Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - The Toronto Star's Edward Keenan: Toronto Mike'd Podcast Episode 1773

Episode Date: October 2, 2025

In this 1773rd episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike chats with Toronto Star city columnist Ed Keenan about the 2026 Toronto election, the love lives of John Tory and Olivia Chow, speed cameras, Ontario Place, the Imperial Pub, bike lanes, and the Eglinton Crosstown LRT. Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Ridley Funeral Home, Nick Ainis, Blue Sky Agency and RecycleMyElectronics.ca. If you would like to support the show, we do have partner opportunities available. Please email Toronto Mike at [e-mail].

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pillars of the community since 1921. Today, returning for his quarterly appearance on Toronto mic, it's Mr. Edward Keenan from the Toronto Star. Woo! When you're this big, they call you Mr. That's right. The name, again, before I press record, I was trying to come up with the lead singer of the dough boys

who married the second Mrs. Draper from Mad Men, and it's thanks to the VP of sales at live.tronomike.com. I see it's John Kastner. John Kastner. John Kastner, lead singer and founder of the Dooboys? Do you remember Doe Boys? Yeah, I do.

And then that came up because then he was in another band. Oh, All Systems Go. And I saw All Systems Go at Molson Park and Berry in 1998 on the small stage because on the big stage, I was there to see a little band called Pearl Jam. Ah, okay. There you go. I did see Pearl Jam at Moulson Park and Berry, but as part of the Lola Poulouse in 92 lineup.

You were ahead of me there. I heard that, do you remember that lineup? I've seen the posters, and it was legendary. So when we bought the tickets, we thought we were going to see a red hot chili peppers concert. And a couple of my friends who were cool knew that Lola Palluzza was kind of a thing because Jane's Addiction,

who were the darlings of CFNY, throughout that era had headlined the tour and founded it the year before at C&E. But like this was now a full on thing but it was like red hot chili peppers were there and then I think Ice Cube

was there that year who we also loved and and then it was like also Jesus and Mary Jane. But then by the time we went there, ministry Pearl Jam Sound Garden like just like blew the

like they had blown up so like the time the grunge breaks between we bought by the time between the time we bought the tickets

and the time we went to the show Sound Garden and Pearl Jam had become two the biggest bands in the world right and so so I mean and that was just a massive show

that was the first time I ever crowd surfed or found myself in a mosh pit and yeah it was a great time so very very memorable and I went to to a couple other lollapaloozes after that, also at Molson Park.

And, you know, lots of great bills. Did you go to any, uh, quite, nothing like that? Eddie Vedder also, like he used to do. Yeah. Because actually, by the, I was, I said by the time we went to the show, Pearl Jam had blown up to become the biggest band in the world, but it's like, I basically only, they had one radio hit at the time that was kind of big, but then they, they put on such a show and it was like such a grunge vibe

at the time, but also Eddie Vedder climbed the rigging, right? Like he climbed the light rigging up and what appeared to be now maybe it was only like 30, 40 feet up, but it appeared to be like hundreds and hundreds of feet up in the air and then dove

like into the mosh pit from a scarily high level and it was just like, what the hell this guy? So, wow, what a force. Hell of a show. Hell of a show.

When you talk about one radio hit, are you talking about Evenflow or Alive? It must have been Even Flow was their first one, right? I remember them being like, yeah, I think it was Even Flow than Alive, but those two were the big radio hits. Alive and Jeremy. Well, Jeremy had the big video.

Yeah, yeah. Which came a little later. But yeah, yeah. That's, I mean, if you go back to 10, those were the three giant singles. But singles, yes. But the big radio song, in addition to those three was Black. Black, yeah, as well.

It wasn't released as a single, but was played all the time on, CFNY, for example. Yes, exactly. Oh, man, I'm enjoying the Pearl Jam talk. I just had yesterday, Bob Willett was here. He might be the biggest Pearl Jam fan I know. And we were talking about a cover band I saw,

I don't know, was that the Kingsway? Stone Temple Pilots? No, he was, sorry. You know what, Plush. I know, so I was, you know, we're similar vintage. So when Plush was released as a single, all my friends were joking about the new Pearl Jam single, but I went out and bought core,

and I'm just here to say they stand alone They're a great band, too. No, no, they have a lot of other good stuff, but it was funny because I was in university at the time, and my closest friend, had her friend, blah, blah, blah, she can't remember her name, but was visiting from, like, Los Angeles, where she was a model.

And then she was like, have you guys heard of STP, this new band Stone Temple Pilots? And we said, no, we've never heard of them yet. And she said, you're going to soon. But when you turn on the radio and you think you're hearing the new Pearl Jam single, that will be Stone Temple Pilots. And that exactly happened.

It was like a week later, I heard what appeared to be a new pearl jam song, and the dogs began to smell her. What a pearl jam song, right? Plus, great single. And it was indeed Stone Temple Pilots, so. Wow. So I saw, you know, it's funny you mentioned

you were going to see a Red Out Chili Peppers show and it turned into a Pearl Jam Soundgarden thing because I actually bought tickets to see Red Out Chili Peppers just so I could see the opening band, Stone Temple Pilots. That was at the amphitheater. So, okay. And also, I once bought tickets to see Lincoln Park.

I want to say Downsview Park. It was where, look, so Lincoln Park at Downsview Park. And to see the opener is Stone Temple pilot. So I'm a big STP head here, Ed Kienin. Okay, there you go. I didn't know. 90s Rock with Ed Keenan. You and I should start a 90s rock.

Rock and wrap. We could talk about Ice Cube and... Yeah, yeah. It could be just 90s stuff. Ice tea. Okay, so how are you doing otherwise, Ed Keenan? I'm doing pretty good. We're in the overlap between baseball and ice hockey.

hockey season, both in my youth coaching, uh, cheering, uh, cheering facilities and in, in professional. So that's good. Uh, yeah, I'm, I'm good in general. It's a very warm fall. It's been wonderful. Yeah. It's been a very cyclable, um, September as it, uh, as it typically is. And October's been pretty good so far too. Yeah, the, the couple days of it we've had so far. It's, it's early, as Mike Rilner would say, it's early. But also, we got October baseball this year. Yeah, you excited, so who do you want to play? The Red Sox or the Yankees? You don't want to pick your poison? Yeah, I mean, I feel like it's dangerous to pick.

I mean, not that I'm going to be bull-borne material for any of them. Like, it's not like some member of the Red Sox pitching staff is going to say he said, we are weak. Let's go show him. But at the same time, just in terms of like not wanting to jinx things, I feel like it's dangerous to pick. But I guess the Red Sox, I feel like the Yankees finished the year so strong. Absolutely. And Aaron Judge has so much to prove. And, you know, but so I, maybe it's,

the Red Sox win what's almost a coin flip for me in terms of what I prefer, but I'm just, I'm so excited about it. And that game three is tonight, right? Yeah. I watched quite a bit of the first two games of Yankees and Red Sox. I remember, it all came back to me. Oh, yeah, I love playoff baseball.

Like that regular season's way too long, man. You know, I know the diehards can glue in for 162. But this year I decided, okay, the stakes need to be higher for me to devote my time to this. But we're there now. I love playoff baseball. It's my daughter and I'm, because my daughter, you know, has played baseball for years. She's 16 now. But what she was talking about it, she will never watch regular season baseball.

Like if it's, and I barely watch. Like, I'll just turn on the game and have it in the background. But we were talking about it. And I said, you know, for the people who love it as a spectator sport, because she loves playing it. But she doesn't really like watching it until the playoffs. and I said for the people who love it the length of the season and the low stakes through the season are kind of part of it

it's just like summertime and it's like easy breezy oh and there's a fly ball but you can read a book or whatever while you're doing it like work on your car or you know whatever you want to do sit at the dock and drink a beer it's just on in the background and then in the playoffs the stakes

like it's still such a slow pace game except that it seems like every pitch has like so much weight on it like the tension just builds and builds because the magic of the game is that nothing happens until everything happens. And there's a great sense of anticipation.

Like you've got to maybe runners on the corner. Like that game won when the Yankees loaded the bases. Oh my. And it was nobody out. Yeah. And they were down by run. And it's like, okay. Chapman ended up getting out of it.

But my goodness, it's like playoff baseball. The stakes are finally high. Let's go. Hey, are you aware of the professional women's baseball league that launches next year? Yes, I am. One of the co-founders, as you know, is the owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs Baseball Club.

The other co-founder is Justine Siegel, the founder of Baseball for All, which is an organization that my girls have played in tournaments with for 10 years now, or 8 years. And so I'm not good friends with Justine Siegel, but I've met her a bunch of times and been in touch with her and have participated in her events, and I'm really excited for that.

