Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Ed Keenan: Toronto Mike'd #1287

Episode Date: July 6, 2023

In this 1287th episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike chats with The Toronto Star's Edward Keenan about the recent election, the proposed Torstar - Postmedia merger, Facebook and Google removing Canadian news, drinking in parks, and so much more. Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, The Moment Lab, Ridley Funeral Home and Electronic Products Recycling Association.

Welcome to episode 1287 of Toronto Mic'd, proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, a fiercely independent craft brewery who believes in supporting communities, good times, and brewing amazing beer. Order online for free local home delivery in the GTA. and the GTA. Palma Pasta. Enjoy the taste of fresh, homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma Pasta in Mississauga and Oakville.

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PR, advertising and production. You need The Moment Lab. And Ridley Funeral Home. Pillars of the community since 1921. Today, making his quarterly Toronto Mic'd appearance. Is Edward Keenan. Hello everybody. Welcome back,enan. Hello, everybody. Welcome back, Ed.

Hey, it's good to be back. Do you remember your last visit to the Toronto Mike studios? Well, lo those many weeks ago. Three months ago. Yeah, yeah. There was just an election getting underway, I believe. It was a shock. We were in the wake of scandalous revelations out of City Hall.

And so we were talking about the election that was, you know, months away at that point. And do you know that we recorded again later that night? Do you remember this doubleheader we did? Do you have any memory of that? That's right. That's right. I wondered if you remembered. 640 Toronto Party.

Right. At GLB Brew Pub. That's right. Downtown. 640 Toronto party. Right. At GLB Brew Pub. That's right. Down, downtown. Cause of course I am a villain host there at 640 and you are their official podcaster of their party at least that one time. I crashed that party. I had permission from chorus.

Okay. It wasn't unauthorized, but I mean, I talked to a million people that day, but it was great. You and your wife came on the mic and I had just had, like, I just, I said to your wife, like, I'm sick of your husband because I had just spent, like, I don't know, a couple of hours talking to you earlier in the day,

but we did a double header last time. Yeah, no, exactly. So, so, you know, we've had a few months to, to dry out, get cool off. Wiseblood and I were quarterly and then we decided there's too much. We need to go monthly and I think you and I need to stay quarterly. If you get the itch though, don't say, hey Mike, let's go monthly because I would do

monthly but we gotta keep it quarterly. Yeah, I gotta keep it special, right? It's gonna be a special event. It's a few times a year I get to come back to the basement I get some pasta Oh, you expect pasta? Is that what we're at now? a special event it's a few times a year i get to come back to the basement i get uh you know some pasta oh you expect pasta is that where we're at now you're lucky i do have a uh you have lasagna for you like pavlov's dog do you get hungry on your drive here all of a sudden i start

the aroma of lasagna it fills my nose even though you're not cooking any that i can tell right now no but you know what uh the bad news for you maybe it's not bad news because you did get one, but I did attend a 50th birthday bash for one Ed Keenan. I don't know if you were there, but I saw on the table the Moneris wireless speaker. That's right.

We were using it there in the backyard. Like to see it in the wild, like box sand. This is the, this is, and again, there was a three-month deal every time a new season drops for yes we are open but they're great people i don't mind telling you yes we are open is a great podcast but because i was promoting yes we are open for three months every guest got a wireless speaker and seeing it in the wild in your backyard was like a surreal moment

like there it is you see the good thing about these quarterly visits is that i managed to drop in in the middle of all these three-month deals you might have going on is that right you know so i have a little flashlight okay i have a tape measure you were lucky i ran out of tape measures we we we we have had uh a lot of great lakes uh beer but it's all been consumed at this point so i brought some to your party. So congrats on turning 50. And that was a great party you had. It was like several hours long.

You just drop in when you can. But there were good people there. Yeah, it was fun. And I met a guy, like a neighbor of yours, who teaches at my kid's school. And it was like, oh, it's like a teacher's here. It was like a narc. Yeah, no, exactly. That was an interesting connection that we were

previously and he was buzzed with a teacher at my kid's school who loves toronto mic'd and then i went to this uh i ended up attending like a talent show for my seven-year-old and all these like i hear the boy toronto mic like the teachers are all calling out toronto mic it was kind of kind of neat the thing about about that party that was good we just like it it was kind of neat. The thing about that party that was good, we just like, it was kind of a strange crowd in some ways because we said, you know, come by in the afternoon or the evening or late at night,

depending on what you want. And I just invited a bunch of people from all different aspects of my life. So you had like, you know, my 75-year-old aunts and uncles and like people from work and the neighborhood people and some media people and just randomly whoever was there.

Like a family wedding or something where you have different parts of your world colliding. But we moved back to Toronto last September and we hadn't seen anybody more or less in three years. And not only that, but most of those people hadn't seen each other in a couple years either because of the pandemic and stuff so it was just sort of like it's spring it's a nice round birthday i'm having it's an excuse to get people together and just see everybody after all so i'm only one year behind you like literally uh next june i would have the same birthday.

Now maybe I'll do the same thing. Maybe just have a drop-in. Yeah, you should have a big drop-in party too. I recommend it. It's like the godfather, his daughter's wedding. Like people just come by. You'll probably have a whole bunch

of box hand speakers so you could just line them up. You won't have to turn on your red light. Blast the whole neighborhood. So since you were last here, like you said, we just kind of were getting ready to dive into that mayoral election. A lot of people, I don't think even Olivia Chow had declared that she was running yet when you were here.

Yeah, I haven't re-listened to it or checked out the dates. Why not? You didn't listen to it on the way here? I think she was thinking about running at that point, or she was rumored to be thinking about running at that point, she had not officially gotten in as far as i can remember and i feel like you and i were of the same mindset at that time that like like oh she's gonna come in and we already like there's already the josh matlow was already like said he'd run and it felt like a little bit like oh she's just gonna like hurt matlow and then somebody like assange is gonna come up the middle like there was a bit of that feeling at the time.

Yeah, I mean, I think there was a lot of people, not just me and you, but a lot of very smart political people that I know, a lot of NDP-affiliated political people that I know who thought her time had come and gone. That, you know, in 2014, she had a great shot. She was the frontrunner at the beginning. She kind of blew it. She basically retired from politics after you know she ran again for her federal seat and lost that to adam vaughn uh i believe and then um and then you know sort of had retired as like a wise old auntie of the left in toronto teaching out of TMU and all of that and sort of being a

mentor to younger activists. And a lot of people thought, well, that's a good role for her now. But I mean, she certainly demonstrated the folly of that kind of thinking. And she has launched herself into, as far as I can tell tell the preparations to become mayor which will happen you know uh next week officially i believe um or or the week after that i here's the thing yeah i'm going on two weeks vacation as of tomorrow afternoon and i'm desperately trying to keep my brain in toronto until until that happens but i haven't because i'm going to be out of town i haven't uh updated my calendar with the most significant events that are coming in in early july so but

spoiler alert olivia chow won she did she sure did and fairly convincingly i think yeah like under those circumstances like considering the way the results were coming in and it was weird i was watching on television and and they weren't telling you, you know how when you watch the election, and you're watching the American election results come in, and they're like, oh, these are coming from downtown Milwaukee. Right, right.

Yeah, yeah. Trump's ahead in Michigan, but the vote that's still out is the Detroit vote. We haven't heard from Detroit yet. We haven't heard from Detroit, and we know that that's going to be the thing. You learn all the counties of the United States, at least in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin.

For sure. All the swing states. But we didn't know where the vote was coming in. So I think two things made election night feel like way more of a nail-biter than it was expected to be, but also than it actually turned out to be, although it was closer, right? It was closer than we thought it was expected to be, but also than it actually turned out to be, although it was closer, right?

It was not a... It was closer than we thought it was going to be. She didn't win running away. No. And that's the thing, is that she won with Anna Bailao running up towards her. But we had been told all the polling until about a week, a week and a half before the election

showed that she was just going to cruise to victory and so the fact that it was not a complete blowout was point one but the other thing is what you were pointing out is that the way the vote was reported right the polls are already closed these votes are already cast and we just scanned them right so they're not counted but the count is coming in right at a rate where it's like, whoa, somehow Anna Bailao has pulled way out into the lead. Oh, now Olivia Chow is inching back towards her. And you have this feeling of a drama.

But within an hour, that was all resolved. And Olivia Chow won by almost five points, four and a half in between there. Chow won by, you know, almost five points, four and a half in between there. But of a very divided field, you know, 102 candidates, seven or eight high profile candidates that got a lot of coverage and who did split the vote more than in past elections. I did a whole bunch of math on it and trying to look at it different ways. And this is only the what was it this is the second election since amalgamation in which the three top candidates did not get more

than 90 of the vote and the only other one was the last one where the three top candidates got like 88 or something like that um wherein in this, the three top candidates got less than 80% of them. Wow. Right? So there was a big split of like a fifth of the electorate that went to none of the front runners. And then the other interesting thing, I think, about the way that Olivia Chow won

is that she didn't just win downtown. She did win downtown fairly convincingly. The old city of Toronto, not what you and I would have grown up calling downtown, but what Rob Ford called downtown, like the whole entire old city of Toronto. She won that and fairly convincingly, but she also won Scarborough,

almost all of Scarborough. The one ward in Scarborough that she didn't win outright was essentially a tie. It was i believe 200 votes um she also won willowdale there was another north york vote ward where it was like within 50 votes and then uh humber river black creek which is in etobicoke she she lost by two votes uh at least in the unofficial count um and so so it was a bit more widespread, right? The familiar map we're used to looking at where it's like Ford Nation

is the entire out-of-Ringer suburbs. Like Olivia Chow convincingly won Scarborough. That's something. And it means something different about kind of, I think, how she might approach the job or how we might, people like me might approach it as critics who are talking about the ways in which the city is divided or the ways in which we disagree with each other on things.

