the founders of the ruling party, Fidesz, wrote in a newspaper column that “a significant part of the Roma are unfit for coexistence. They are not fit to live among people…. These animals shouldn’t be allowed to exist. In no way. That needs to be solved—immediately and regardless of the method.” The rise of racist politics only legitimized the growing tensions between Hungarians and the Roma. In 2008 and 2009, at least six Roma Hungarians were killed and 50 injured in a series of attacks across the countryside. Militias marched through Roma communities with flaming whips and torches. According to a 2012 survey, 60 per cent of polled Hungarians believed that criminality is in Roma blood.

Timea worried about Jozsef’s trips to document the violence. Mohácsi’s outspoken activism had made her a target. She had received multiple threats and was placed under police protection for a time, and Jozsef was fearful that his family might also be in danger. The Pusumas began getting phone calls, angry threats. “They would call me at night,” Jozsef remembers. “ ‘Jozsef, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you.’ Not just one phone call, 20.”

One evening in July 2009, Timea was waiting for Jozsef outside the house with Lulu. As Jozsef parked, a black jeep pulled up. According to Jozsef, four men jumped out of the car, their faces covered by the Arpad flag, a symbol that had been adopted by some far-right militias. The men beat the couple, yelling abuse. Jozsef fell on top of Lulu, protecting her with his body, while the men kicked and punched him. “You stinky gypsy, we know where you live,” one of them yelled. Lulu wailed, her face scratched from her fall to the sidewalk. When another car approached and the driver held down the horn, the men fled.

That’s when the family knew they needed to get out. They sold everything they owned, borrowed money from family and friends for airfare, and jumped on a plane to Toronto.

The post The Family That Won’t Leave appeared first on Toronto Life.

By Philip Preville

(Image: Peter Andrew)

Getting around the city, by public transit or by car, has become a perpetual nightmare of sardine-tin crowds, endless queues and construction bottlenecks. Gridlock is the lightning-rod issue of this mayoral race, with candidates sparring over which transportation fix—underground subways, surface subways, LRT, more buses, more bike lanes, no bike lanes, more speed bumps, no speed bumps—is best. But to voters, who’ve endured a generation-long succession of false starts, bad decisions and political interference, it’s all empty promises. Toronto’s epic infrastructure fail has put commuters in a fury and brought the city to a halt. Here’s a list of the most egregious scandals in recent memory—and who’s to blame.

In 2007, the city announced it would oversee a massive revitalization of Union Station—the most important gateway to the city, and a hub for more than 65 million passengers per year, a figure that’s expected to double by 2031. The project is one of the most complicated ever undertaken in Toronto, involving the preservation and modernization of the grand, historic building, and multiple private companies and government agencies, including the City of Toronto, the TTC (which would build an additional subway platform, mostly with money provided by Waterfront Toronto) and Metrolinx, the provincial agency that runs GO Transit. The total cost of the overhaul was budgeted at just under $1 billion, and it was scheduled to be largely completed in time for the Pan Am Games in 2015.

Seven years later, Union Station is shrouded in scaffolding and tarps, and the construction job has been infernally botched. At least four parts of the project have gone over budget so far, by a ­whopping combined total of $345 million. The price for renovating the building’s train shed, which includes a new glass roof designed by the architect Eb Zeidler, has jumped $60 million, in part because of complicated work not anticipated in the original contract. The cost of the TTC’s improvements is now nearly double the initial estimate, partly due to the need for structural rehabilitation and additional fire ventilation. Rail switch work will cost twice as much as originally expected. And the price tag for the station’s facelift, which included building an additional underground concourse, has jumped by $156 million and counting. There’s lots of blame to go around, but the buck ultimately stops at the top of the organizations involved, with TTC CEO Andy Byford, city manager Joe Pennachetti and Metrolinx CEO Bruce McCuaig. And while the project was David Miller’s baby, many of the budget busts happened under Rob Ford, who until recently continued to promise that he’d protect taxpayer dollars despite mounting evidence he was failing.

City hall should never manage another infrastructure job of this size and scope. Under its watch, new walls were built then torn down after it was discovered other work hadn’t been completed, crucial deadlines were missed (at one point, only two of an expected 12 structural columns had been built), and certain improvements, like a planned PATH ­connection, were forgotten altogether. The city’s department of facilities, design and construction was so overwhelmed by the job of monitoring Carillion, the main supervising contractor, it called upon three consulting companies to help rein in costs and attempt to get the project back on track.