And actually, one of our friends from Washington, D.C., is going to be drafted into that league. She went to the open tryouts. Which was that national stadium there in Washington? So Paloma Bonash, she was a mentor to my younger daughters when she played on the DC Forest Girls baseball team, and my daughters also played in that organization on younger teams, and they would practice together every Sunday,

and Paloma was there. She helped coach one of my youngest daughters. daughter's team at a couple tournaments, and then she went off to play baseball in college with men for a year or two in California, and now she's going to be a professional baseball player. Well, in previous visits, and I should point out to the listenership, Ed Keenan of the Toronto Star visits once every quarter, and we never talk about it. Like, it's a recurring calendar event, first Thursday of every quarter at 2 p.m. I know you're going to be here, but we never have that moment of like, we're still on for 2 o'clock or just checking in.

Once or twice, the only time we talk about it beforehand is when we're going to postpone it or canceling, right? It's like when I was out of town or whatever, then, but otherwise, like, I got in my car here today and was just on faith that you also had the calendar notification. I knew you'd be here and there you are and I'm glad you're here. But I was going to just say we've talked in the past about Ayami Sato, who, Keith Stein, who I found out speaks Japanese because he worked for, Toyota Canada and he learned Japanese he was a lawyer for that company hope I have the right company

but anyway he knows Japanese and he recruited Ayami Sato to come play for the Toronto Maple Leafs this summer and I saw her quite a bit spent some time with Ayami Sato and I think she's I think the whole method to the madness there is that she's going to be a big deal

when the women have their own league next year so it's all kind of part and parcel I was wondering I mean because there was obviously I mean he recruited her as a baseball player but I think for her and for the team for the Toronto Maple Leafs in him it was partly like she's an ambassador and a public relations person

It got a lot of press. Like yeah yeah and so she played but I think it's a bigger play for both of them when they have the winnings league yeah and I know she was in Washington for those tryouts and of course she'll be a big part of that so stay tuned to league of their own if you will

the first time since World War II, I believe that there'll be a professional women's baseball league in North America. No team in Toronto, though, because we're going to get to Toronto here. Not yet. I guess the border is probably. Where would they play? I think that I asked Keith about this, but he's like,

where would, I guess you don't have to, I think this league is structured where you don't have to play home games. Like, they'll have, they'll all play in, like, Arizona, for example. Like, I think that's the way this league is going to go. Some of the league are their own stuff back then, too. They had that where, but yeah, but so they would have a Toronto, franchise that plays their games in Arizona. They're not going to be traveling as much?

I don't think so. And in fact, I don't know if this is out of school chatter. We should talk to him. I don't know. But I think they're talking about maybe this new league might launch after next year's World Series. And due to climate, they'll want to play all the games somewhere warm,

probably Arizona or Florida, right? So, I mean, in theory, you don't need a place to play. Like, there really is nothing between the dome. Like what's the next? There's nothing in the city where a baseball team can play lower tenants in the going. I do not doubt that he has a plan.

He's got a plan. But I mean, if you want, and I'm looking at the PWHL as an example, or, you know, any other kinds of things. But it's like the thing about naming the teams for cities is that like for the Toronto Maple Leafs now, they could go and play all their home games in like Iowa. and I would, basically nothing would change for me

because I'm not the kind of high roller who actually is going to loose games. You're talking about the hockey team. Like the Toronto Maple Leafs are a television show I watch. Right. And then obsess over. Like I read all the stuff and I whatever. We watch the playoff games from Edmonton.

But it's like I don't, I don't ever go somewhere where the Leafs are there. But for a smaller startup team, it does feel to me like the fans being able to go and watch them is a big part of your revenue and your relationship building with the team because like if they just name a team for Toronto

and they play all their games in Arizona and none of the players ever even visit Toronto I mean I don't know like I guess I could hop on that it does seem weird though well the reason I think that is because the first sports league that Keith Stein launched was a pro-Padell league

Paddell is a paddle sport that most Canadians have never heard of but I used to be involved in their podcast, the Pro Piddell League podcast. So I know a little bit, but they did that where they had franchises, like a New York franchise, and they had like a Boston.

It had these different franchises, but they played all their games in Florida. Like all of that. So I think that's like a model that Keith has experience with, and I could see that being the model deployed for at least the first season of the Women's Professional League

where all the games happen in Arizona. I guess the Olympics work like that, where there's a team Canada, but none of the games are in Canada. They're all over in wherever they're hosting the Olympics. But those players come from Canada. Like it does seem like there should be some connection to the city. Well, Sato hopefully would play for the...

Well, there is no Toronto franchise, so this is all moot. But when I have more info, Keith Stein promises he'll give me the exclusive. Maybe I'll get it like an hour before the Toronto start. They're going to have an original six cities, right? Right. And I think...

See, what I had heard is that they were going to keep it to the northeast. but if they're playing all their games in Arizona, that's not... Well, I think it might depend, again, we'll move back to Toronto stuff in a moment, but I think it might depend on when they launched this. Like, I don't think they want to have their league playing games at the same time as MLB. Like, I think they'd rather get everyone excited about the World Series

and MLB production, and then when that ends, so like, I don't know, November or whatever, launch the Women's League and they'd need to play somewhere. either in a dome or warm climate. At the same time, there is a professional women's softball league starting up for the first time. And that got a ton of funding from Major League Baseball. It's kind of like the way sort of the NBA and as a WMBA. And I think they're launching soon.

And I know a lot of people in the women's baseball community, we're kind of disappointed because, like, a lot of them have played softball. A lot of them have friends who play softball. They're excited that there's going to be a professional women's softball league, but that the announcement by Major League Baseball, like, yeah, we're going to be partners and starting a professional softball league came, you know, just a few weeks after this. But I think I actually know a catcher who's going to go and play in that league, and I think she's going down in January to play for a team in Mexico City or something.

So if they're playing in the winter, which again, I should double-check this before I just spout right off. Well, let's say that the caveat is we actually don't know what we're talking about. But if they're going to play a winter spring season in southern cities, again, I guess the idea would be not to compete with Major League Baseball's schedule. Right. So stay tuned. I'll get Keith Stein.

He's a good friend of the program. He loves Toronto Mike. He's listening to us right now. and I can't wait for the Maple Leaf season to start up again next summer so I can talk about Toronto Maple Leafs baseball at Christy Pitts. How are things at the Toronto Star, Ed Kienann? Things are good at the Toronto Star.

Yeah, I mean, there's always lots of news. The year started off great because we had all these elections and, you know, great in the news sense in that like Trump was threatening to take over the country and all of that. That's terrible. I mean, it is always the standing rule of journalism is like terrible for the world,

great for our business. Right. But things remain good at the Toronto Star. I think business is better than it has been in a long time. There's just a good morale there. We've been staffing up a little bit. And so, and yeah. That's good.

No, glad to hear it. Any updates on the world of podcasting as it pertains to the Toronto Star? Oh, wow, blah, wah, wah. You know. We talk about this. Can I call you on that? I feel like this is probably like the third...

But it's every three months. We do this quarterly. And so this is probably like six months or so since... Like, I've been in kind of a holding pattern for a year, but I did go back and do a bunch of podcasts in between. We went to sort of like a, okay, a version of what the podcast I had been hosting, but not quite as often. And then over the summer, we kind of put that on hold again.

And there's a vague idea that I'm going to go back to it. I mean, I hope we get it together soon because it's like, like honestly, hosting radio is the most fun job I've ever had. I love being a columnist and a writer. That's like my main thing. And I probably would always do that no matter what I do. But like in terms of just like enjoying spending a couple hours, like I love doing this.