Because for a long time, it's been this sense of like, the people of Scarborough are feeling left out and alienated and reactionary as a result, and they don't want the progressives and all of that well they just elected one they helped elect one right so so a few firsts here you mentioned amalgamation so these are first since the megacity first woman to be mayor of the megacity that's right and the third in toronto history entirely although, this is where you get into the longer Toronto history. It's like a smaller and smaller thing, right?

Because June Rowlands and Barbara Hall were both mayors of the old city of Toronto. But of course, Frances Nunziata was the mayor of York. There was at least one woman who was mayor of Scarborough. And I'm trying to remember Pauline. I can't remember it right now but uh there was at least so there were other women who were mayors in what is now toronto but she is the first since amalgamation and the third official mayor of the city of toronto in its entire history okay so just to recap for the newbies here okay so we have mel lastman we have uh david miller david miller of course we have rob ford and then we had john tory and now we have

olivia chow so not only first woman but uh also the first racialized person to be elected mayor of toronto that's right uh there was one uh man william payton hubbard is famously uh referred to you know, during Black History Month or whatever the fact will come up. We had this black mayor. He was actually the black acting mayor. He was a black politician in the very early 1900s, repeatedly elected as an alderman. And then citywide, he won to the Board of Control. to the Board of Control. And so in his capacity on the Board of Control,

he often served as the acting mayor when the mayor was out of town, like on city business and whatnot. And so, you know, he was the first racialized person to do some of the role of, to perform the role of mayor sometimes. Sure. But it's more equivalent to like Jennifer McKelvey being the deputy mayor and leading council.

This is the first person of color to ever be elected to that job in the entire history of Toronto. And also, since I'm a big fan of these barroom trivia firsts, this is the first person for whom English is their second language. Ah, that's interesting because because uh because anna bylau would also be uh if she had won she would also be the uh first she would have been the first person for whom english was her second and uh we did have uh she she's not even the first immigrant to be elected mayor since amalgamation david miller was born in the united states and raised in england right but uh basically and in early toronto history a lot of our mayors were born in scotland or england or ireland as late as the 1960s we had a mayor who was an immigrant to toronto from england um but but she is the first immigrant from a country outside of North America and the British Isles,

or what used to be called the British Isles, including Ireland, right? And English as her second language. And a Bailao would have been that too. Right. Also would have had English as her second language. Also would have been the first woman elected as mayor of the megacity.

That's right. And even Mark Saunders, whose English is his first language, but he was also, he moved here from Jamaica. So the top three finishers, the entire podium, were immigrants to Toronto from non-traditional countries. Okay, well done. Well done. Okay, so there's a few hot spots.

We're going to do a tight 90 today. I know we're itching to do like a five hour deep dive and everything but we're gonna do a tight 90 you've already got your pasta you're getting great lakes beer you're getting another flashlight from ridley funeral home so don't worry ed you won't leave uh empty-handed i know that's why you're here okay so that's for the graft let's talk about the tory endorsement for a moment here okay so i uh will preface this to say i jokingly tweeted so my tongue was in my cheek but the toronto star keeps talking about this uh endorsement by john tory being a big push for anna bylau that helped her on election day because on

election day itself anna bylau actually gets more votes than uh olivia chow like on election day yeah so this big push. I just want you to know, Ed Keenan, that Anna Bailao on the Friday before Election Day came on Toronto Mic, and there's no credit, no discussion of the Toronto Mic bump Anna Bailao would have received

for her Toronto Mic debut on the Friday before Election Day. I think it's just a conspiracy against you. It's bullshit. David Wright, are you listening? Come on. Let's repair this. Okay.

The other thing is that what was also only passingly being mentioned in the Starz coverage is that the Starz editorial endorsement also came that same week, actually on the same day as John Tory's endorsement. And I think when you talk to political people on Bailao's team, but also the other teams, they credit it to John Tory's endorsement. And I think they're all overlooking the Toronto mic bump at their own peril because there will be other elections upcoming. And these people will be working on those campaigns. I got Amber Morley elected.

And they will need to try and curry favor with here in the basement. You are wise. Okay. But let's pretend like John Tory had something to do with all this. I found it interesting to read the behind the scenes story. Maybe I'll let you talk about Brad Bradford, also an FOTM, by the way. But Brad Bradford and Anna Bailao sort of both kind of getting like I don't know mentored by John Tory yeah and then how Bradford and even during the campaign yeah you tell the

story like how Bradford reacts to the fact that suddenly at the very last minute almost John Tory does this big endorse public endorsement of Anna Bailao yeah and I mean Brad Bradford um some people may be questioning his entire smarts after that campaign or whatever, but I think the guy's not a complete idiot, and he knew there was a chance that John Tory would endorse Anna Bailao because it was in the air, this speculation, willy or wony, willy or wony. But according to the reporting of my colleagues, he wasn't given a heads up. He had been consulting with Tory, getting advice from him through the campaign, as had Anna Bailao.

And John Tory had, you know, said some nice things about Mitzi Hunter for some of those profiles, too. He'd been saying he was going to stay out of it. He was kind of doing an elder statesman mentor role. mentor role okay um but but then you know Bradford found out about the endorsement from the press from the media not from John Tory himself and so apparently they had a very uh hostile well John then he tweeted out about it right you know he he's got his nose out of joint so he tweets out something uh along the lines of tomorrow's solutions are not going to come from yesterday's politicians or something like that right and and so then john tory who in my own experience is very sensitive to criticism more so than you would think when you keep running for

jobs where everyone in the city is going to call you a bum all the time. But John Tory is very sensitive to this kind of criticism, especially from people he perceives as, you know, having a respectful relationship with. Right, or allies. Apparently they start, you know, a back and forth, texts or... So what's our source? I did read it quickly, but what is the source on this? Like, where's the leak here?

Well, my colleagues in the Toronto Star Bureau talked to a lot of people involved in a lot of the campaigns. I do not know exactly who their source is. Of course, you'd have to pull my fingernails out to try and... I always protect my sources.

It's easier for me if I don't know. People close to Bradford's campaign, people who worked on Bradford's campaign were the sources of this information as well, I presume. And I don't know about this particular fact or exchange, but they were also, I have several sources who've been close to Tory for years and have been in communication with them.

They have sources inside Anna Bailao's campaign as well. So, you know, that entire piece about how it all came together and the aftermath of it drew on all those sources. But I think it's fair to say that if they're reporting it, it's fairly reliable, right? Oh, for sure. Yeah. You know, I ask the tough questions around here, Ed.

Yeah, yeah. This is the hot seat, Toronto Mike here. Okay. to ask the tough questions around here ed yeah yeah this is the hot seat toronto mic here okay so so you believe in your opinion uh the john tory uh endorsement of anna bylau was a huge positive for anna is that your opinion i mean i think so i think if um because i wasn't sure when it happened given a little longer to play out too uh there there's like dominoes that fall and they're not all predictable right um i think we we saw a lot of josh matlow and mitzi hunter's vote uh collapse if the john tory endorsement had come earlier it might have more so like it rather than getting

four or five percent they might have gotten one percent like bradford did uh and a lot of that vote would have gone to, no doubt, to Olivia Chow. It's hard to predict exactly what would have happened with the Anthony Fury, Mark Saunders, you know, sort of right-wing. I think there are limits to how many of those populist voters or right-wing voters

would take Bailao as an anybody but chow candidate like you know there's a constituency of people who will vote for the people's party or for you know who voted for faith goldie at one point this is a group of people that would deem anna bylau to be too much of a leftist far left wing right um and i mean mark saunders also did um uh you you know anna bylaw is viewed by by many progressives in toronto and certainly by the ndp in toronto and people like former mayor david miller as a right-wing figure or a conservative figure in the john tory mold largely because she was john tory's sort of housing lieutenant and was a reliable member of his team.

But she has always kind of branded herself as a progressive, but not just, it's not just branding, right? It may vary issue to issue, but, you know, her connection to the labor movement and to labor issues and her dedication to that is not really questioned. Right. And that's not a right-wing thing. Right. And she's been always opposed to contracting out.

She's opposed to opening up the bargaining agreements. And, you know, affordable housing has always been her big issue. And so, you know, I think she's really in the center. But she would say she positions herself as a center left leaning candidate so you know if john tory was the center right she'd want to be on the center left we're part of the same middle coalition uh but yeah certainly for there are a lot of right wing voters in toronto she's way too left wing and for a lot of left wing voters in toronto she's way too right wing um but there are a lot of mushy voters in Toronto

and she did get most of them, I think. Right. Well, you know, I just remembered that when you were here three months ago, one of the things we did was if all the candidates we knew of, we dropped them into buckets. Like we had a right, you know,

we basically put on the plate, we did that exercise. At the time we put Anna and we put Brad Bradford actually into the centrist bucket is where we stuck them. Then a couple months later, Matt Elliott came over and we kind of did the exercise again, and Brad Bradford had moved to the right. And I'm just going back to Brad before we put a tie on the whole Anna Bailao thing. And lest we forget, Olivia Chow did actually win this election,

but I want to ask you about Mark Saunders too but what do you think went wrong with brad bradford's campaign he ended up with i have the numbers here so i'm just going to pull it up here and i enjoyed my hour with him very much actually but he ended up with 9254 votes and i gotta go find a source that gives me the percentage but it was like a one percent or something yeah Yeah, it's distressingly low. It was just a little bit higher than Chris Sky. I think not much went right with Brad Bradford's campaign. And I've talked about this on my podcast at The Star and I've talked to a lot of people about this.