By the end of 2013, the extra costs had burned through the $91 million in contingency funds initially set aside for cost overruns. Council injected an additional $80 ­million on top of that. At this point, we’re so far into this that Toronto can’t afford not to spend the money.

For decades, Montreal’s Olympic stadium was considered the ultimate symbol of budget ineptitude, earning it the nickname the Big Owe. The total cost of the Olympic complex ultimately reached $1.4 billion. Union Station’s renovation, already at $1.33 billion and counting, may yet inherit the mantle.

(Images: McCuaig by Luis Mora; Pennachetti, Byford, Ford by QMI Agency)

The post Gridlocked: how incompetence, pandering and baffling inertia have kept Toronto stuck in traffic appeared first on Toronto Life.

Edward Rogers expected to run the family empire after the death of his father, Ted. But the board squeezed him out

By Kelly Pullen

Suzanne and Edward Rogers in their Forest Hill house. (Image: Getty Images)

n a grey December day in 2008, a thousand people gathered at St. James Cathedral on Church Street to remember Ted Rogers, the legendary founder of Rogers Communications. The business icon had died of congestive heart failure at his Forest Hill home a week earlier, after months of declining health. Rogers’ funeral was a rare event in the city—a ­coming-together of high society, business titans and politicians that was the lay equivalent of a state funeral. Stephen Harper shook hands with his on-again, off-again friend Brian Mulroney, former premiers David Peterson and Mike Harris were in attendance, along with then-mayor David Miller, and members of such big-business clans as the Westons, Jackmans, Shaws and Péladeaus walked solemnly side by side in and out of the church.

As Ted’s widow, Loretta, looked on from the front row, Alan Horn, an accountant who had served as Rogers’ financial lieutenant for more than 15 years before being named chair of the Rogers board, delivered the main eulogy. He referred to his former boss as “young at heart but wise in years,” someone who’d “lived large and dreamt large.” Two of Ted’s daughters, Melinda and Martha, spoke about their father being “their rock,” a devoted family man who always made a point of being home for dinner. And then Edward Jr., Ted and Loretta’s only son, took to the podium. To many in the church, Edward was something of an unknown who’d kept a low profile while working his way up through the ranks of the company. But on that day he was the perceived heir apparent, stepping out from behind his father’s long shadow.

Few people plan their deaths as carefully as Ted Rogers. He had to. His life had been punctuated by multiple illnesses, from the celiac disease and poor eyesight he suffered as a child (he would later be declared legally blind), to a weak heart, aneurysms and a blocked carotid artery. Ted’s father, Edward S. Rogers, had died as a result of an aneurysm at the age of 38, and Ted always feared he would suffer a similar fate. He frequently updated his life insurance policies and established trusts to protect his nearly $8-billion fortune. When it came to the future of his company—which was, in essence, his first child—he left little to chance, consulting with his closest friends, especially John A. Tory, the father of mayoral candidate and Rogers board member John H. Tory.

The result of those consultations was the Rogers Control Trust, which would be run by Loretta, Edward, Melinda, Martha and a third daughter, Lisa, plus a few old friends and trusted advisors (including Horn and Tory, the former Scotiabank CEO Peter Godsoe, and Rogers’ board members Phil Lind and Thomas Hull). Edward was named chair of the trust, Melinda vice-chair. There are all sorts of checks and balances in place (an arrangement Ted compared to the American system of government) to guard against hasty or unilateral actions by any one shareholder. The Trust controls 91 per cent of the Rogers Class A voting shares, making it essentially a family-run operation, in line with other communications behemoths with dual-class shares like ­Comcast (the Roberts family) and News Corp (the Murdochs).

While he was alive, Ted Rogers had always run the public company as though it were his own, and not just because he controlled most of the voting shares; he also retained a 28 per cent financial interest. But more than that, he was the entrepreneurial founder whose fingerprints were all over the organization. He was Rogers Communications. And, for better or worse, he’d instilled a similar sense of proprietorship in his son, along with a deep desire to live up to Ted’s exacting expectations. The question for everybody—including Ted, the Rogers board, company execs and Bay Street—was whether Edward was ready to replace his father as CEO.