I love sitting in front of a microphone and talking. And so I'm hoping that, you know, the podcast department at the start and I can come together on something that's going to, work for us in the near future because I got lots I'd like to say and I and I get to say it in the paper of course but I think podcasting is a really fun way and it's and so I don't mean to sound really grumpy about it it's just that there is honestly like more moving parts especially when you're in a big company that has all of its strategies and stuff than just me showing up and sitting in the podcast studio and talking it's like there's a distribution strategy and a lineup and there are

other hosts and other podcasts they're working on and they have producers and technical producers who, you know, have limited resources. And so it's, at any given time, they're figuring out strategically, like, what are we going to put our resources into over the next immediate future? What, what, what are growth opportunities for us? Like Kevin Donovan's investigative journalism, you know, murder mystery podcasts, essentially, have been, like, great to listen to. uh the readers love them his work uh that that has you know won him awards and and

changed things as as a journalist is finding new audiences through podcasting like it's like it's great but it's it's sort of like somebody working on that is not working on me sitting around shooting the shit and telling jokes right put me in coach right put me in coach i'll handle the keenan stuff so so we'll figure it out soon but i don't want to like i don't want to get anybody's expectations in it. At some point, I'll be back podcasting again and it will no doubt be great, but I don't want you to expect it in the next week or two because I honestly I'm not sure yet where we're, and I mean, I think as things come up, like I may do some one-offs or things here and there, very special episodes, but, you know, over the next couple months,

I'd really like to get back to something regular, like weekly or more than weekly. Well, you need to get back to a show because I have a PSA for the listenership, and this is also for you. Edward Keenan, the next general municipal election in this city is Monday, October 26, 2026. So we're not quite, not quite one year away. We're close, though. Like, you need to have a show in place to cover what I, and we're going to talk about this off the top. But it could be a rather interesting. race. Well, ladies and gentlemen, we already have one

declared candidate. And I don't know if you've read the newspaper, but you could probably just guess who it is. On that note, when we take our photo, before you continue on that line, when we take our photo by Toronto Tree after this episode, will you brandish a baseball bat? Like, I have a bat. I want you to hold a bat for the photo. I'm serious. Bats are having a moment. If you want me to, I can hold a bat, I don't want that to be construed as an endorsement of any candidate in next year's election. And if anybody out there's in the dark, okay, so for...

Are you going to chew gum right now? Everybody's expecting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But would you chew gum for a Toronto Star podcast? I always do. It's nicotine gum. I need to. Oh, it's nice.

So I have a strong... Okay. I'm born in the wrong generation. Ladies and gentlemen, like, do you ever see, like, talk hard? Yes, the Dewee Cox story. Is that what you're talking about? No, no, I'm actually thinking of, bump up the volume. Oh, yeah.

A happy Harry Harder on. But then also, like, there was an old talk radio movie as well with a guy loosely based on Howard Stern. Yes, that was a great movie. It's like, in my youth, as a chain smoker, watching these movies where there are all these scenes of guys sitting there hosting radio. They've always got this cigarette burning. And I have never in my life been in a radio studio where you're allowed to smoke. And yet, it still feels to me like the nicotine impulse comes on strong when I'm... Are you still on the darts?

Like, do you still smoke cigarettes? No, just I vape. Because it looks so much cooler, doesn't? No. Because you know, only... You feel like a wally when you're vaping, because you feel like you're like a 16-year-old. And yet, it smells better and is cheaper than smoking. And you get less nicotine

And there's at least a coin flip chance That maybe it's mildly healthier I don't know I think it's probably mildly healthier than cigarettes Yeah and not at all healthier than Not doing it at all That's correct But um

So so okay so you'll be back here in January Which will be very cold and we will be in the basement But the episode after that We could totally record in the backyard And you could like smoke sips do the whole thing Well if yeah yeah if we're gonna do it in the backyard I would have to blow it into my mic cigarettes so so but before we got off on this tan yeah yeah so we're talking about the election so

olivia chow the current mayor of toronto has not confirmed that she's going to run again but it's widely expected that she is she hasn't given any sign that she's not running again her staff when you talk to them say you know they haven't had a meeting about it and all of that she's focused on the job she's doing but they all expect that she's going to run again um and Mayor, former mayor, John Torrey, has been not very secretly or not even subtly. I think he's like trying to test the waters and get a sense of whether he should run again. I get the sense he wants to run again and he is seeking for encouraging people to encourage him to run again. But first out of the gate announcing that he's running is,

Da-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-man Slugger Brad Bradford from Beaches, East York. The bald batsman. He is in. He just, you, he officially confirmed it yesterday. Can I just go off on the fact he went, he said he was coming out west to make an announcement on a podcast, and I was at the door waiting for him. He went, wasn't Toronto Mike? Did you get the caliper?

No, he comes to the Toronto mic listener experiences. He's been to several. He wanted to come to the most recent one of the GLB Brew Pub, which was just last week. But why did I, if he's going to make an announcement on a podcast in the West End of Toronto, how did I miss that? I know Brad's listening.

So, Brad, what the hell? Hey, we would have fired up the Toronto Star podcast studio for him if he had wanted to come down. If anybody wants to know, if anybody is in the dark about the slugger and the Batman references, of course, he officially confirmed on a podcast yesterday that he was going to run. He's been widely expected to run for months and months,

but it became an absolutely sure thing a couple weeks ago when he appeared on the cover of the Toronto Sun with a softball bat in his hands, like a 1980s principal who's just fed up with the gang activity in his school, not going to take it more. Like lean on me or something. And Joe Warmington had a big column about how Brad Bradford sleeps with a softball bat under his bed or in his room within reach

in case he has to defend his family, you know, like every dad in the city. And I don't doubt actually that a lot of dads and a lot of non-dads in the city do have baseball bats. certainly I have thought about how I would defend my family if there was a home invasion and baseball bats are a part of that but there was a suggestion that somehow like things have gotten so bad in the city

that for the first time in history a man has had a violent fantasy of having to defend his family and keeps this keeps his like 15 year old softball bat that he could you know probably hit a weak ground ball with near his bed

Telly bad, is it? Do you remember the... It was a Louisville slugger. It actually was a Louisville slugger. I think they got one of those upstairs. Yeah, I've been to Louisville to the factory where they make those bads. I have coached baseball in Louisville.

So... Fun fact. But you're in the right place. So I... So, but I thought the implication there, knowing he was thinking about running for mayor, knowing that he's like... Like other mayors promised

to get tough on crime. But only Slugger Bradford is going to be out there actually bludgeoning criminals himself. And when that, before Doug Ford intervened to basically join the side of the criminals, to basically, like, you know, vindicate their campaign of vandalism, I thought when Brad Bradford said the police are looking stupid and it's just getting ridiculous over this parkside drive camera.

I thought this is a job for the Batman. This is a job for Brad Bradford to just get out there and stake out the camera with his Louisville slugger and get to be a hero. I mean, how would that be to kick off a campaign, especially if there was a podcaster from the West End on hand to document. So he missed the opportunity there.

What you're cooking there, buddy. He missed the opportunity there. But, I mean, Rocco, Rossi once ran for mayor against Rob Ford. Yep. And he, Rob Ford's whole thing was don't call 311. Call me on my personal cell phone. I get thousands of calls, but I spend all of my waking hours returning those calls to

try and help you. And Rocco Rossi made a joke and said like, we can't have a mayor by like, oh, they turn on the Batman symbol, like, and Rob Ford sees it in the sky and goes, oh, okay. okay, let me go mediate a landlord-tenant dispute in the, in like Scarborough, right? Like, you have to have a civil service and a system in place. It can't be like the bat signal. And in fact, now, we could have a bat signal for a whole different thing. Like, who needs a police department?

This is all I'm saying. Okay, so lots to process there. So we have one. So, yes, we all saw this coming that Brad Bradford would run for mayor. I thought he'd make the announcement on Toronto Mike. I'm not going to lie to you. he did not make the announcement on Toronto Mike but okay so he's running for mayor we all knew that

I think we talked about this last time but am I right and I mean it's just an opinion you're an editorial list you share lots of opinions in the Toronto Star people should subscribe and read the Ed Keenan opinions on many interesting Toronto things but if John Torrey decides

to run isn't Brad Brad for DOA okay I want to preface this by saying. And if people, if people were like really close readers of my column, they'll know I've, I've said a version of exactly what I'm about to say a couple different times. But like, in 2006, no, sorry, in 2003, Barbara Hall was supposed to win in a walk, so much so that other people shouldn't even bother running. And John Torrey, the young fire

brand backroom boy with no frontline political experience was kind of the dark horse, the right wing candidate who might have a puncher's chance to beat her. And people who you can look it up on Wikipedia, who wound up winning that race was David Miller, who in January of that year was polling at like 6% or 4% or something like that. He was like in fifth or sixth place behind John Nunziata, Tom Jackalbeck, right? then people might remember that in 2010 George Smitherman was such a powerhouse that nobody should bother to run against him

Adam Jambrooney was maybe going to be the heir to David Miller's like progressive cred but it was just like well he's going to get rolled over by George Smitherman anyway when Adam Jambroen had to back out Joe Pantalone ran basically because like a no hope campaign on behalf of the NDP against the liberal monster

was a good way to end his career and go into retirement. At least he could say he ran for mayor. And you may remember Rob Ford won that time. And then in 2014, you may remember that Jack Layton's widow, Olivia Chow, who was then a sitting federal member of parliament, was like called back to the city because only she, she and only she.

she stood any chance of defeating Rob Ford, according to the polls. And then she got, she came third place behind, behind Doug Ford, who came second place, and John Torrey. And so, like, you know, the dustbins of history are littered with ridiculous, like, ridiculously confident predictions of what's going to happen. So that said, that said, all that was like a caveat. Here's what I think. If you look at the polling today, it's a really,

close race head-to-head between John Tori and Levy Chow, which depending on which poll you're reading, John Tori might have a slight advantage in right now today, right, if the election were held today. Lots can happen in a campaign. Olivier Chow beats Bradford head-to-head, but he maybe does surprisingly strong, if it's just the two of them, but he maybe does, he may be surprisingly better than you would have thought in that head-to-head race, given that he finished eighth place last time. Barely beat Chris Sky. Yeah, and he did not beat Chloe Brown, right?