But I think essentially there's a fundamental mismatch between Brad Bradford's entire political identity before the campaign started and his own advertising. essentially there's a fundamental mismatch between Brad Bradford's entire political identity before the campaign started right and his own advertising there was he came in okay so I just wanted this is an aggression but for anybody who's listening who doesn't know um the star editorial board is a a group of writers and columnists editors who who decide the official editorial position of the Toronto Star. They write the unsigned editorials that appear on the editorial page, and they decide the official editorial board endorsements,

which have nothing to do with the newsroom. They don't report to the same editors as me. These are mutually exclusive silos. They report directly to the publisher, and they consult with the publisher, right? He owns the newspaper. The editorial page reflects his idea of right and wrong as much as anything right um and but but it's separate from not just the reporters but opinion columnists like me i have nothing to do with it except that when they invite candidates in to speak to the editorial board they will

usually invite the newsrooms's subject area experts, the beat reporters, the columnists who write about that issue, including even our Queens Park reporters, because they want people who are informed to ask good questions, be participating in the debate. So we appear at those editorial board interviews as sort of guests who participate in the discussion. And we also get to observe it, take notes.

You know, we can use it for our own. But after Brad Bradford came into the... So when the editorial board decided to endorse Anna Bailao, I was not consulted. I found out just, you know, hours before readers did. Well, I thought you found out when you read your newspaper. That's usually when I find out. In this case, there was an email sent out just giving us a heads up. This is what's coming today.

Because we deal with the complaints, right? I have nothing to do with it, or even more so, David Ryder, the Toronto Star City Hall Bureau Chief, has nothing to do with it. But for the next three years, he's going to be hearing about how he's got it in for Olivia Chow because the Star supported Bailao and we're all in the bag for Anna Bailao

and our candidate, you know, whose team we all joined, lost and all of that. So the heads up was just like, so you can kind of prepare for the flack that you're about to get. Your Twitter is about to explode with people, you know, so angry at you. Right. Um, about something that you have no control of that affects your life otherwise not at

all or your job, not at all. But so anyhow, I was a guest at the editorial board meeting with Brad Bradford, and one of the other people who was in attendance at that meeting, who's a writer and a smart guy, but not a follower every day of Toronto City Hall politics, kind of came out of the meeting and was like, he spent an hour there talking to us. He arrived on his bike share. He sat down, and he's talking to the Toronto Star, right?

So he's maybe emphasizing the things that he thinks will be favorable to the Toronto Star and not emphasizing this sort of like law and order authoritarian Brad. So all of a sudden, he was city planner Brad, and he's talking about how you build cities for the future for the world we're becoming and like climate change and and then talking in real depth about his experiences inside city hall and the bureaucracy and what needs to be changed on a very specific like granular level so anyhow we come out of that meeting and this this one smart guy says to me, who the hell was that?

And I said, it was Brad Bradford. And he was like, he is unrecognizable from his own campaign advertising. Like the Brad Bradford in his campaign videos is not the same guy I just spent an hour with. I heard the same thing. Not only are they not the same guy, they are like enemies with each other. Yeah, that Brad Bradford would hate the bradford that was running from there and and i think uh my understanding and i don't get this from any deep conversations with brad or deep sources and campaign but from what i can tell uh there are a couple of right wing or like Canadian conservative thought leaders. Corey Teniaki, whose last name I always botch up,

but who used to run Fox News and who's like a mastermind on the Ford campaign and all of that. And then the fella who runs Ontario Proud. Right. It was like the conservative sort of like meme lord, The fella who runs Ontario Proud. Right. It was like the conservative sort of like meme lord, like online. Right. These guys are friends of his from like cycling in the beaches.

Like they're just friends. East York buds. And they say, what if we run your campaign? And so together they kind of design a campaign that those guys want to run because they think there's an open lane in toronto city politics and maybe brad bradford has this kind of you know you can see how in the drawing room they're thinking like so you've already you've got this affiliation with john tory which gives you sort of center right leaning credibility but you're a bike riding urban planner right which gives you this center left credibility and so maybe if we can marry that

with some of the like i will be the strong mayor to crush dissent and keep you safe from all the all the predators who are trying to get you the law and order authoritarian if we can add that and yet there's a process of subtraction that happens when you do that addition, because when you suddenly become like strongman Brad, all the bike riding city planner Brad fans go, no, he's not my guy at all. Not our guy. But I also think that like the type of people who were tempted to vote for Anthony Fury are never going to be convinced that the bike riding city planner is is their actual guy right like you were the guy who who put the heartfelt message about how we have to rethink policing in the wake of george floyd's death and rethink how we fund the police and reallocate some of that fun that's that is the actual message of black lives matter defund the police he put out that message and now all of a

sudden he's going to be the thin blue line guy? Like, just two years later? Three years later? Right. Come on! You know, it's amazing the story you tell there, because who is that guy? He's unrecognizable, because one of the prevailing notes, common threads of people

would write after the Brad Bradford episode of Toronto Mike. So he came over by himself, by the way, just sat where you're sitting now. We talked for over an hour, one-on-one. No one else in the room, you know, even Anna had somebody in the room, but Brad and I one-on-one for over an hour. And I kept hearing from people like,

oh, I like that guy. Like I could get behind that guy, but that guy doesn't resemble the guy who's running for mayor. Like this disconnect between the Brad Bradford that you, you know know see in the media and that you know in the debates and stuff running for mayor and the guy who i chatted with for an hour like they're different people and there's always i think um not always but regrettably, there are messages that politicians adopt for a campaign because they think they'll need it to get elected. And often they keep some of those after they get elected because you did dance with them what brung you, right?

Right. So, you know, John Tory as the head of civic action, as a private citizen, as a talk radio host, was against the construction of the scarborough subway extension in favor of the lrt plan uh was open to road tolls and and changing the reconfiguring the gardener as a candidate for mayor and as an experienced talk radio host he thought nope we have to say we've made our decision we're sticking with our decision this is what we're doing we're not we're not fighting the war on the car anymore. He and then and then as mayor, he stuck to most of those. Right. Because he thought that's my message. Right.

They're not usually the complete 180s of of entire character that that many of us perceived in Brad Bradford's persona. that many of us perceived in Brad Bradford's persona, but also there's this big question then of like, well, which, which guy's going to be mayor? Like which part of Brad Bradford gets to be mayor? And I,

I do think actually that Brad Bradford's actual constituency, like the, the way he wanted to be, the way he was promoted to be the chair of the planning and housing committee under John Torian in his most recent term, and the sort of taking over Anna Bailao's old job as the guy whose job is to try and get housing built as quickly as possible, is that there's a faction of Torontonians who would call themselves progressives or who are in favor of traditionally progressive things like civic progressive. Like, there's no reason why these

are left-wing issues but but in toronto politics like like bike lanes like housing density yeah um and those things who are fed up with how especially in the housing crisis are fed up with how long things are taking and the number of bureaucratic obstacles and the amount of red tape. And so I think the like strong mayor of action, it's time to cut the BS and cut through it and just get it done. And if that means I just have to go in there and give orders, we're going to get this housing built.

Like I do think that there's a constituency for that, but I'm not sure how well it marries with the kind of like law and order ness and all of that there's just like i mean the short answer is that i think there's a lack of authenticity that you perceive in brad bradford's political persona on the campaign trail um and i mean he's a young guy uh potentially still a long career ahead of him but i think you think he's in trouble a lot too uh oh he might be yeah i mean i actually i'm not in on the ground but the people i hear from there are i mean it's it's embarrassing but now he had always said that he was going to

term limit himself to two terms anyway that he thought two terms was going to be enough as a city counselor um and so i think at the end of that two terms, he was thinking maybe mayor or maybe something else. So there's a chance he might not run again. And potentially a good chance, especially after that, if he thinks he's vulnerable, why would you put yourself through that again, right? Why would you put your young family through that again? His wife gave, he had a new child born

in the middle of this campaign. He was very appreciative. I was giving him a lasagna on the way out because there's a meal right there, and you know what it's like with the movies. It's like, oh, yeah. Absolutely. It's tough. So anyway, we've spent a lot of time discussing a guy who got like 1% of the vote. Well, he's an FOTM.

Okay, so he got 1.28. So let's do this. But, okay. You want to finish the Brad Bradford? I'm just going to jump to yeah no because this is where i think because i now have numbers what we've been talking about with brad bradford like a lot of the discussion of his authenticity or whatever we we centered around like you know how far on the left right spectrum he moved and all of that but i think like part of the result

of this election as i interpret it and and going out and talking was like a reminder um that those of us who who view this as like something we follow regularly have this idea of the political spectrum and teams and stuff but especially at the civic level like i think a lot of voters are just it's based on personal vibes like that's you say somebody will say not you necessarily but like how can we have an election where everybody agrees the city's going down the toilet? Like it's busted up and broken down and not maintained and nobody can afford to live here anymore. And like, and then, and then, but also agree, well, if John Tory won again, we'd vote overwhelmingly for him. Right.

Obviously. Right. Right. And it's like, they just kind of like John Tory won again, we'd vote overwhelmingly for him. Right. Obviously. Right. Right. And it's like, they just kind of like John Tory. Like, and they don't, they don't say it's, oh, it's a right wing penny pinching thing or whatever. Like, like, and I think in this campaign, a lot of people just liked Olivia Chow the best.