So the gathering at St. James Cathedral was not just a funeral, but also a public passing of the generational torch. In his speech, Edward talked about his father the deal-maker, the man who relished the role of the scrappy underdog going up against his entrenched rivals—the David to Bell Canada’s Goliath. He outlined the empire his father had built, acquisition by acquisition. Toward the end of his speech, he reiterated one of Ted’s favourite sayings: “The best is yet to come.” But he followed it up with something that in hindsight was revealing. “With him gone, it is hard to think how this can now still be the case…. He didn’t work so hard and build so much for his passion and determination to die with him.” And with that, Edward Rogers III vowed to continue his father’s legacy.

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It seems like every 30-something couple has an embarrassing financial secret: their boomer parents are covering their mortgages, child-care costs and other expenses

By Leah McLaren | Illustration by Mark Thomas

rica met Gavin on JDate in 2007. They were married two years later and had a daughter two years after that. Gavin owned a one-bedroom condo in Liberty Village, which his parents helped him buy with a $10,000 contribution to his down payment. He sold it, and he and Erica moved into a temporary rental apartment at St. Clair and Bathurst while they looked for a house. Three years later, they were still living in the rental—the $100,000 Gavin made selling his condo, their down payment, shrinking every day as the market continued to skyrocket.

Erica and Gavin aren’t their real names. They’re embarrassed by their financial situation and only agreed to speak to me on the condition of anonymity. They take pride in being career-focused young professionals. She’s 34 and works in the non-profit sector; he’s 40 with a job at a media company, and they have a combined income that fluctuates from the high five to low six figures. The endless house hunting made them feel desperate. Many of their friends had bought homes in the early 2000s and were already trading up to bigger houses in nicer areas, like Little Italy and High Park. The money from Gavin’s condo sale wasn’t enough to buy into those neighbourhoods without pushing them into extreme debt. “Our budget started at $500,000 and quickly went up to $600,000,” Erica says. “Our down payment was going to leave us with a huge mortgage and massive payments.”

Last spring, when Erica’s parents came to visit from Alberta, Erica and Gavin took them around to see a few houses. That’s when Erica’s father, a semi-retired lawyer who is financially comfortable but far from rich, pulled her aside and offered to triple their down payment. The young couple ended up putting $300,000 down on a $661,000 house near St. Clair and Dufferin, which left them with manageable monthly payments.

Erica and Gavin refer to the money as an investment. But for all intents and purposes, it’s a gift—a gift with substantial benefits. Without it, they wouldn’t be considering sending their daughter to private school or eating out whenever they want. Without it, they would either be house poor or living in a neighbourhood they didn’t much like.

Grateful as they are, they avoid talking about how their lifestyle is supported by Erica’s parents. Her three siblings don’t know about it and neither do her in-laws. “They would be hurt if they knew how much my dad was able to put in compared to the amount they put toward Gavin’s condo,” Erica says. She and Gavin don’t want to think about what would happen if her father died tomorrow. (“Would my siblings inherit a portion of my house? That would be awkward.”) When her parents recently visited the new house, she and Gavin expressed their thanks and told them, “This is your house too.”

Erica and Gavin try to be more frugal, not less, because of her parents’ help. She wouldn’t feel comfortable driving a fancy car or going on lavish vacations because her parents might notice and think, “Gee, I guess they could have paid the higher mortgage payments after all.” They’re also careful about what they reveal to friends, many of whom seem to have more decadent lifestyles than they do. “I’m grateful,” she says. “I feel like this money has allowed us to finally catch up.”

The post The Bank of Mom and Dad: confessions of a propped up generation appeared first on Toronto Life.