He did not beat Anthony Fury. He came in eighth place in what a lot of people thought was a five-horse race, right? So, but if you pull the three of them, it looks like Olivia Chow more comfortably beats them both because, you know, they share at least some of their base. like um and brad bradford in particular maybe um steals some of the forward nation angry vote like despite being a bank or bike riding urban planner himself personally he pushes a lot of the buttons that the sort of like right wing edge lord meme factory true north and and ontario proud and all of that like to push right um and maybe that's exactly the part of uh toronto's voting coalition that thinks John Torrey was a sheep in wolf's clothing, right?

That he was like the driver's best friend when he was a talk radio host, but then he allowed himself to be, you know, arm twisted into putting in those stupid bluer bike lanes that they all hate and putting in, you know, like having to walk Toronto and like spending a lot of money on things that were, he's Joe Cressy's best friend, right? So, you know, he says he's conservative and maybe he's not, he's not a raving socialist like chow but he's not he's not eaten red meat for the base he's certainly not serving it to them right um and so maybe bradford steals some of that and if anthony fear runs he steals even more of that right but it's like but bradford looks at those same polls they show him in

a third place and says okay first of all i'm not invisible in those polls like i'm i'm in double digits, right? And John Torrey is a known commodity, right? He served for mayor for two full terms. He's been in public life for decades. The public knows him. They mostly like him, but there's not a lot of people changing their mind about John Tori at this point. There's not a lot of people wondering, well, let's see what he says, because I don't know what that guy's all about, right? so he thinks is it i haven't had a detailed conversation with him but i did exchange some text messages about polls at one point with brad bradford and and i'm extrapolating a lot so when i say he thinks this let me say i think he thinks and i'm mostly guessing but educated guessing that he

looks at that and says okay if that's the the result at the starting line john tory doesn't have a lot of place to grow right he he doesn't have a lot a lot a big pool of voters who've never heard of them. Meanwhile, I'm still relatively obscure. I ran for mayor, but I'm not, I wasn't, I didn't punch through to the podium in that race. It wasn't like people, and so they've, and I've gotten to be like this sort of leader of the opposition, but I still have, you know, people can still learn about me. And there's a dynamic in some races in the past. And David Miller is the most famous one, but John Torrey winning a three way race against Olivia Chow and Doug Ford in 2014 is another example where the person who starts in third place,

but who shares sort of some ideological ground with the person who's in second place, like as the race goes on and it becomes obvious that Barbara Hall or in that other case like Doug Ford, like is not going to beat the person that their shared enemy. Everybody herds over to the other one, right? So Brad Bradford thinks If we're months into the campaign And Olivia Chow is still leading John Torrey His people are going to stampine to me

Right? Because they realize this horse can't run anymore Who's this fresh face? And come over there And I mean it's not It's not absolutely insane to think that could happen I don't know But it would be unprecedented for somebody

In this city to finish eighth and then the next election win? I have to think so. I mean, Mark Maloney has written a book on Toronto mayors and he may have more like stretching back to the 1800s might have a more detailed list of who finished. So you've got to go back to the 1800s

to possibly find an example. Although for a long time there weren't general elections for a long time there were like the city council appointed the person or stuff like that. But I don't know like how many people have ever finished eight. I mean, I guess in the last, 30 or 40 years we often have 40 candidates right we just don't hear about most of them but well it would be so it would be a hell of a comeback so if fotm brad bradford ends up uh winning this

election on october 26 2000 and 26 without a doubt this will be the greatest political comeback i believe that this city has ever ever seen yeah it'd be quite something and i and i do think though that if um like i think brad bradford and his his team have to also be thinking that But planting their flag now, first of all, is like a warning to John Torrey, right? Like, things get a lot easier for you if I don't run, but guess what? I'm running. I think you betrayed me last time when you endorsed Anna Bilau, which stole a big part of my vote at the last minute. I was your deputy mayor or, you know, your point person on housing right at the end of your term.

I considered myself a protege of yours. I thought you were my political mentor. or you stab me in the back, right? But also he thinks it's time for somebody else to have a turn, right? This guy's had a lot of turns. I'm younger, I'm fresher, but I'm not getting any younger, right? Like, and so it's time. So he's planning his flag as a warning to Tory,

but also if Tori decides not to run, which, you know, he could. Of course. He's already out there now as the other one, right? Essentially what you're saying is, The left will line up behind Olivia, but there's the centrist and the right need somebody. Yeah, I think it would be very unlikely for any high profile established progressive to challenge Olivia Chow. We might see someone like Chloe Brown or somebody in that mold, like a complete outsider who says these leftists at City Hall aren't even really representing us, could run a no hope campaign. but I don't think there's going to be a serious heavyweight political challenger from Olivia

Chow's left, which means it's easier for the right if they don't split the vote. But like John Tori won a three-ray race against Olivia Chow in which he split the supposed right-wing vote with Doug Ford, right? Like it's not impossible for him to see, but it does, the path does become a lot easier and clearer if there's not a bunch of other candidates muddying things up. me ask you this, Ed Keenan from the Toronto Star. Am I nuts or, like, if I went back five years, let's say, or let's say six years ago, I felt like Brad Bradford was far, like was left of center.

Like, it feels like he's been moving to the right side of the spectrum throughout the past, you know, five, six years. Is that just me because, is that, am I being fooled because he bikes? Well, I think the fact that he was like a protege of Jennifer Kismats and a city planner and worked at the city planner. In an avid cyclist. And that his mother is a liberal, provincial liberal. Let a lot of people to think that, and especially because his main issue politically was housing,

which is not really falling on the left-right spectrum. Like being a real advocate of opening up housing permissions and allowing a lot more housing to build is very developer-friendly, but it's also like an affordability issue that resonates with the left too. So I don't think at first, I don't think he was particularly clear. Like, I don't think he was out banging his chest

and declaring himself a socialist or anything like that. I think he always thought, I'm a reasonable centrist, but I think people thought the urbanist mold that he emerged from was generally associated with the left in Toronto. And I don't think he ever did much to discourage that kind of thinking early on, except accepting a role in John Torrey's sort of cabinet at the time.

But I don't think that he was doing a lot to create that impression, other than being a big cycle bike lane guy at the time. I follow him on Stravus. But I do think, and I mean, I've sat and talked to him, and I don't want to be unduly, like, cynical or mean about him. But I do think that, like, he wants to be a player, and he wants to go where the votes are, right? And in Toronto right now, and over the last little while,

I think he's thought that the kind of populist right buttons that Doug Ford pushes and other people, aren't properly pushed by John Torrey or Mark Saunders or the sort of like more and he thinks there's a lane for me to run in here right I can be this guy and I don't think he disbelieves the stuff I think he often has a nose for publicity

which is something people would have said about Jack Layton that like he'll see an opportunity to go out and hold a press conference and organize a thing and get things going. So it is kind of opportunistic, but it doesn't have the worst thing you can say about a politician, but it does seem to me,

like a lot of it seems almost like an AI could have come up with this as like the right-wing populist talking point, like, oh, somebody got killed, let's put out a video about that, let's like, there's a cravenness to it that it, and I told him this honestly, that's how it appeared to me.

He says like he is entirely sincere that his last mayoral campaign was as best good a representation of him as he's ever been able to put forward in his political life that since then as the guy with nothing to lose on city council who's the self-appointed leader of the opposition but who doesn't think he has any real good friends on city council he's out there just shooting from the hip i also think like a lot of his close friends are the people who run his campaign right like these senior provincial conservatives the Ontario proud guys and the and the like campaign masterminds from from Doug Ford's team who

helped run his campaign last time are like his friends like they live in the neighborhood and they go bike racing together and stuff right right and so you know like whether he's he's an ideological true believer I think that's that's the environment he feels comfortable in and so But maybe when he was working at City Hall as a city planner, maybe, like, maybe earlier he was in a different environment. I don't know. Well, let me ask you this. So he ran for mayor in a by-election that means he did not have to give up his seat on council.