And like, to those who tuned into debates and stuff, they're seeing that she looks comfortable in her own skin. She's smiling smiling she's talking hopefully about the city and she's well known and is polarizing because of the ndp stuff like political people have a strong opinions about whether they would ever vote for and all of that but for the general public it's like she's she's not widely despised like there's no she doesn't have the kind of baggage and and jack layton when he died jack and olivia as a team were really well known across the country and especially in this city and and not subject to the kind of like intense polarization that

somebody like robert doug Doug Ford is subject to, right? Like they didn't have, they did, she's not carrying the same kind of baggage, right? Isn't, this is not a like Joe Biden, Donald Trump situation, right? Where the best known person is also the most widely hated or whatever. It's more like, yeah, she always seemed like a nice woman. And we, she's got her heart in the right place. She's done a lot of good things. And I think people just like that. So I think to some extent, they didn't know Anna Bailao particularly well.

And I think she, I mean, you sat down and talked to her, but I don't think her campaign necessarily did a really good job of, they started to towards the end, but I don't think like early on she really was established as a persona as a person in people's minds where people really knew what she was all about um she was parading out a whole list of endorsements like city councillors who like her and all of that and and so it's like all these people vouch for me but but a lot of voters

i think well but what if i invited you over for dinner like what kind of person are you what we're gonna live with this mayor for a long time right right i mean i think i think so much of this came down to like in my own sense is just like it's not a left-wing right-wing thing necessarily um and it it's vaguely about policy but but it you know to the extent that everybody agreed on housing it's it's more about like is there a person i like who can make me feel some sense of hope that they're going to try and solve some of these problems and i think olivia chow won that contest so she won that contest with 37.17 percent of the vote. But of course, as you know, because you're good at math, that means 63% of people

wanted someone else to be mayor. So this Tory endorsement seems to be this point where the, I guess the people who, anyone but Chow, they call it, the ABC vote, I guess that's the term that they've been using. They found like, oh, there's our person.

Where prior to that, it was, is it Mark Saunders? I know Mark Saunders tried to present himself as the... He certainly went hard on that. He had signs printed up and everything like that. Like Chow is how you beat, or Saunders is how you beat Chow. Vote Saunders to stop Chow. But he must have just bled like... He rebranded his own website.

And he had the robocalls coming from ever so popular Doug Ford in this city. So Doug Ford the robocalls coming from uh ever so popular uh doug ford in this city so doug ford yeah i mean if you line up you know if you wanted to see parse out this endorsement game as a contest like doug ford and john tory more or less rolled out their endorsements at the same time doug ford like backed into his. He was kind of hinting, is Kim Wright the strategist at Wright Strategies who I did the global panel on on election night? She was saying, early in the campaign, Doug Ford was saying, well, I'm staying out of it,

but I do like that schmuck Saunders. I'm not saying anybody's name. I'm going to stay out of it, but you sure would want a former police chief like a guy who's run a big city-wide organization who's well known and maybe uh you know so but but in it was like the day before tory announced his endorsement that he you know the whole thing about he's got a sign on his lawn and then he said yeah he's who i'm voting for and then he you know then he jumped in with feet, more on the attack against Chow in the days that followed.

And he did a robocall, I think. I got one. But so it's head-to-head endorsements. At that point in the polls, these guys appear to be centrally tied, Bailao and Saunders. You know, depending on which poll you're reading, Main Street has, you know, but for all intents and purposes,

the two stop-chow candidates appear, from what we can gather, to be roughly equal, and John Tory endorses one, and Doug Ford endorses the other. These guys are longtime enemies turned frenemies turned whatever. Both of them reentering the race to face down their old foe, Olivia Chow, who they managed to combine to defeat in 2014.

Right. But in that, so if it's a head-to-head, who has more juice with the Toronto electorate? I think Doug Ford comes out of this humiliated, like absolutely just demolished, right? All right, so let me drop the numbers here. And then, yeah, because to me, the big surprise was what a non-factor Mark Saunders ended up being. Because my big fear all along was that, I don't know, there'll be a split. And then Mark Saunders comes up the middle somehow and becomes, you know, first past the post,

which I'm going to ask you about that in a minute, actually. But okay, so Mark Saunders ended up getting 8.58% of the vote. OK, 62,000 votes. I mean, Anthony Fury had 35,000. But just to give some perspective, Olivia Chow wins with 37.17% of the vote. And Anna Bailao is a respectable second place with 32.45% of the vote. So third place less than 9% of the vote. That's got to be a sad night in the Saunders household. That's pretty bad.

Am I right? Yeah. And a sad humiliation for the members of Doug Ford's team who thought this guy was going to be the horse that could run for them. That's what they thought from the beginning. Doug Ford's team, with a couple high-profile conservative exceptions

who were running Brad Bradford, and Nick Kouvalas, who lined up because of his Tory connection, essentially, with Anna Bailao. And those two had history at city hall right like they knew each other in the ford years at city hall um but but basically a bunch of doug ford's people ran mark saunders for mayor now a couple things happened here right is like one is that saunders is just a phenomenally uninspiring candidate and i if there's a way to mean that in the nicest possible way i i kind of do uh well you were shocked he was running at all because there's

no sign he never seemed comfortable in the public eye he as police chief he very clearly hated press conferences hated being questioned uh seemed to grudgingly make speeches um where the words were were obviously you know written by by some professional forum and or or you know or he speaks in cop speak right which is a language of of uncommunication right like like official uh you know like saying words but saying it's a form of bureaucraties that says next to nothing or where there's no like no sentence has a subject right it's all objects like that every verb is a passive and and uh you know uh um eight point5 no one's a person there's never a guy it's an individual right and like so anyway that's how he talks and right and he almost seems meek like there are other and i don't want to get into psychoanalyzing that because i i actually

my brother's six foot three and is a big guy and he was big from the time he was in grade six and at a certain point early on he started slouching and he's very soft-spoken and it's a conscious decision on his part to not appear intimidating he realized that some people found him scary and adopted an entire a series of personal tics to make himself less intimidating to people, less imposing, right? And some of that you might look at and say, this guy needs a shot of confidence. This guy needs to stand up straight

and he needs to project his voice. And so trying to, like, it is not my place, given that I'm a short, loud mouth and a white guy who has, you know, every privilege in this city, right? To psychoanalyze how a black man who's an immigrant to Canada from Jamaica, who decides to pursue a career in the police force with all the obstacles he faces, but also the baggage that people have with, you know, a black man in a position of authority.

Maybe his persona is involved. Maybe it's just the way he was born but maybe it's evolved a different way but i would just point out that like other police chiefs who you think of going into politics people like julian fantino and bill blair you you see them command a room right like you may dislike them a lot you may like them a lot but when they come in it's like a it's like a few good men like uh you know you can't handle the truth like you want me on that wall like they are barking orders at people and mark saunders even as police chief seemed much more and you know this is refreshing in some ways but much more soft-spoken much more uh having a back and forth like much more of a manager and yet as a as a

political candidate again it's not like you're getting this sense of his great vision and actually again going back to the editorial board when when mark saunders came into the room yeah he got really excited and really engaging when he was talking about um programs to deal with especially in the black community offenders or people who had been drawn into gang life. He was talking about how it's important that we have diversion programs for at-risk youth. But he was like, what about already involved youth now? Once somebody has fired a gun,

once somebody is in that life, how do you convince them to take a better path out of it? And he was talking about his ideas for legitimate strategies to do that and the work that would be involved in doing that. And the passion that he was showing for that made me think, I wish this guy was in charge of a program to do that. Right. Right.

His whole life experience, both as a police officer, as a member of that community, as a retired police officer who's been trying to do work on the other side, on the non-policing end of it for housing which is this mixture of uh political talking points like about how olivia chow's big bureaucracy is not going to get it done but also like management seminar speak about the leadership threads that you have to follow to to really you know penetrate down it's like like there's no i'm never left with an understanding of what he's talking about but i'm also not left with a clear sense that he understands clearly what he's talking about on those kinds of issues but when you when he gets to what he's passionate about you think man i i want this guy to be in charge of that stuff and yet somehow he thought or was

convinced that it would be a good idea for him to run for mayor which is a job where where basically everybody in the city like views you as a target right and you have to stand up and and use the words you speak to persuade them that you're on their side to try and rally them to your side and all of that. It's not... I think to rise to the position of police chief in Toronto, he has to have a lot of skills, like management skills, both as a police officer but also as a mover in the bureaucracy. But those skills are not the typical ones of a stump politician. And I think that showed on the campaign trail.

And so I think part of Mark Saunders performing really poorly is that I just don't actually think he's really cut out to be a candidate. I'm glad to see such a, you know, single digits, right? 8.58%. I was afraid he might win this thing because he was leaning hard on things like ripping up bike lanes. I think I got it. I think that was a quote, right?

So it's sort of like you kind of have your own, I have my own personal vision for this city and hearing something like that, which is like a jarring opposite of my vision, rip up bike lanes, you actually become fearful. Like, oh, what if this guy becomes mayor of Toronto? Well, two things.

I think one thing is that his poor showing is also partly the hurting effect, though, of the anybody but Chow situation. Of course. And when you look back and say Barbara Hall got 5% of the vote or something silly, small like that in 2003 when David Miller won. Barbara Hall was the commanding leader

at the start of that campaign. Like close to half of people voted for her against Mel Lastman, like 48% or 49%, or maybe it was 47, whatever it was. But also then like close to half of people were supporting her at the start of that campaign. And she just collapsed in the end. But that's the phenomenon where once David Miller became the progressive torchbearer,

everybody heard it to him. A hundred percent. And it was no reflection on Barbara Hall necessarily. I mean, maybe of a poorly run campaign or whatever. But it wasn't her personal unpopularity that drove her down that way. She was generally a well-liked figure. And I think Mark Saunders did suffer a bit of that. He and his campaign managed to really sort of define the choice

of anybody but Chow, but then he lost the primary to decide who anybody but Chow was. It was anybody was not him, right? It was Anna Bailao. And so I think he suffers in the end for that. But I also think there's like a misplaced emphasis on things like that. Because when he held his press conference with Stephen Holliday to say, this bike lane, extension of the Bloor bike lane out to Etobicoke, right?