By Emily Landau | Photograph by Daniel Ehrenworth

From left to right, foreground: Ivan Yuen, 37, co-founder and CTO; Allen Lau, 46, co-founder and CEO; Background: Candice Faktor, 36, general manager; Melissa Shapiro, 34, head of global marketing; Chris Stefanyk, 27, project manager of strategic initiatives; Danielle Thé, 25, product marketing manager; Brandon Zhao, 28, senior data scientist; Marc Shewchun, 42, head of operations; Tarun Sachdeva, 33, chief developer; Aron Levitz, 36, head of business development; Amanda Lai, 26, social media specialist; Ashleigh Gardner, 31, head of content, publishing

Wattpad occupies three floors of a handsome Greek Revival building on the touristy stretch of Wellington East. The office, if you can call it that, is an amusement park of dot-com clichés, strewn with beanbag chairs and elephantine 3-D puzzle-piece ottomans. The staffers laze in vinyl hammocks, slurp snow cones and play Ping-Pong in the main boardroom (they keep paddles at their desks). Framed posters decree upbeat mantras: “You demonstrate a positive attitude. Your optimism and perseverance lead others to overcome tough challenges.” Whether you find them invigorating or trite will depend on your tolerance for perky cheer.

The company is responsible for an app that connects self-publishers with readers. Wattpad’s founders, a pair of computer engineers named Allen Lau and Ivan Yuen, peddle their product as YouTube for books: amateur writers upload their serialized fiction, and a network of 32 million unique users spend nine billion minutes a month reading and anatomizing the content on their phones and iPads. When you tap the tangerine Wattpad logo on your smartphone, a selection of stories appears, organized by genre—chick lit, romance, thriller, werewolf, and so on. The app uses a Netflix-style algorithm that tracks your personal tastes. At the top of the screen is a banner of stories that have gone viral. Recently, those featured titles included The ­Wedding Gift, a serialized romance novel that posts new chapters on Thursdays; Numinous, a kids’ fantasy book about a magical tabby cat; and The Rock Star’s Daughter, an angsty YA phenomenon with four million reads. Users can follow authors, add books to their libraries and comment on their favourites. ­Wattpad’s prolific YA output has made it a household name among young girls and their parents; the bulk of readers are in their teens, with a median age of about 20, and some stories rack up more than a billion reads.

It’s a good time to be a Toronto tech company. Last ­December, the Ontario government teamed up with Cisco Canada, a branch of the San Jose networking conglomerate, to invest up to $4 ­billion in the province’s tech sector over the next 10 years ($220 million from Queen’s Park, the rest from Cisco), funnelling money into venture capital, incubators and R&D facilities. Cisco picked Ontario for its competitive tax rates, university strength and supportive government. A few weeks later, the federal government launched the $300-million Northleaf Venture Catalyst Fund, to invest in tech companies across Canada—the federal and Ontario governments each committed up to $50 million, with the rest coming from private-sector investors like the Canada Pension Plan and the Big Five banks. The tech incubator Extreme Venture Partners has invested in 22 mobile tech start-ups, some of which have been snatched up by Google and Apple.

Financiers have clued in to the potential of the smartphone app industry. Between 2003 and 2012, the number of individuals who own mobile phones grew from 1 billion to 3.4 billion. Of the seven hours of screen time the average Canadian spends per day, 2.5 hours are on a smartphone. These devices are electronic extensions of ourselves, where we broadcast and absorb knowledge and experience. Many people spend more time with their phones than they do with their families.

The fastest-growing segment of the new mobile economy is the app sector, which rakes in $205 billion per year and is predicted to blow up to $576 billion a year by 2020. It’s the ­millennial answer to the dot-com boom, filling the city’s tech entrepreneurs with renewed optimism: there are meet-ups for aspiring code ninjas at Pauper’s Pub and Steam Whistle Brewery, and incubator programs at Ryerson and U of T for burgeoning start-ups where top tech czars provide tips on business management and monetization.

Wattpad is reaping huge benefits from the city’s tech renaissance. This time last year, the company had about 50 employees. Now they’ve hit 100. The office on Wellington is their fourth in as many years. Wattpad’s staff is a ragtag assortment of recruits from places like RIM, Kobo and Rogers; stir-crazy Bay Street refugees; and young brainiacs fresh out of Rotman, Schulich and Waterloo.

Thirty years ago, when products were tangible and users were buyers, a company with 30 million consumers would make a fortune. Wattpad has massive growth and a mushrooming user base, but it’s not making any money yet. Amazingly, that doesn’t seem to bother its creators.

The post The Wattpad Cult: why Toronto’s buzziest tech start-up is a self-publishing app beloved by teen girls appeared first on Toronto Life.