So he was playing of house money when he ran, right? Yeah. He wasn't going to lose his, is it possible that it's been, and this is all pure speculation. When Brad returns to the program, I'll be asking him some of these tough questions, because that's what I do. Just ask the guys from Sloan, okay? I ask the tough questions around here.

But is it possible that he's determined at this point, thanks to his veer to the right, he won't get reelected in his riding, which is a rather progressive riding, I'd say. So if he won't get reelected as city councillor, this is his best move, is to go for broke because he's probably going to lose the 2026 counselor.

Well, I mean, I haven't seen polling or anything from the beaches. and so I don't know but it is like very rare that a sitting council against defeated well it happened here last time yeah yeah it does happen it does happen but it is rare and I mean I don't know that he necessarily be in trouble

and especially just a sense I have from listeners but it is possible and I think also equally possible is that he thinks even if he were to win again another four years in opposition to Olivia Chow is not going to help him accomplish his goals.

And by that, you could say political goals, like his own career advancement, but you could also say his political goals in terms of like accomplishing the things he thinks will make Toronto a better place. Like the reasons, the good reasons that people get into politics are they want to be able to do some good.

And they think, let me push this over. And if he says, like, I'm, he's, you know, I'm persona non-key. Grata in the Olivia Chow administration, spending another four years being the screaming voice in the wilderness is not going to be that effective. So either I beat her or I'm out looking for another job because I don't want to be a city counselor under her mayoralty for another four years or John Torrey wins or somebody else and I'm still out of a job, but maybe I've set myself up if I have a decent run and I can

run provincially or I can run federally or I can, you know, have another job. And there, you know, potentially with, you know, running for Doug Ford's party or whoever the next leader of the provincial conservative is or running for Pierre Pauliev, he's in line for, you know, potentially a cabinet post at some point or at least like some kind of, some kind of change. on a bigger stage, right? So I do think there's a sense, even still, of playing with house money in that sense, where if you've determined, you know,

I don't want to spend any more years in opposition at Toronto City Council. So, and I don't want to spend another four years being a yes man for John Torrey after he stabbed me in the back. And so instead, I'll take my shot if I land a knockout punch and surprise everybody, I'm the mayor. And if not, I get, I've at least, you know, set myself up potentially.

Unless it's absolutely humiliating. Like, if I even do okay, I might be in line to move on to something else that I would find more fulfilling anyway. Interesting. This is like a lot of psychoanalysis from afar. Like, this is like... Well, it's early. We got over a year to go here, right?

And I got a couple of quick questions about John. So John Tori and Livy Chow. So John Tori, neither has said they're going to run next year. John Tori, less we forget, we'll just bring up the fact that he resigned because of an inappropriate relationship with a city hall staffer, lest we forget. I think it's, I don't think I'm telling any tales at a school to say John Tori appears to be still with this woman. Yeah.

Like, my understanding, and I have not been in the room when this has happened, but my understanding is that he's been appearing in public with her. Yeah. That she is. His girlfriend. His girlfriend. Or is his girlfriend. Exactly.

She appears to be his girlfriend. Yeah. Which, which I mean, if, if, um, if the public perception was that that inappropriate relationship was a case of him victimizing somebody. she appears not to believe that right i mean i have to say and i i never spoke to her uh or anything like that but i never had the impression that she ever complained to anybody or felt hard done by in that relationship in any way and so so that was an important caveat but like if people still think it's inappropriate or that it wasn't inappropriate um he admitted that it was

inappropriate the way the relationship began but that the relationship is ongoing Because of a conflict of interest. And that this adult woman is now his girlfriend would seem to dispel any lingering fears people had that he victimized her somehow. See, I never ever even considered the victimization angle necessarily. And I never cared, I personally speaking for myself, I never cared that if he was married to somebody else

or any of that, what I felt was inappropriate about it was things like, okay, so there would be city trips to Europe or whatever and then she'd accompany him. And then I can't remember if it was MLSE or if it was the FIFA bid, but just this whole conflict of interest that would emerge when you're having an intimate relationship with somebody when you're mayor of the city. So I think he did the right thing by resigning.

I'm wondering if John Torrey's girlfriend would approve of him running for mayor in 20206. I've got to get her on the program at all. But just an interesting angle to consider here, because we talked many times on this program about was it a, Was it sexual? Like, was it just that it was COVID times and he was separated from his wife and maybe he found a confidant he could trust? Like, who knows? But clearly, they're presenting themselves as a couple here in 2025.

Yeah, and presumably, I mean, I haven't spoken to John Torrey about this. But, you know, given the reporting of some of my colleagues and then the chatterer, around from people who have talked to those who've talked to him or have talked to him is that like presumably he is prepared if he runs again to discuss this stuff right he I think he thinks he doesn't have to discuss it in too much detail and length because it's a settled issue he resigned over the the inappropriate beginnings of that relationship he was at the time very concerned about the fallout for his family both his estranged or ex-wife barb but also his children and whatnot and and for this woman and her

family and friends and so if he's got that all squared away in his personal life where he feels like his family issues have been dealt with and that he's he and she are in a good place then he's coming back saying you know there was a mistake but I paid the price for it I was accountable for it you elected somebody else now I'd like to come back and finish the job and sure let's let's have a conversation about that

he I think expects and hopes it might be a quick conversation but presumably he's willing to have that conversation because there's no way he would dilute himself into thinking nobody's going to look hard at it again because I mean them looking hard at it the first time is why he wound up resigning right um and and so i mean i just have to think that that was a big part of the calculus but

i mean i think another big part of the calculus there is like whether he thinks he can win like i don't think he's going to run if he doesn't think he can win right i don't think he wants i think part of why he wants to to run back and and serve one more term at least is to like you know whatever unfinished business but i think also not having um the end of his political career be resigning in scandal having the end being that he went out on his own terms he went and finished the things he thought needed tying up you know in his mind put the city back on the right course or whatever but but finish the job properly i don't think running and losing after having resigned in scandal is the end of his career that he's looking at and it's not like the guy needs

a job at this stage right like i mean but i think he wants it like again this is even more so with him with Bradford because I have had almost no contact with him since he resigned. But my sense of him and everything about how he is. Like I think he misses being mayor of Toronto and not even just like being the manager that he was and overseeing the government, but I think being the mascot for the city. Like I think he really loved that part of the job. He would talk about how his favorite part of the job was going out every night of the week to like community barbecues and banquets and events and

meeting with people and shaking hands and talking and you know a lot of politicians will say something like that like oh i love knocking on doors but i think he loved being like mr toronto for all of those people and getting to cut the ribbons and all of that and and i think he'd like to do that again because who know i don't know how exciting his life is in retirement i don't I don't know. Okay. Semi retirement. He's on the radio.

Right. He's on the radio. And he's got all of his corporate boards and all of that other stuff, right? I always found it interesting. He's on the radio on a Bell Media-owned stations when we consider John Torrey a Rogers guy. Like, that is interesting, right? Yeah. You can tell me if it's not interesting.

No, no, no. It is interesting. And Rogers does not own a talk radio show. 100%. But not only that. John Torre's very earliest careers. Like, he was initially a journalist, I think, before he went to law school, like a young, and CFRB, which was, I think the R in that,

it stands for Rogers. Canada's first Rogers battery list. That's right. Yeah. And so, like, that was a radio station that when he first formed a relationship with it. 10-10, news talk 10-10 is what we're talking about now, if anybody doesn't familiar with the call letters in the history, was owned by his business mentor, Mr. Rogers, Ted Rogers,

at the time when he first started working there. But then I think at the time where he was like no longer leader of the provincial progressive conservatives, and he was looking for a high-profile gig where he could be in the public eye and sit and wait for what was next, Like, I think when he got that afternoon drive-time show, again, Rogers didn't own a talk radio show at that point. It was like Astral Media bought it and then Bell Media and CD-G-G-G-Gro-Met.

Standard had it and then Astral bought it and then Bill got it. So, like, but Rogers didn't have a talk radio show. And so in Toronto it was either 640, CBC or CFRB. And the RB is a place where he had some history and relationships stretching back. So whether or not the current ownership had any role in that or not, you would think like some of the station management through the years or whatever, there's that residual feeling of like that being home, right? So we talked a little bit here about John Torrey's love life.