From Runnymede where it stops now phase three will run out past Royal York to just past Islington I believe we're going to reverse that decision and Stephen Holliday city councilor was there saying yeah yeah he was repeating his earlier endorsement just putting an exclamation point on it right right i went and looked and that city council decision it's a larger plan that includes that that western extension of the bluer bike line that bike plan was passed at city council 21 to 1 stephen holiday is the only one who voted against it. So no mayor can reverse that decision. Yeah, but to me that's a signifier that there is still a... I am a talk radio host sometimes.

I am a participant in this city. So I know there are a lot of people who are loudly angry still about bike lanes, for whom this really is a wedge issue. But you see from the votes at Toronto City Council that it's actually no longer a live issue. It's like there's a consensus. The councillors in Scarborough, the councillors in North York, the councillors who voted to remove the Jarvis bike lanes, and actually did rip those out, right? remove the Jarvis bike lanes.

And I actually did rip those out, right? These people are now, or their successors, are all voting overwhelmingly for these bike plans. John Tory came around and became, you know, not as much as the bike people want him to be. But I have to say, from the time I left for Washington, D.C., and then the time I came back, it was like, I could just notice. I was like, there's bike lanes on Bloor. There's bike lanes on university. This is great. I can ride to work now and feel safe. I never did before from roughly the same neighborhood. Um, so you

could see the progress. And I, and I think, so it's not to say that the people in the city who, who think the bike lanes are a huge mistake, there is a chunk of them, and they're loud about it. And a lot of them are on the road all day. If I just bought... But they're not a political force at City Hall, and it appears not a political force in this election. Anthony Fury and Mark Saunders, the two anti-bike lane candidates combined,

got 15% of the vote, right? Right. There you go. That's it. Less actually, yeah. But one thing, when you get the call at 640 from the person who is complaining about the bike lanes, if you ask them the next question, which is where do you live,

more often than not, it's somebody who's, maybe they have to get to downtown Toronto for work or a sporting event or whatever, but they live in the 905. I'm telling you, most of these angry... A lot of them do. And I think a lot of the people who mis-overestimated, mis-overestimated Mark Saunders' potential support, I think are thinking that 905 sentiments

apply to the toronto electorate right that a lot of the things he was running on even i mean there was a moment and it was more than a moment there there has been this year some strong concerns about public safety there were a few really high profile incidents that caused a lot of us to start questioning, am I safe? Are my kids safe on the subway? Am I safe downtown? Like, what the hell is happening here, right? But the most fearful voices I've heard are people who live outside the city, who are like, are you thinking about getting out? Are you going to escape to Vaughn like we did are you coming out to Mississauga like we did right they're retroactively justifying their own decisions to move out there nobody can afford to live in the city anymore and I

will not go down there anymore because it's not safe I just read my newspaper it's not safe but I'm down there every day I know it's not as safe as I would like it to be, but not a war zone. Not any place I'm afraid to take my children. Right. Right. There's people will say on Twitter or whatever, they'd be like, come down to Yonge and Dundas Square

and tell me that you would allow your child to be at Yonge and Dundas Square. It's like, my daughter goes to school downtown and eats lunch at the Eaton Center. 100%. Come on. Yeah. Come on.

I think my daughter's down there right now and this is the you see there's a lot in the united states where i would go to rural pennsylvania and people would be like you live in washington dc it's like that city's burning to the ground just like portland and san francisco like they use these words the names of cities as like as like somehow like they're summoning this image of like a circle of hell okay so i got a phone call my phone's on silent because i'm a good host and i ignored it but i looked over and i saw it was fred patterson from humble and fred and i produced the humble and fred show so he was calling and i just remembered uh on election day he his advice on the humble and fred podcast was

don't vote chow unless you want toronto to become san francisco this was the sentence from fred patterson okay now fred lives in brampton okay he doesn't actually get a vote in this thing but don't vote for i remember these words this was exact quote don't vote and did he mean that as a good thing or bad he meant it as a bad thing oh okay okay it was not no and he was very i'm not i wonder it's actually very expensive to live in san francisco more so even than toronto i can't speak to say i haven't been to san francisco actually but uh but Fred Patterson was like this was the warning. Unless you want this city to turn into that

shithole that is San Francisco, do not cast a vote for Olivia Chow. Here's the thing. My understanding of the parts of San Francisco that are desperately bad, and Vancouver has a similar problem. With outdoor drug flagged,

like we're homeless, drug addicted, mentally unwell people are essentially like just thick on the streets. Yep, I've seen this in Vancouver. Right? That doesn't seem to me to be a problem that the nanny state has somehow created, right? Like actually housing those people, offering them treatment options, doesn't seem to me to be a problem that the nanny state has somehow created right like that like

actually housing those people offering them treatment options um offering clean needles better ways to to um to like try and step up out of poverty like to mental health services uh addiction treatment method clinics also likeone clinics. Also like income supplements, rent supplements. Like those things seem to likely to solve those problems rather than exacerbate them to me. But what do I know? We'll see. Well, I'm with you.

Maybe Olivia Chow's going to set up a, like it'll be like the tenderloin. But I mean, you know, back in the good old days of the nineties, when I went to the school that is now called Toronto Metropolitan University, like Jarvis street had a lot of street walking prostitutes. There was a lot of drug, sure. On the street,

Jarvis street. Now I would still like go to the Phoenix and, and when Martin streak was behind the, today's the anniversary of his passing. I thought of that when I, 2009, I would still like go to the Phoenix and when Martin Streak was behind the mic. Today is the anniversary of his passing. I thought of that. 2009. One side note.

I was never, I did not know Martin Streak well. I met him several times. My cousin and close friend, one of my closest friends when I was younger, she's now out on the West Coast, Ange, was friends with Martin. And so she would always get us on the guest list when he was younger, she's now out on the West Coast, Ange was friends with Martin, and so she would always get us on the guest list when he was there, and he would always have a few drink tickets for us, and so I have fond memories of him that way,

but also as just a radio personality who I love listening to, and that voice, right? Well, if you're of a certain age and you liked alternative music, Streak was a really important part of our teenage years. I was an editor at iWeekly when he passed and got news of that. And of course, our music critics and music department

was sort of like hopped to trying to memorialize him, right? Like as a fellow part of this sort of alternative media culture. That's the first time I remember. I may well have been aware of it. Oh, I know where you're going. Go ahead. But your blog became such a repository first time I remember, I may well have been aware of it. Oh, I know where you're going. Go ahead. But your blog became such a repository of like both information, but remembrances. And so I may have like read or tracked some radio rumors and stuff on the Toronto Mike blog before that.

But the first time I remember now being aware of it. Well, I just got goosebumps because I just remember that night. I was actually just pouring over it and seeing all the outpouring of grief and memories on your blog. Yeah. And I was a regular reader after that, before I was ever a podcast listener. And now you're a regular guest. And now I'm a guest. Look at the evolution here.

But I got goosebumps when you started talking about reading it on torontomic.com because, and I'm not here to pat my, don't brag here, this is the most tragic thing ever and it was the saddest thing I ever posted, but I was the first public place to mention the death of Merton Street. Yeah, and I think I may,

either I read it on your blog and started phoning or being in contact with the music people at iWeekly or one of them had called me to say it and when I started looking online I saw yours I can't remember which was first because the word was spreading through friend networks I think yeah before it was so I got I got notified by somebody who worked at CFNY who because you know I was you know I've always been interested in CFNY and the ongoing history of CFNY.

The spirit of radio. The spirit of radio. Half these episodes, sorry, Steve Paikin, but half these episodes, he won't listen. He might kind of soften that a bit.

He just said, he's a Sinatra guy, Steve Paikin, but he did famously tell me he loves Toronto Mike, listens to Toronto Mike, except for the CFNY episodes. Right.

You know, it's like, he's like an old soul. Like, I know he's not, he's not radically older than you and I, okay? to Toronto Mike except for the CFNY episodes. Right. He's like an old soul. I know he's not radically older than you and I, okay? But he might as well be 90. Do you know what I mean? But it's just like, what are his great Toronto memories? I'm just trying to think of

who played that big band swing for him in the 80s when he was growing up. When he was coming up, it was what, the 70s, the 80s, I guess uh he's probably about 60 he's got 10 on you no that's what i'm thinking he's probably 10 years older so if if my heyday was like the late 80s to the late 90s of like that's when i was a youth uh who was listening to the radio a lot and where my music uh opinions and tastes and stuff were being formed or in by or around what was on the radio either like you know i don't like that waves or cfny yeah i just don't know where a young steve pakin was was if there was a radio

experience at all or if it was just like old vinyl old 78s crackling pop from grandpa's collection okay so shout out to steve pakin who takes the summers off he's got a good gig apparently uh he's off for the summer here but uh we'll get him back on in september so i now because i know i promised you a tight 90s so i now i'm going to so we gotta move it along we're gonna move it along because i have very specific things i want to point out but we do miss martin streak i actually posted a couple of things on twitter you're still tweeting right like there was a couple of days where I couldn't see tweets and it pissed me off royally. Like it just wasn't functioning. And I don't mind all the political

bullshit. I don't even mind that this idiot billionaire has bought them. I don't like it, but I know it's not enough to make me leave like the idiot billionaire in charge and the whole, like, you know, you know, you know, I haven't been tweeting the last couple of years, nevermind the last recently as much as I used to. Right. I used to be sort of a power user on Twitter. I would I really enjoyed it. And then for a while it just wasn't fun anymore. And and I stopped using it as much, but I still use it as like a source of information as a news feed.