It’s been a big year in the corridors of power, with an infusion of ambitious new leaders in the city’s most influential institutions. Here, our annual ranking of political rainmakers, Bay Street moguls, real estate gurus, major league sports stars, celebrity chefs, culture czars, and everyone else who matters now. In a nutshell: the people whose smarts, connections and clout are changing Toronto as we know it.

The post Toronto’s 50 Most Influential: the people who changed the city in 2014 appeared first on Toronto Life.

She had loving parents and all the opportunities and privileges in the world. Then she discovered drugs

By Emily Wright

The author in kindergarten, in her Havergal uniform (Image: courtesy of Emily Wright)

In 1992, when I was seven, we moved to a sprawling Edwardian house in Rosedale, effectively upgrading from middle class to nouveau riche. My father had risen from a working-class childhood in Montreal to the upper echelons of Bay Street finance. The new house was his prize for all he’d accomplished, a way to show the world what he could do for his family. Growing up, I was provided with unconditional love and support. My mother made a point of encouraging my artistic side, making me costumes for dance recitals and driving me to extracurricular activities.

My home life was as idyllic as a ’50s sitcom, but school was torture. In Grade 1, my parents had enrolled me at Branksome Hall, the private girls’ school in midtown. From the moment I arrived, I was constantly, cruelly bullied. Every day at recess, kids would steal my boots, stuff them with snow and hide them in the playground. I’d run around in my green stockings searching for them while the teachers rang the bell and hollered at me to get in line.

At Branksome, a school known for its academic rigour, I struggled with my studies. (I had a learning disability that wasn’t diagnosed until I was 16.) I was also a deeply sensitive and trusting child—I expressed my feelings, which only made me more vulnerable. When my mom confronted my teachers about the bullying, they’d tell her I was being too touchy, that I needed to pull up my socks and deal with it. I made a few friends in my neighbourhood—kids I would play with on weekends and after school—but I was always worried they’d discover whatever my classmates hated about me and disappear. Over the years, I developed a chameleonic tendency to change my personality for whomever I was with—a dangerous pattern that followed me into adulthood.

I switched schools seven times in the next decade. At most places the bullying intensified, chipping away at my self-esteem. In Grade 7, I landed at the co-ed private school Montcrest, where the kids called me fat and scribbled BITCH in my notebooks. To fill my friendship void, I became addicted to Yahoo chat rooms—primitive, unfiltered oceans of lonely teens searching for a connection. In Grade 8, I became involved with a handsome lacrosse player who lived in Mississauga. After chatting for a few months, we started dating in real life. I was 14; he was 17. That summer, he came up to my cottage for a weekend, where we made out in the bunkie. Before I knew what was happening, we were having sex. I didn’t intend to lose my virginity that night, but I don’t remember saying no. The next morning, he went back to Toronto, and I never heard from him again. I emailed and called him every day, but never got an answer.

A few months later, I started dating a new guy who was a couple of grades ahead of me. We were fooling around behind school one day when he suddenly pinned me to the ground and raped me. When I arrived at school the next day, he told everyone I’d had sex with him. The girls hissed “slut” as I walked down the hall. I started to believe them. I didn’t tell my parents what had happened, but my behaviour had them worried. “I feel like I’m losing you,” my mom kept telling me.

And she was. I barely went to school for the rest of the year, partly out of mortification, partly due to the sudden, severe migraine headaches I’d begun experiencing. My mom and dad took me to every neurologist in the city, but nothing came of it. I managed to pass Grade 9 through frantic cramming and sheer luck.

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To his wife and girlfriends and business partners, Albert Allan Rosenberg was a billionaire, a Swiss baron, a merchant banker with holdings around the world, the most charming guy in the room. The incredible story of how he fooled them all

By Courtney Shea

Rosenberg in 2011, when he was posing as a merchant banker

Looking back, it does seem unlikely that a Swiss billionaire baron would be seeking love on the Internet, but when Antoinette met Albert Rosenberg on eHarmony in February 2012, she just figured she got lucky. Along with the European title, he was also charming, successful, dashing and, yes, mega-rich, hard at work on his latest venture, a Canadian merchant bank called Marwa Holdings. He was educated at Harvard, fluent in French and German, a world traveller. Rosenberg had a thriving medical software business back in Zurich and a sizable trust in the multimillions. He was heir to the Ovaltine fortune, a direct descendent of Albert Wander, who invented the popular Swiss malt drink back in 1904. This was how he supported his lavish lifestyle. Or so he said.