So I just find it, I think it's a fun fact. So Olivia Chow, who of course was married to Jack Layden, the late Jack Layton, you know, you still hear about that, you know, she'll talk about him as the love of her life. and it was a beautiful relationship they had, and then Jack left us all too early. But Olivia has a not-so-secret boyfriend. Yeah, this is what I heard.

I haven't talked to her about it. I've got good sources on the inside, but, I mean, he's kind of a famous guy, I think. James Lockyer, the founding director of the Association in Defense of the Wrongly Convicted. That name just rolls off the tongue. Kind of a well-known guy, so-so-secret boyfriend for Olivia Chow.

She's seen him. and I do find it interesting at these events sometimes they both attend events. They don't actually like present as a couple. They are at the same event. It's not a secret that nobody's cheating on anybody. These are two single people having an adult relationship, which is good.

I'm happy for Olivia. But it will be interesting to see in 2026 if she runs again whether she presents herself with her boyfriend, James. It's one of those things too. And as I say, I have heard this and I have no reason to doubt it because the people I hear it from are people who know what they're talking about.

But I haven't asked her about it or anything like that. I do think like depending on how long they have been in a relationship and how, what a stage of seriousness they're at? Like this is a woman with a very full-time job, right? So I'm just thinking like, from a public relations point of view, When Pierre Trudeau was a single prime minister, right, elected as a bachelor, like a confirmed bachelor, right?

Like, people just thought, like, and then, like, was dating like, like, celebrities, like, Barbara Streisand and Leona Boyd, like, while he was prime minister. It was obviously, like, a public relations coup for him to have these celebrities on. And then a teenage Margaret Sinclair, who went. became his wife, like half his age. But, like, having these beautiful women on his arms at events was, like, a public relations coup at the time. But you have to think, like, not particularly good for the relationship. Like, especially in the...

That was a certain level of press scrutiny your personal life got back then. Today, in the, like, social media, TMZ, like, like... Like, all panopticon, we live in, right? Like, I think if you're just, like, dating and trying to see, hey, are we compatible? Like, we enjoy hanging out. We have a good time.

There's some magic there. There's some chemistry. Like, is this going to be a couple months? Is this going to be years? Is it like, are we going to be partners? It's like, I might want to keep that stage in my relationship a little less high profile. Like, because you don't want to have to come out and say, oh, this is my boyfriend. And then, and then come out and have a mayor of press conference about how we broke up.

Three months later, right? See if it's going to stick here, maybe. I understand. But just, I was happy to, like, I was just happy for Olivia, like, that, you know. Yeah, yeah. Because, you know, you know, her husband passed away so, so, so young and just, just happy to hear it. Okay. So now that we've covered, we're kind of like the TMZ now of Toronto, we've covered the John Torrey's girlfriend.

Does John Torrey's girlfriend approve of him running for Marin, 2026? Will Olivia come out of the, not that she's hiding him, but just, you know, present as a, dating James Locker, the founding director of the Association in Defense of the Wrongly convicted. So I realized, so we talked about how long do these go and they typically go two hours. And I was thinking, oh, imagine we can get it down in 90 minutes, but we're an hour into this chat, Ed, we're still talking about an election that's over a year away. We've reached the traditional bathroom break time.

Okay, you go to the bathroom. And we haven't, we haven't even gotten into the meat of the agenda yet. But we're going to cook with gas here. I'm going to thank some partners and you go to the washroom. I know you can still hear me, Ed Keenan, because I'm inviting you and your family. to TMLX 21. All listeners invited, it's going to be November 29, which is the last Saturday of November. It's at noon. It's at Palma's Kitchen in Mississauga. Everybody who shows up, we're taking over the second floor. We're going to have a live recording there. You could jump on

the mic and say hi. Everybody who shows up gets a free meal from Palma pasta. They make the food there. They'll feed you. I'm going to bring some fresh craft beer from Great Lakes breweries. So you can grab a cold beer, have yourself, I don't know what you want. Pene, you can have lasagna, you can have, well, there's so much good food at Pena, at Pena, at Pasta, at Palma Pasta. So TMLX 21, November 29 at noon, Palma's Kitchen, be there. Also, welcome back, Nick Aini. There was an episode of Building Toronto Skyline with Nick Aeney's that featured Brad Bradford. Brad Bradford and Nick Aeney's talking about affordable housing, very interesting.

Subscribe and enjoy building Toronto Skyline with Nick Iini's. You know, Ed, I'm always shouting out recycle my electronics.cate. I know you always are. Because you're hoarding all these old cables from the 90s, okay, man. I'm refusing to recycle them, man. Go to recycle my electronics. What if I need that cable one of these days? This is what people think.

Just let it go. Let it go like they'd say in Frozen, okay? You got that old laptop from 2009. You got that your old sports Sony Walkman that doesn't work anymore. All of that, go to Recycle Myelectronics.ca and find out where to drop it off. And I want to shout out a gentleman named Doug Mills. Doug Mills owns and operates Blue Sky Agency. Blue Sky has forged partnerships with established office furniture brands like

Silen and Green Furniture Concept and Ruellyard. And he's eager to chat with any and all Toronto Mike listeners who are looking for dynamic and creative work environments. He can be reached Doug at bluesky agency.com. let them know you're an F-O-T-M. I would just say that I was reading in the Toronto Star. Great newspaper, by the way, Ed Keenan. I was reading about some of the big banks,

and I know this from personal experience. They don't have enough desks. Yeah, like they called back, and I will say I'll speak for somebody who lives with me, even sleeps with me, Ed, who thinks we're talking about everybody's lovers. Is it James Walk here? Oh, no, wait, sorry, sorry, sorry, that's a different subject. That's a different person's potential lover,

alleged lover. It's all good. But my lover, she basically was called back four days a week to a certain big company, a big bank, and they told her to stay home for two weeks while they configure work environments. I hope they talked to Doug at Blue Sky Agency, okay, how to get that right. But it absolutely is an issue. There's a lack of seats, a lack of places to work. Yeah. But you have to be there.

I'm not talking about my wife anymore or where she works. I'm now talking about other banks. I wonder allowed if this is simply a way to let's reduce our headcount, our payroll, without having to, you know, let somebody go and then sever them fairly, they'll quit because we basically told them part of working here is being a... Pull up a piece of the floor. Sit, sit crisscross applesauce there while you do your work. Like you've got to be here four days a week,

and possibly many people, particularly during the pandemic, kind of fell in love with what I fell in love with long ago. go you're well familiar of it but working from home like i just think it's interesting that we have all these people who if you want to work here you got to be in the office four days a week and if you don't come to the office four days a week we can now dismiss you for cause and not sever you but like i actually i sympathy i have sympathies on both sides of the back to the office work from home debate because i actually think like i already had an arrangement before covid where i could work from home part-time. Like, I had a hybrid arrangement. My bosses wanted to see me in the office sometimes

before I went to D.C. But I could just, I would often be working from the field, though, too, right? Like, sometimes I work from home. Sometimes I work from the office. Sometimes I'd be working from a donut shop in Scarborough because I was interviewing somebody out there about something or whatever, right? Right. But, but the time I spent in the office was actually like how I got to feel like a part of the team there, not just seeing my boss is there. And often, like, if I'm working from the office, it's like I wander over to my editor's desk and say, hey, I'm thinking about this, but what about also this? And they do you think this?

But also, like, my colleagues are there working on stuff at the desk beside me. And the kind of, like, water cooler chat that could be considered a distraction is also where a lot of our best ideas come from. Like, you're absolutely right. And, like, I don't personally at least get any of that from my Slack. channels or my Zoom. These are just annoying stupid mailboxes that I have to now check in addition to my

my other 1500 email text message boxes I've got on my phone. And so I think there's like real value from having them work in person there. I also think there's a real value to a lot of people in not

having to commute into the office. I think I am more productive when I work from home. Like if I'm or if I just work away from other people like if i'm in a room by myself i can accomplish twice as much because i'm intensely focused on the job right without distractions um but so so on the one hand i can be more productive but on the other hand the distractions are often what what makes me more productive in the long term and are enriching in their own way um but at all of that said mm-hmm like in the pre

hybrid pre-work-from-home days, when you got a job, they said, this is your cubicle, this is your desk. Put a picture of your children on this desk. You know, leave your favorite coffee mug here. And tomorrow when you come back, you'll sit at the same desk with your stuff on it. And now, like, I mean, the star is one of the places. And I'll actually say, like, working at the well in the new offices in the star is actually a pretty great place to work. like it's a pretty cool office to come into. It's got a lot of, you know, the standing desks and bells and whistles

and good technology in it. And it's a decent setup. But we have a hoteling system where you have to book a desk when you get in there and there aren't enough desks for the entire staff if we all showed up on the same day. And if banks have a office where they expect everybody to come and they don't have enough desks for everybody

to sit, then that's a strange thing. Because it does seem like if you want people in the office full-time, you've got to provide them a full-time place to work. And ideally it would be like their own place with their team next to them so that all those good knock-on effects where like sitting side by side with your co-workers is giving you a sense of mission and allowing you to just shout over and say, hey, what do you think of this thing? like none of that works if you if you have 100 desks for 300 staff

absolutely like because what are they pulling up they're sitting in the cafeteria they're like like right or they're wandering to other floors that the banks also own and sitting in the way it's worked in somebody I know is workplace different teams get different days of the week off so they do so it's not like everybody can take Friday off because everybody wants Friday off I always felt like When you say off, you mean working from home. Sorry, I should say that clear. Working from home, of course.