It's tracking other people and seeing what they're what's going on with them and right. And what's going on in the world um and so i have signed up uh with my same the keenan wire uh name username for some of these other services that may or may not emerge as the competitor but i think like for all of its garbage right right? Yeah. The good things, when everybody says they want Twitter to go back to or be like, is like a simple chronological posts by the people you decided to follow. Correct. And that was one half of Twitter's magic.

The other half of Twitter's heyday magic was that everybody was on it. Sure. Or everybody whose opinion you cared to follow so if there was an earthquake or off across the world you were getting a real-time photos from people on the scene like regular people news reporters in in whatever country it was and all of that but also yeah the world's foremost experts in earthquakes would suddenly start holding forth on what was happening there and how it compared to other things.

And then all your friends were also in the conversation like you're at the water cooler watching both the experts and the live feed at the same time and able to comment between each other. And then the charitable organizations that would be trying to do relief, like telling me what I could do, they're also on there. And so, you know, in American politics too, it's like not just American politics, but every politics. Like the politicians themselves are sending out the message. Their critics are commenting directly on it. commenting directly on it.

And so it does seem simple, like if some competitor wants to recreate what Twitter used to be, the reverse chronological feed of only people you follow, that's the easy part. Nobody knows how to make money at that because Twitter never did, and that was its problem that led Elon Musk to take over. But that was the format everybody liked.

But the ingredient was that everyone else was on it. And I don't know if we're ever going to get that back at Twitter or anywhere else. Like, I think the people who have left are not looking for another social media thing. They're, like, overdosed on it. Or, like, there's this critical mass. It's just fragmented now.

Okay, so I'm with you. So, quick observations from yours truly and then again we're gonna we're gonna burn here man we're gonna burn here but I did

like many people in the last 24 hours I did create a threads account yeah I got one of those this is the new meta one okay it's sort of tied to Instagram

that is no chronological feed well not only that here's one of my beef with it I'm gonna sound like an old fart here but I do all my power content creation on a laptop, not the mobile phone, okay?

I actually, I don't know, Matt, I'm going blind. I make mistakes. I don't like typing on it. So there is no way to, right now, see comments. It's so hard to type with the rotary dial. Yeah, I like it. I am always, you know, Twitter, I mainly do, unless I'm out, I don't know about.

I mainly tweet on my laptop. I mainly contribute to the FOTM group on WhatsApp on my laptop. And when I realized I couldn't actually update threads or even see replies and comments on my laptop, I actually tapped the guy who lost interest in it. I didn't even know that was the case because I haven't tried to check it out on my laptop yet. Because you're a phone guy.

No, but I mean, I mostly am on laptop day during my work day. You can't. It makes you download the app and do it there. But then I did get an invite to Blue Sky, which is invite only, so there's not a lot of people there. So that's the only one I haven't hated on yet of all the Twitter alternatives I've, since they fired an FOTM Hall of Famer. So Blue Sky, although no one's there because people can't get in there. But that's the only one. I'm holding out hope

on Blue Sky. But I've come to the realization that I can move the DM group, which I did, to WhatsApp. I got it out of Twitter. That's the FOTM DM group. Ed, you should beg me to get in there. I would add you. But I think that crappy, shitty shitty blue bird twitter elon thing is still the best game in town when it comes to real-time micro blogging

yeah i mean i i don't i haven't replaced it with anything else yet as either a reader or a tweeter same uh and though i tweet a heck of a lot less than I used to, it's still the only one that I'm scanning and reading. And I do, actually, I have done most of my tweeting on a laptop and most of my reading of Twitter, though, on my phone. Oh, so I'm good at reading on the phone. I just don't like to create content on my phone. I just want the keyboard. I'm a power content creator.

I'm still not a... I have written entire articles on my phone, but it is not natural to me. It doesn't flow. And you had to do it. That's why we did it. Yeah, yeah. No, there's situations where you...

In the old days, you would literally phone and use your voice to dictate the article to the person on the other end of the phone. And when you're in a situation where you can't safely or easily sit down and type it out. Right.

And these days, you just type it in notes on your phone and email that to somebody. There you go. There you go. Okay, so we're cooking with gas. And you want to thank a couple of people real quick. I want to thank the Moment Lab. The Moment Lab, I'm happy to introduce anybody listening to Matt and or Jared at the Moment Lab. They have a team of PR professionals that are ready to help you

with your brand strategy, your PR strategy. They're good people working with people, good FOTMs you know and love. Shout out to the Moment Lab. And this is exciting. I want to take a moment on this because this is brand new.

But there is an evening for the Downey Wenjack Fund on September 1st. That's the day after TMLX 13, by the way, Ed. I hope to see you at Great Lakes Brewery for TMLX 13 on August 31st. That's the day after TMLX 13, by the way. Ed, I hope to see you at Great Lakes Brewery for TMLX 13 on August 31st. I hope to be there.

You better be there. I'll be pissed off. The next day at 7.30 at the Rec Room is Getting Hip to the Hip. There's a whole bunch of great stuff planned for Getting Hip to the Hip. FOTM Jamie Du is a part of this. I have more details at TorontoMic.com and I'll share more details in the future. But for now Jamie Du is a part of this. I have more details at torontomic.com

and I'll share more details in the future. But for now, you need to know that you can go to gettinghiptothehip.com. You can use the promo code FOTM10. FOTM 1-0. You can save 10% on your ticket. I will be there. Come on out, hang out.

If you love the Tragically Hip, you'll love Getting Hip to the Hip. An evening for the Downey Wenjack fund you big hip guy i am i i like the hip i don't you're a lukewarm on the hip i can read your i actually like the hip quite a lot um it's just that in the there are so many when you say are you a big hip guy like i know big hip people who are like big hip people and i uh like the tragically hip i am not i would never was obsessive by them their later stuff uh i'm i'm less familiar with did you ever buy a ticket to see the tragically hip uh yeah a couple times okay um at ontario place uh whenles, I think they were touring maybe.

And then at Molson Park, I think, maybe around the time of Fully Completely. Or like after it, but in that era of early 90s. But I mean, I'm less familiar with the stuff that came after Day for Night. I know the radio hits and all of that. I'm not an obsessive hip fan. I do like the hip quite a lot. I actually am not that big a fan of almost any band or musician because the people I know who are real music fans geek out on something and they, they know all the deep,

like Sinatra stuff and Steve Bacon or whatever. Yeah. Uh, whereas like I'm a guy who likes the hits. Uh, there are a few, like I, even,

even the bands I really like outside of the Beatles. I, I, I have a couple albums that I really like that I'll like put on and listen to. And I know all the deep cuts on that one album, but it's like, well, I might be completely unfamiliar with whole entire other parts of their

catalog. So that's what you're streaming in that Maneras speaker is on the backyard. Okay. There you go. Straight up question. We have no way to know the answer, but I'm curious what you think of your, your educated,

your guess on this is that I believe, and I said this to Anna Bailao, I said it to her face, actually the Friday before the election, if we had ranked balloting in this city for the election we just had, I believe Anna Bailao would be our mayor today with ranked balloting. It's possible. It is hard to game out, in part, as Dave Meslin, who's been a big advocate of ranked ballots, says, like, it's not just because, like, when you try and go and say, okay, how many Mark Saunders voters would have bylaw as their second choice versus having, like, whatever, but also it changes the whole way people run, right? When you

need to attract second choice voters, third choice voters, and all of that, you run an entirely different campaign, right? And so it's hard to know, but I think Matt Elliott ran some scenarios about, he was trying to game out if John Tory's endorsement had come earlier, but you're trying to apportion how much of Matlow's support goes to Bailao. Some. And how much of Matlow's support goes to Chow. But I think whether or not we have rank balloting, or I'm also a fan, i have come around to being a fan

of the runoff it's more of a blunt force uh to have a second election yeah the top two okay yeah but it also means like there's a playoffs there's a finals right like this is now the preliminaries are done uh and and it's narrowed down to two choices and they've got one week or two weeks to go head to head. And then, but either of those systems, I think, eliminates a lot of the questions about like, well, 60 whatever percent voted against you. I mean, I wrote an article and the headline was like, more people voted against Olivia Chow than in favor of her.

There must be a better way to run an election. Everybody was like, well, there he is. He hates Olivia Chow. He's of her, there must be a better way to run an election. Everybody was like, well, there he is. He hates Olivia Chow. He's prejudiced against her from the beginning. He's like, I wrote the same thing after Doug Ford's last election.

I was in the United States, but I did a newsletter where it was rounding up some American news and some Ontario news, and I was like saying, look, this guy got a majority with only 40%.

There's a better way to run elections. I've said that about Justin Trudeau before. I've said it all along. It's like, no matter, I just think an electoral system

where you clearly allow the electorate to choose to the extent they can tell you what they want, that's a better system than the one where they try to strategize based on polls. First pass the polls. Who's best able to defeat the candidate I like the least? Who's going to prevent the ripping up bike lanes guy from winning? Again, quick hits here, man, because you said 90 minutes.

We could do 90 minutes. But there was a candidate named Gong. Yeah. And finished with 0.41%. That's a bit less than 3,000 votes in this thing. But on bike rides, I've personally seen 30,000 Gong signs. Yeah, I mean,

Gong's campaign was sort of an interesting test of how many votes, money alone, and nothing else. Right. Not quite. Money and nothing else? Right. Not quite. Money and a memorable last name. So that's what he had. He won the sign war.