Antoinette was 54 when she met Rosenberg and working at an Etobicoke medical clinic as an executive director (she requested that we not reveal her last name). She was divorced with two 20-something daughters and had recently restored a 100-year-old townhouse in Bloor West Village. She was comfortable and content, with a close circle of friends. Life changed dramatically on the arm of her new beau: she entered a social sphere of Bay Street lawyers, bankers and brokers who dealt in the seven figures. This was Rosenberg’s circle, and at the beginning ­Antoinette found the Pygmalion experience exhilarating. Her new boyfriend introduced her to fine food and the best French wines. He lived in a penthouse apartment in the Minto building at the corner of Bay and Yorkville, and brought her to swanky restaurants like Sassafraz on Cumberland, Café Boulud at the Four Seasons and One at the Hazelton Hotel. On a getaway to Montreal they stayed at the Ritz-Carlton. There would be future trips, he promised, to his home in the south of France, and adventures on his yacht, which he said was moored in Monaco. In the fall of 2012, the couple was invited to attend an exclusive reception for the Duke of Edinburgh Awards. They were the guests of the Bay Street law firm Wildeboer Dellelce, where Rosenberg was an important client, and they were personally introduced to Edward, Earl of Wessex. Antoinette felt like royalty herself.

After dating for just a few months, they decided to move in together. Rosenberg convinced Antoinette to sell her home and quit her job. He told her that he would invest the profits from that sale as well as some of her retirement savings in his company. Antoinette handed over $155,000—a lot of money for her. He drew up a contract and said he would make her a director of Marwa, which loaned large sums of money at high interest rates. Around this time he was in the process of establishing a permanent office space at Brookfield Place, working with several of the city’s top design firms. He also said he was setting up a trust in Antoinette’s name so that, no matter what happened, she would always be looked after.

They got married in March 2013, scarcely a year after they’d met. Antoinette took Rosenberg’s name. The ring was a family heirloom of such great value that Rosenberg instructed Antoinette to leave it in their safe whenever she went out. The ceremony was held in the condo building’s party room. Afterward, about 20 guests—mostly Antoinette’s friends and family—attended a dinner at Crème ­Brasserie, a French restaurant co-owned by ­Rosenberg’s new friend Ricardo Sousa. Rosenberg left early, saying he didn’t feel well. Antoinette’s uncle had to pick up the sizable tab.

Everything in their shared home was his—on Rosenberg’s insistence, Antoinette had sold or given away most of her belongings. Her furnishings weren’t up to snuff in her new abode. Rosenberg had a taste for luxury brands like ­Hermès, Louis Vuitton, Cartier, Armani, Gucci. He loved cashmere sweaters, which he would wear tied around his shoulders in country-club fashion. Shopping was a daily pastime and ­Yorkville boutique owners greeted him by name, fawning over him from the moment he walked in. Often, the Rosenbergs would take a post-dinner stroll through the neighbourhood or hop into his Porsche Carrera convertible for a spin. York­villers knew them, and would smile and wave like humble villagers paying respects to their feudal lord.

While Antoinette and Rosenberg were dating, she lost touch with a lot of her old friends. He occupied most of her time and discouraged her from maintaining connections with anyone from her previous life. After the wedding, Rosenberg wanted to know where Antoinette was at all times, whom she was with and what she was doing. He gave her a cellphone and used its GPS capability to track her movements. When she made calls from the house, he would stand in the background, listening. The behaviour was troubling, but Antoinette gave her new spouse the benefit of the doubt. When she tried to discuss her feelings, Rosenberg would accuse her of being unreasonable. She had no direct access to funds and felt trapped.

One summer day, a few months into the marriage, Antoinette was looking at bank records when she noticed something curious. There was another woman’s name attached to the Marwa corporate documents: Mihaela Zavoianu. She appeared to have signing authority on the company bank account, and Antoinette had never even heard of her. When she questioned her husband, he told her it was nothing to be concerned about. Zavoianu was a former associate he was helping out, he explained vaguely, refusing to elaborate. Around the same time, she brought her engagement ring to Birks on Bloor Street for resizing. The Birks clerk was impressed by the bauble until he pulled out his magnifying glass and saw that it was costume jewellery. When Antoinette confronted her husband he calmly explained how, back in his grandmother’s era, it was common to have a second, imitation ring made for travelling. The two must have been mixed up at some point. Like all of Rosenberg’s lies, the story sounded just plausible enough, and Antoinette found it easier to believe him than to consider the alternative.