I remember if I had an opportunity to work from home, I'd want to work from home on a Monday, but that's just me. But so different days of the week for different teams, they call them teams or whatever. Hey, here's what we're going to do, Ed Keenan. Love your visit so much, but I'm actually going to, I have five topics. Okay.

And we're going to spend 10 minutes on each one. All right. Okay. Do you think you can do that? Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Okay. You just like, you just like, I'll set you up.

And then at the end, there'll be a catch-all if there's anything you'd have on your mind. Like a rapid fire round or something like that. I love this. Okay, we're building it. We're building it from scratch here. Okay. So, the first one, you've alluded to it already. Toronto, the parkside speed camera was cut down for the

seventh time and Doug Ford's now meddling in municipal politics again. Please. This fucking guy. Every time we circle around a lot. Like, I've been watching and covering and writing about Doug Ford for a lot of years, right? And there come times in his life where I say,

I don't agree with a lot of his big policy things, but I agree with he's done some of the right things. He seems to want to do a bunch of the right things. He seems to be persuadable. Maybe he's just a big Oofu, like, you know, like, and then he just comes out and does these most asinine things. And it's like, so like, you know, the bike lanes and all of that. But out of nowhere, the stupid speed cameras,

Like three months ago, this was not a province-wide issue. It wasn't even really an issue. Here's the thing about photo radar speed cameras is that everyone hates getting a ticket from them personally, and I've gotten some, and I don't, it's not a good feeling. But everybody likes having them on their street where their kids live and walk, right? Like people want them in their neighborhoods.

They work. They are among the most successful traffic interventions, like everywhere they are put in place. They actually show dramatic, measurable, almost immediate results in slowing down traffic, saving lives, like preventing collisions, right? Right. Like slowing down traffic, slowing down the speed of travel really does prevent deaths, right?

and prevent serious injuries and prevent and these are shown to work. They're one of the most effective interventions there are. And that's been shown by research here in Toronto, across Canada, across North America, even in other countries. It's like that's, but here's the other thing, and I wrote about this recently, they're popular. People like them. Every politician seems to have a gut instinct that like,

well, everybody hates them, but they work. And then every time they do polling, it actually, like, across, like in CAA conducted a poll in Ontario just earlier this, sorry, released it in July, I think. And it was like more than 60% of people, I think it was like, but roughly two thirds of people, approve of having these in speed zones, right? The police department, the chiefs of police say they work and we should have more of them. the CIA, sorry, let me back up. In releasing that poll that says most people like them, CAA, whose whole job, they're a membership-based organization that depends on dues

in which advocacy for drivers is their job, say, yeah, let's have more of these. The police chiefs say let's have more of these. The hospital for stick children released a massive study with TMU that said, these work. They have dramatically reduced. everything there was basically other than like your drunk uncle whining at night there was no constituency for getting rid of them except except a bunch of criminals a criminal and or bunch of

criminals who kept cutting the things down famously on parkside drive repeatedly almost tauntingly like chopping them down one time several times yeah but then also across the rest of of the city, including like 12 or 14 in one night a few weeks ago. But it was like out of the blue commenting on that. It's like, oh, do you see Toronto is becoming a laughing stock because they can't catch this criminal whose life work seems to be, or whose favorite hobby seems to be making the streets less dangerous. Beside a park with a big playground here, he keeps chopping down the only thing that

stops drivers from speeding. and like doing thousands of dollars of property damage in the meantime. What do you think about that, Doug Ford? And Doug Ford basically said, I think whoever that is is doing a public service. I'm not quoting them there. But what he said is those speed cameras should come down. If mayor won't take them down,

I'm going to take them down because they're just a tax grab, right? So I don't know if like a member of his family is that, vandal or if it's secretly him in the dead of night or if they've just twigged his sympathy but like that was the only public uh public lobby like those were the only public

expressions of opposition to these prior to Doug Ford changing them and now here's the crazy thing you know who who gave us those stuck cameras in the first place it's Doug Ford that's right his government green lit

divindel duca wrote their initial legislation when Kathleen Wynn was the prime minister, and Stephen Del Ducca was the Minister of Transportation. But they were finally enacted by Doug Ford. And then Stephen Del Nuka, now the mayor of the Vaughn, was the first to step out and get ahead of the Premier.

The Premier started whining about them. And so Stephen Deluca said, oh, yes, sir, please, can I have some more? And he immediately banned them in his own city. And then Doug Ford came out and banned them in the rest of it, the whole rest of the way. And there's just this, like, the final thing on

it, right? It's like Doug Ford, he kept saying, and this was the one thing that I thought I agreed with him about. Before he started banning them, he was just saying, you know what, I think they should have bigger signs. Like, they shouldn't be surprising anybody. You need a flashing thing there, right, to really get your attention. And I was like, you know what, they could probably make them bigger. Like, I see the sign that says your speed and there's a flashing number that says I'm going, you know, 38 and then I realize, oh, it's a 30 zone on a little side street here. I should slow right down. And I do. And it works. And that's great. And yes, if you can make that bigger and not noticeable, let's do that. So at his press conference, he was standing in front of

exactly the kind of signs he was talking about. And I think he may have borrowed them from the city of Toronto because they are exactly the signs we already have. They're not bigger or more noticeable. They don't flash anymore. They were, they were the signs. And he was saying, like, the cities won't put these in because they want to do their tax grab. Like, this is what would actually work, but they just won't do it. And I was like, are you, has it been so long since you had to drive yourself anywhere that you don't realize those are the signs

we actually have in every single speed camera zone already? It's just like, almost everything about this to me is like, usually, even when I disagree with Doug Ford, I think I can see why he's doing that as a political move. I can understand the politics of this for him. Presumably he thinks his gut tells him there's some like valuable rump of disgruntled speedsters out there who want these removed. But I'm not sure even talking to people from across the political spectrum, even talking to conservatives, that that's actually the case. I don't know.

It's just puzzling, but the most puzzling thing about it is that I just think, like, this is something that actually works. And as a driver, I mean, I didn't like getting the tickets, but it actually, I know why it works because now I slowed down. I had to pay a hundred bucks or whatever, and now I have to slow down, right? Pedestrians, so pedestrians and cyclists are safer. And it's a source of revenue for the city. So, and it was Doug Ford's government that green lit these photo radar. speed traps in the first place back in 2019. So, of course,

they've got to go. Yeah. Okay. Geez, what bugs to be is Parkside, and I'm a West End guy, so I can tell you, Parkside is like a, it's like a race car track. Yeah, I think Parkside, I used to live on Keel Street, which is what Parkside turns into. I deliver GLB to you there.

Yeah, yeah. Like, Parkside becomes Keel Street, north of Bloor. And so I'm really familiar with it. and I've lived in the neighborhood for a long time. I still live near High Park now, but on the other side of it. But it's an interesting case because it is like a purely residential on one side of the street. Just the park, like High Park on the other side of the street. So this is like the definition of like in terms of the uses of it.