He probably put more signs on public property than any other candidate. 100%. Right? No doubt. He also had buses. Yeah. He had- YouTube ads.

My kids are watching a YouTube video and gong thing in the corner. I imagine probably Twitch streams or something. He had online. I think he was on CP24 maybe. He had CP24 ads. He had ads in Yonge-Dundas Square. Wow. That's expensive.

Everybody's waiting to see if he actually files his financial disclosure forms. Yeah. Because the penalty if you don't is that you can't run again. I mean, he's been convicted of like a. But he spent a tremendous amount of money. Yeah. But had absolutely no profile. The news reports about his background that we get are that he's...

It's questionable. Well, there's a pyramid scheme that he was... He was convicted of like a pyramid scheme. I think a company that he owns or partly owns... But there's some dirt there. Settled. Not convicted. Like, pled guilty to involvement in a pyramid scheme.

Right. If I seem careful, it's just because I don't want him to sue me. Well, I don't want you to say anything that's not true. I just know what I read. Certainly sketchy-looking background. Or questionable questions. Deep questions about that. And otherwise, like, nobody knows who this about that. And otherwise,

nobody knows who this guy is and he wasn't in the debates. So it's a pure test, but it turns out that having all that money, it gets you, what was it, less than 3,000 votes or so?

Less than 3,000 votes, 0.41% of the vote. But that is way more than, I'm just going to throw out a couple of quick hit names here before I want to ask you what Drinking in Parks, but Giorgio Mammoliti finished with 0.15%. I think he might be the biggest name to smallest vote count.

Yeah, I mean, Unless you count Frank D'Angelo. Selena Cesar Chivana, I think, is down the list there, too. Now, she was probably a smaller name in Toronto political circles. I don't even know that name. She was a member of parliament, a liberal member of parliament, but represented Whitby or Oshawa.

I should know this. But she's an experienced politician. But so, yeah, Giorgio Mammoliti, that's got to be... Anthony Peruzza has very few silver linings in this campaign, although he seemed to be running as a bit of a lark. But if I know these guys well, and I don't know them that well, but I've been watching them long enough,

that his main goal in this would have been to beat Giorgio Mammoliti. And he did. But there's two other names here. One, former councillor Rob Davis. He was also big on ripping up the bike lanes, by the way. But he finished with 300... I'm certain if I had won in the election,

I would have had more than 378 votes. Yeah, yeah. No, if only the FOTMs voted for you. But the other name that I, you know, lest we forget before we move on from this election, that, by the way, Olivia Chow won, but Frank D'Angelo finished with 343 votes. That's 0.05% of the votes.

Like, that's kind of interesting considering that is a name people know, right? Somebody said he got almost as many votes as people have seen his movies. Watch Being Frank on CHCH there. Okay, and I see Romero now. He had 281 votes. Okay, so we'll leave the election now.

Just wanted some of these notable guys. And again, I was mildly concerned that Chris Sky was able to get more than 1% of the vote. He had it with 1.1%. That's 8,000 votes. Like it is a little, you know, there's 8,000 Torontonians who cast a vote for Chris Sky. Like I know it's a protest vote.

Every single one of them has tweeted at me at some point. I'm sure of it. Okay, so again, this is Quest for 90 minutes. Are we going to do it? Okay, we got 10 minutes left here. Okay, so I need to ask you about what's going on with you

repeated it so many times that if i have wanted a little flexibility like hey i can stay i could do 95 i could do 97 you after 90 minutes this is like a test here uh what's going on with uh this proposed uh merger of sorts between uh your your place, Torstar. Is that the name of it? Nordstar or Torstar? What do I call this place now? Torstar? Nordstar owns Torstar. Okay, Nordstar owns Torstar.

And there was this talk of a merger with Post Media. But then this news almost got eclipsed right away because Google and Facebook are like balking at these mandated payments. And then perhaps that deal was predicated on that cash flow. So what say you without, you know, just,

you know, what can you share with us about what you know about this? The fact is, I don't know much more than anybody who has read these stories knows. We did have some information shared with us at work, but it was basically, you know, that this wasn't necessarily at a stage where they were planning to announce that they were going to do this, but there was some irregular trading on post-media stock,

and so they wanted to get out ahead of it. If some people had heard something and were trading based on that, they wanted to clarify what's going on. If some people had heard something and were trading based on that, they wanted to clarify what's going on. And I can't say that I necessarily think it's great news. I also don't think much of the media news I've heard in the last few years is great news. From what I know, the discussions are about merging the two companies and then splitting the Toronto Star off as a separate company

that is also owned by the same group in a different ownership configuration, right? So basically the owner of the Star, Nord Star, which is Jordan Bitov, the star nordstar which is jordan bitov um and uh would it would would be sort of like be 50 50 voting owners on uh torstar post media that would it basically involve all of the metroland newspapers the daily the community papers in the smaller town smaller city daily newspapers that that that are owned by the same company along with all those post media titles across the country that they believe somehow that that would um allow them to join forces in selling advertising and whatnot in a way that would give them even better advantages and potentially often also protect them from some of uh post media's creditors who they have to pay giant payments to right now i don't know

i'm not a financially sophisticated enough guy to know how that works that that the debt to equity stuff and all of that um my primary concern as a employee of the toronto star but also a lifelong reader of the toronto star and a believer in this toronto star's mission is that the star maintain its editorial independence but also maintain basically its independence as a company. Like, I think there's a driving philosophy at the Star based on the Atkinson principles and all of that, but also an identity as the paper of the people in Toronto

that is a different business proposition than the Post Media chain is or than even the Metroland papers necessarily are. And I also think that its business prospects are potentially different. I mean, I don't have any of the inside business details. I was somewhat reassured, although these conversations are still happening

that that the the way they're structuring this would not see the toronto star moved into some kind of like editorial alignment with a post-media chain which right now like they share a lot of content around like rex murphy columns and like editorials and stuff all across the entire country all the post media papers uh i i wouldn't want the star to be part of that and it it it seems like there's no it's not on the horizon it would be a separate company not just a separate title but like a separate entire company that would own the star um that would still be controlled and majority owned by the same person, people who own it now. Um, so,

I mean, that, that's where I'm at. So I'm like partly reassured that we're not in the midst of like, uh, a merger that would affect my day to day job with, with the Toronto sun and the, and the national post say,

right. Um, it would be weird for us to be competing against them with this kind of shared ownership structure. Everything's weird now. I mean, that other news that you said about Google and Facebook eclipsing it does complicate every discussion of this, right? Because Meta and Google are actively removing Canadian news.

Yeah, and... because meta and google are actively removing canadian news yeah and this is one of those stories where where the digital giants the big tech companies particularly facebook and google but also um yeah i mean basically captured the entire advertising market that the canadian news industry used to depend on right right um like it's dramatic you can go and look at the charts but what it is is that like almost all of when the canadian government in its own retaliation for their retaliation said we're going to withdraw our government advertising from those from from facebook then you can see that like i don't have the numbers in front of me but i think we're going to withdraw our government advertising from Facebook. Then you could see that, like, I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I think it was something like they spend $6 million

on, like, ads in Canadian news media a year and $10 million on Facebook ads. It's like that's actually generous to us. Like, the other numbers are dramatically different. But basically, to deal with this situation where the entire old business model of the Canadian news and magazine industry, the entire publishing industry and broadcast industry in Canada

has been destroyed by a couple big online companies. destroyed by a couple big online companies um the way the canadian government attempted to to deal with that seems to me to have deep flaws in it in that they're like well we're gonna put a tax essentially or a like charge on on linking to these traditional news media so all of a sudden if google sends me traffic, which is a major source of Toronto Star traffic. The biggest source, right? Our readers come in from search engines and from social media,

but primarily from search engines. Like those are potential customers, right? They're readers and they're also potential subscribers. They often are subscribers. We're going to charge them for that. That's actually not, that's,

that's backwards. That's not what we want to charge them for, right? That's not what, to the extent that, that I think it's fair to ask those big companies to, uh, be part of the solution of a,

of a Canadian news industry. I don't think the format of charging them to drive us traffic is, that's not the solution, right? Anyhow, they've said, we're going to call your bluff. We're just going to not, there's going to be no Canadian news at all accessible on Google or Facebook, which, which means that for like many Canadians, it might as well not exist at all right um right i mean this is a crisis uh for not just for us but for all canadians looking for information about what's going on in canada um so now the federal government is withdrawing it's added it's a it's a giant mess

that's a clusterfuck i hope they're all bluffing i hope they can sit down and work something out i i do think like the Canadian government is sinking billions and billions of dollars into trying to develop an electric battery industry, an electric car industry in Canada because of the jobs it creates, because of the potential contribution to society. I think we spend like, I can't remember if it's $6 billion a year subsidizing people's electricity bills, right?

Right now. You know, the Canadian news industry probably needs an injection like of that size or equivalent. And I'm not talking about the Toronto Star. I'm talking about all of them. I don't know exactly where morally the money should come from. I don't like the idea of Trudeau's cabinet or Pierre Palliev's cabinet or anybody else's writing the checks to my bosses because it creates the appearance, if not the

reality, that we're under there but i mean maybe there's a potential let well how about this every canadian is given as a tax credit or a refundable tax credit or let's say uh like you you've got an account every canadian has 200 bucks in their account and that's subscription money for media and it's provided by the government and every year they get to spend two hundred dollars on subscriptions and if toronto mic'd starts requiring a five dollar a month subscription they can spend it on that and if the toronto star that i will absolutely and if the toronto star wants to but i mean a mechanism like that would let the people of canada decide which places they wanted to support and where they're directing a government subsidy while also potentially recognizing...