One late-August evening, the Rosenbergs were out for a walk. She wanted to talk about their marital issues. She hoped they could find a way to improve things, but rather than understanding, Rosenberg reacted to her words with anger, grabbing her arm in a way that was violent enough to leave bruises. The next day, Antoinette was on Skype with her daughter. As was often the case, Rosenberg lingered in the background. To avoid detection, Antoinette carried on a mundane, how-was-your-day type of conversation, while her daughter held up written notes on screen. She was concerned about her mother’s isolation. She felt her mother wasn’t safe, and encouraged her to go to the police. Soon after, ­Antoinette met with detectives at 53 Division, and told them about her husband’s physical and emotional abuse. She also said she had suspicions about whether everything he’d told her about his finances was true.

The post The Yorkville Swindler: how Albert Allan Rosenberg scammed his way into high society appeared first on Toronto Life.

The world’s largest amateur hockey organization is also a breeding ground for unscrupulous coaches, raging parents and miserable preteens

By Rachel Giese | Illustration by Michael Byers

Sometimes during my 11-year-old son’s hockey games, usually in the second period when the play has settled into a rhythm but before the pressures of the clock begin to swell, I do calculations in my head. Not stats about assists or goals. Instead, I tally these sorts of things: the hours logged in gridlock getting to the game, the pages of math homework that still need to be completed later that night, the likelihood my kid’s head will someday be driven into the boards, the minutes he might spend in the penalty box should he chirp at the ref, and the time the alarm will need to be set for the next morning so I can drive him to his 8 a.m. practice.

This is what it means to have your child play in the vaunted Greater Toronto Hockey League. With 40,000 participants on 587 teams, the GTHL is the largest amateur hockey organization in the world. It’s also a star factory, with alumni including current NHLers P. K. Subban, Tyler Seguin, Jason Spezza and John Tavares.

Within the city’s hockey culture it’s a powerhouse, monopolizing precious (and expensive) ice time in arenas throughout the fall, winter and early spring, and spawning a microeconomy in private instruction and coaching, anything to transform promising young prodigies into Hall of Famers. Families relocate to Toronto so their gifted 10-year-olds can compete with other wunderkinds and be coached by former pros. Each winter, the GTHL hosts the Scotiabank Top Prospects Game, showing off the league’s 40 best 15-, 16- and 17-year-olds, many of them en route to the minor leagues and possibly the NHL.

My kid’s team sits in the middle of the pack of his age group in the A division, the bottom of the league’s three competitive levels. It’s as low-stakes as you can get in the GTHL, and the odds of the players going on to stardom are essentially nil. He and his teammates are being very expensively groomed to play in an adult midnight beer league. Yet, even for them, the experience is demanding: two practices and two games a week. There are about 60 games a season (plus tournaments)—by comparison, NHL teams play 82. Many of the boys also participate in spring and summer leagues.

While my wife is a lifelong fan and player, I am a reluctant hockey mom. Having spent much of the past decade shivering in rinks, my emotional terrain feels as twisty and perilous as the dipsy-doodle stickhandling manoeuvres of my son’s idol, the Chicago Blackhawks’ Patrick Kane. Some moments give me enormous pleasure, watching my kid and his friends play a sport that is at once gritty and graceful. Others fill me with dread that some child will wind up curled into a ball on the ice yelping in pain, or that the genial air of competition in the stands will erupt into high tempers, heckling and even fist fights. Like a lot of GTHL parents I know, I trawl for sanity in a culture that seems increasingly unhinged. Over acidic arena coffee we flatter ourselves that we’re not crazy, not like some hockey parents. But when you find yourself driving 90 minutes through Toronto traffic so your child can play 10 minutes in a game, or shrieking “Hustle! Hustle!” to a bunch of fifth graders, or charging a thousand dollars to your already overloaded credit card for a weekend tournament in Niagara Falls, you have to admit that every hockey parent is a crazy one.

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