I mean, here's the fact is that like I know at the risk of coming right up to our tight 90, but this is like I know it appears that I have a vested interest in this issue and I do. it appears that I have a vested interest in this issue and I do. But my interest goes beyond it because frankly, like opinionated blowhards like me who are paid to be columnists, like they're traditionally considered one of the value offerings of a paper. They help provide the identity and hope, hopefully attract subscribers. Um,

but I don't think the world is going to be missing the voices of people like me. If the business market disappears, first of all, people like Matt Gurney and Paul Wells have shown like you can start a substrack and use your, your personality, your voice, your whatever, to have a pool of subscribers. But also there's a lot of people, a lot of smart people who, who will do that for free or for close to free, right? They will set up a personal blog. You can find them on Twitter or whatever comes after it and all of that. But investigative journalism is really expensive. You have teams of reporters who earn, you hope, a middle-class salary working for a year on one

project. And it may not even turn into anything, right? It may be that after a thorough investigation, nothing happened, right? Nothing bad happened. There's no scandal there. But we are paying people, the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, CBC, traditionally Global and CTV, they're paying people to dig into those things. They're paying full-time reporters to be at City Hall watching meetings on your behalf so that they can tell you if something important happens there that you need to know, they can let you know, right? Those are the things that very few people are going to do for fun. And that it's almost it's not impossible but it's close to impossible to fund as a like one person startup you know uh

it's hard it's it's one thing for me to start up uh uh for you to run your own podcast here or for me to start up a sub stack where i send people a newsletter once a week with my opinions on in it. It's another thing for me to start, uh, like a team of five investigative reporters who are going to spend two years working on one story as our first project. Like it's like, right. There's no independent.

It's a very difficult indie business model for that. And I think society depends on that stuff. That's, indie business model for that, right? And I think society depends on that stuff. That's the real value of what traditional newspapers and TV news and radio news and websites like traditional journalism, that's the value of what it provides. And that's what is at risk of disappearing. And, you know, as much as my bosses and everybody else's bosses in the industry and a lot of, like, innovators are all trying to figure out a new business model to do that old same thing, this work that we love, there's a societal interest in seeing that. That's similar, I think, to the societal interest in other industries in Canada that get a subsidy. But I'm not sure. I just have no, there are no good guys to root for in this fight between the government and,

because it seems like they're all, I don't know. That's a terrible way to end that phrase. No, you know what, you did eloquently express those thoughts. And I love what you said there. Now, the 90 minutes, I would literally start playing lowest of the low right now if we wanted to come close to 90 minutes.

But I had two more things on my notes. Can I just burn them? Yeah, yeah, let's do them. I'm going, blowing by this 90 minutes. I built a little leeway into my... Okay, so you knew I'd do this. Okay, smart. That's why you're writing for the Toronto Star.

Okay. Here, I'm going to read this. An environmental assessment conducted for Infrastructure Ontario on its planned Ontario Place redevelopment says the project will result in a net benefit for the physical environment, but doesn't take into account the creation of the controversial spa

or live music venue planned for the site. You try to imagine like a study that says that in fact, the National Football League has no higher incidence of concussions than any other employer. And then the asterisk is excluding the players. We did not include players in this sample. That's a good analogy. or like if you exclude the parkway there are almost no cars in the Don Valley at all like hardly any traffic in the Don Valley

right outside of the parkway so it's like a net traffic benefit the Don Valley except for the parkway so what the fuck Ed that could be the name of your sub stack if things blow up for you Except for the parking lot. So what the fuck, Ed?

That could be the name of your sub stack, okay? If things blow up for you, what the fuck, Ed? I have a column I wrote about this, or it's partly about this, that will appear in Friday's Toronto Star, I believe. But it's... Like, I mean, the Ford government has decided to exempt private projects from environmental assessment requirements. And so you say to yourself, why the hell even conduct the assessment?

Why would you do that? And I'll tell you why. It's because now Doug Ford and his team get to hold up. Yeah, they wave this. They get to refer to the fact that environmental assessment has said it's a nest. This is a guy who has spent 10-ish years claiming that he and his brother found a billion dollars of efficiencies at Toronto City Hall, which is like just gibberish. Like his numbers, when he used to provide the numbers, were like some of those are new fees.

Some of those are fees they eliminated. Some of those are additions of revenue. Some of them are cut revenue. Some of them are like, well, some pinko would have given a bigger raise than we did to the cops, and so we'll just count that as a savings. And it's like the man is not against entirely fabricated gibberish. And, and so if you can torque it,

which, so here's an EA that says that all the, all the stuff around the therm spa and the live nation thing will have a net benefit. They're going to plant some new trees and all of that. Those areas are going to be, you know, therm as a condition of its thing has to do some cleanup of the water around there and all of that it's like but what about the giant glass enclosure that's going to have to be heated and

cooled on the toronto waterfront facing south all year what about the the half a billion dollar garage that's going to draw this car traffic traffic to the area? What about the forest of trees that they're raising? That's not included in the environmental impact. Why is this okay? This basically speaks to why we need journalists covering this stuff and shining a light on this.

This is stinky. Yeah. If you ask me, it's not okay. I mean, the guy got elected to a majority government, and so... That's a license to, you know, shovel shit on the constituents? Basically, it's like if people object, they need to, like, call their preferably conservative member of provincial parliament.

Like, the one thing doug ford the one thing you can say for him is that when he when he thinks something he's doing unpopular he will back down sometimes often well we hope not always right like this is all such like this is how we run like let's let's hope he backs down because we all bark about how much bullshit that is but man what a way to like what a way to live your life in you know the biggest city in the country like the thing is that often like people will say and you know i i get it because i feel it too like it's like when when donald trump was doing certain things when uh you know even when rob ford was in the the height of the crack scandal

they're like how is it that this guy can't just be fired? Isn't there some condition where if you admit to smoking crack, you have to resign? There's two safeguards. When you elect the premier or the prime minister or the president of the United States or whatever, one thing that keeps them in check is the electorate. In the next election, you can vote in somebody else.

Right. And the other is like a sense of shame, right? There's a constitution and all of that. That's how John Tory is not there anymore because of that, right? It's like people have to say their own sense of propriety keeps them from pushing the boundaries too far. And increasingly, you see a sense of shamelessness which is what i think you see here uh is just like i mean so you got all these ford family lawyers and caroline mulrooney getting the new king's council it's like hey

that stinks it's a piece of paper you can wave around just like an environmental assessment Caroline Mulrooney getting the new King's Council. It's like, hey! That stinks, too. It's a piece of paper you can wave around, just like an environmental assessment. Now I'm angry. We closed badly. But this song's very long. So before I thank the sponsors, and Ed, you were great as usual.

I can't wait for the next quarter when you come back. That'll be in three months. But beers and park. Where are we at with it you can do it well there's this pilot project coming where there's gonna be 20 parks in the city where people can drink alcohol and if that goes well you know who knows maybe it'll be 40 next year um i mean i think and you know i don't even drink beer anymore right i drink non-alcoholic beer. But still, I just say like let people have a beer in the park if they want to have a beer. Can I disclose this to you?

I promote my park beers and invite people to join me. I put a map on Twitter and I say here's the X in this park where I'm going to be with cold Great Lakes beer. Come to this X and if you're over 19 years old and you're a responsible adult, you can have a beer in this park with me. I'm out of fucks to give on it all. Yeah, and I think most people are like that. I have heard from people

in response to a column I wrote that they are concerned that it's going to be like drunk teenagers and all of that. And I was just like, there already are drunk teenagers there, but if we need to police boisterousness and stuff then police that but that's what i say have a glass of wine or a beer or a six-pack or whatever like let us be responsible adults and the irresponsible

people police that activity yeah like don't tell me you know pushing 50 here that i can't have a responsible couple of cans of beer you can sit on the licensed patio on the street. You can sit in your own front yard if you want. Right. Now, there's lots of people who don't have a front yard. Right. Let them go out and have a beer, too. Right.

Yes. There's a good scene in The Wire about this, where it says, put it in a paper bag and the cops won't bug you. And they put it in a paper bag and the cops won't bug you. And they, you know, yeah, you know, let's put it in a paper bag. And I mean, to some extent people already do that and the cops mostly don't bug them, but it's just like, I don't like that hypocrisy.

I think just, just, just let people legalize it, legalize it, and then deal with the problems and problems emerge. But I think the experience in other places where they allow it is that there aren't actually that many problems that arise. And that brings us to the end of our 1,287th show.

You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike. Ed is also on Twitter with me. We're hanging in there. He's at The Keenan Wire. Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery are at Great Lakes Beer. They're hosting TMLX 13 on August 31st from 6 to 9 p.m. You should join us.

Palma Pasta is at Palma Pasta. I have a lasagna for you, Ed. Woo-hoo! Getting Hip to the Hip is Getting Hip Pod. And that event, again, is on September 1st. Get a ticket and save 10% with the promo code FOTM10. Recycle My Electronics are at EPRA underscore Canada. The Moment Lab are at The Moment Lab

and Ridley Funeral Home are at Ridley FH. See you all next week when Simon Head, the director of the new Lowest of the Low documentary, joins me in studio. That's Monday.

And FOTM Andrew Stokely will drop by to kick out his 10 favorite Lowest of the Low songs of all time. So it's going to be a low lovin' on Monday. See you all then. And it's just like mine And it won't go away

Cause everything is rosy and gray Well, I've kissed you in France And I've kissed you in France and I've kissed you in Spain And I've kissed you in places I better not name And I've seen the sun go down on Sacré-Cœur But I like it much better

going down on you Yeah, you know that's true Because everything is coming up Rosy and green Yeah, the wind is cold