There's like some schools around there and that, but there's like basically a big public park and then a bunch of houses facing the park. that's where you would normally have like a really quiet street and you'd expect children to be running across it and all of that and yet it is one of the only ways to get from Lakeshore Boulevard right where the Gardner Expressway lets off like right where Lake Shore and like and the Gardner kind of like the big on-off ramps there the only way to get from there up to the north central part of the city like if you're going to like Keeling in Egglington or running meat in

Egglington or like St. Clair or whatever. Yeah, but no, Alice doesn't actually take you all the way up and depending on which way you're coming off the gardener, you can't take Ellis, but it's like Parkside is one of the main routes. Right. And if you take Ellis, you then have to turn on bluer and figure out how you're going to

get over there. So Keel Street actually goes up more. So it's probably the next one after Windermere probably. Yeah, yeah. Right. And it's the only the only way like Parkside turns into Keel Street. Right. Which goes up to the north end of the city like even if you're trying to get up to the 401 from there a black creek right like right take keel up and then you get a north self artery western road onto on to black lake road and and people are coming off the highway already going fast and you have that weird psychological

effect so it's like it is a weird case because it really should be a low speed street and yet it's mostly used as a like like a highway bypass system or or like um i'm trying to I remember like a spur road between two highways or between mass. Yeah, like the Allen was supposed to be kind of... Yeah, yeah. And so I understand, but like, in the end, what they really need to do on Parkside, and Matt Elliott, who writes for The Star,

has said this a bunch of times, is that, like, Parkside, the... Most cameras, they start giving out fines, and people stop speeding. Parkside became permanent because they still had so many fines going out, right? It's like, there's a persistent problem, and that persistent problem means, okay, What you need to do is, like, make the street narrower, put speed bumps there, or something out.

Other kinds of traffic interventions that they do. Calming measures. Calming measures. Like, you can do things with design that make it feel like a road where it's dangerous to go faster than 40, right? Right. And they haven't done that. Because it still feels like a road that's built for you to drive 60 on, and so that's what people do. Or they drive faster than that.

So we've hit our 10-minute limit here, but. I thought we were way over 10. we may be I may be generous because I like you but I just would are going to leave this and again

pure speculation but have we considered as the Toronto Star considered possibly that the speed camera being cut down is an inside job if we considered

it's not an angry motorist or a civilian that perhaps it's somebody more on the inside and maybe that's why I just suggested that earlier but I know

no no it will possibly could it be somebody with TPS, for example. Again, just speculative. Lauren Honakman wants me to say just speculating here. I mean, it's possible, although...

That's why you wouldn't be able to cast. Like, Dexter, you know? We didn't catch the serial killer. Oh, yeah, he works for... The Star has explored a lot of angles on this. And some of the people, Raju Madhar, like in particular, are kind of sick of reporting it out,

but also, like, fascinated by all the wrinkles of it. But it's like, it becomes, a full-time job all of a sudden, there's one story. But like, I don't think there's anything any reason to think that it's like a police officer in particular or whatever. But it's weird we can't catch this.

I think also like the Toronto Police Service, like here's the, the thing is is that our police service a decade ago, more than a decade ago, basically stopped enforcing traffic laws altogether, more or less. They just said, we need to

direct our resources at real crime. That's what cops want to do. In high park, a cyclist who don't come to a complete stop at stop signs. And so they dedicate very little of the, so they have this like traffic enforcement unit that goes out and does crackdowns. And one day they're doing a speed trap in one place. One day they're ticketing cyclists in high park. One day they're out catching people who don't stop at stop signs. And it's like maybe they shouldn't do that.

But it used to be that there were like traffic enforcement broadly across the city. And you look at the stats on the number of tickets given out for various highway traffic act things. and at a certain point, the numbers just drop way down because the police said, we're going to put everybody on murder and gun crime and we're not going to have people out there catching you coasting through a yellow light, right? And, you know, a lot of us who care about, like, safety on the roads

and said, I want to be serious about those other crimes too, but we can't afford to stop enforcing traffic laws altogether. Like, I have never been pulled over for any reason in my entire time as a driver. And when I was a kid, my parents and my friend's parents had been pulled over all the time. Like, there are just no police out there policing the streets, like policing me as a driver. Now, now some cops going to hear this and look up my license plate number and find me and pull me over just so. But the thing is, is that like, but so cops don't want to do it, right? Right? And so this is the magic where, like, the law gets enforced.

And for the people who love to speed, like, well, you still get the fine, but guess what? Because it's an automated camera and we can't identify who the driver is, you don't get the demara points, right? Like, it doesn't affect your insurance at all. Right. It's just a fine, right? But, like, the cops don't want to be out there doing this. Like, I mean, you're going to force some cop to stand on Parkside Drive pointing a radar gun. and radio some other cop to pull them over.

Like, it's like, they don't want to do this police work. All right, listen, I had a, no, because now we can move on to the next one here. So I got five of these things. But this was a comment left. So we do this every quarter, and then I posted on tronomike.com, and I make a little, I put our little photo there. And I don't know, you may or may not have a bat. It's up to you at the new photo I'm going to take with you at By Toronto Tree.

But sneaky meows, this is the handle of the person who wrote this. I want to raise this. Oh, hey, mom. Sneaky me out. I'm sure that's her. Why is almost everyone, including you and Ed, I'm the you in that sentence, still assuming this spa water park thing

is actually going to be built? It looks like that would likely require hundreds of millions of dollars that this thermae, the smaller, more phony one, almost certainly does not have. I haven't heard or seen anything to contradict or discredit what was revealed by auditors. Then the New York Times article

back in April. And as it is pitched, as it pitched its vision for Toronto, Thurme's, I hope I'm saying that right, Thurme's finances appeared to be shaky. Auditors found it was losing money and had less than one million euros in equity. The company has yet to secure outside investment for its Toronto project. There seems to be a very strange mindset that afflicts a lot of otherwise sensible grown adults, causing them to naively ignore anything regarding money, the only factor that really matters and think something like they've got a bunch of really cool looking

computer images that some 15 year old could have made up. That must mean they're serious and legitimate, right? That's all in quotes, by the way. So do you want to just reply to sneaky meows who definitely listens and just thinks we're giving too much... Because we do talk

like it's going to happen. Well, I mean... It's a big boondoggles. It's possible Sneaky Me hours has read those audit documents in New York Times story and stuff closer than I have or speaks a language I don't speak Oh no I've read them And I know I get

I understood them to mean something different Than what sneaky hours does So I'm trying to acknowledge I'm trying to acknowledge that this person could be Could be on to something that I have missed But it It never I think

And Thurman has answered what they think, the misunderstandings of their finances as reported in that, that their audit system that they used didn't allow them to show some of the sources of real revenue and all of that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But the point is that, like, I don't think there's actually much of a question about whether they have the financing to construct the project in Toronto. I mean the construction is underway they're on the water

Well I see them working on it I bike by it every day Yeah So I mean I think there's a What I have heard more frequently expressed By some of the skeptics Is whether they have the kind of financing And business plan that will allow them to successfully run this business

and if not, what will that big glass shed be used for once it's no longer of water park because that may not be viable in the long term. I'm just, I'm speaking slowly because I'm trying to think, like, maybe, maybe there's a question here, but even the most vocal critics who have been following this most closely have never suggested to me that this company is not actually going to be able to build it. Well, that is the question. as a given that it will be able to build. I mean, and they have at least one other operating one in Budapest, right?

So the actual question, which is the first line of this thing, is why is almost everyone still assuming this spa slash water park thing is actually going to be built? So the answer to that question is we're assuming it's going to be built because it's been approved and it's happening? Yeah, yeah, because the construction is in the way. but also because nothing I read in that led me to think they didn't have enough financing to actually construct the one in Toronto.

Like the financial health of the company is certainly something I question. And maybe I need to take a closer look. Well, you wrote, I think you're the author of the piece in the Toronto Star that says inside the Ford government there was worried the Ontario Place Spa was, quote high risk unquote they signed a 95 year okay yeah they signed a 95 year lease knowing that it was high risk venture yeah i mean that's where fuel for the fire yeah yeah no no certainly from the beginning i don't think there's any lack of people questioning whether this is going to be a viable business or not and there's a lot of uh you know speculation about whether or not

they're going to turn into a casino afterwards or there's some other sweetheart deal where once the land is developed and turned into this building, it will be sold off cheap to somebody else. Or a lot of people who just worry, this business is going to go bankrupt and we're going to have this white elephant sitting vacant on the waterfront, right? I should maybe have a better answer.

It's just that I hadn't given any thought because none of the... Like, I... You know, I'm a columnist who often comments on things and I try to do a little bit of research, but I have colleagues and friends who have like dug into the financials of this company and written, John Lawrence has written quite a bit about the business plan and the whatnot. And I haven't seen any of them suggest that there's a reason to doubt they could actually build it.

But maybe there is, maybe, but then I don't know what, why did they, why destroy what was there and start break ground on it if you have no hope of finishing it? I don't know what their question, right? I don't know what their motive would be to, to fraudulently, like, plow themselves towards bankruptcy while destroying the Toronto Waterfront in the meantime if they don't think they have a viable business at the end of it. Like, they may be a shaky business, but I, yeah, I don't know. Oh, God, stay tuned. Make sure we, we can't just be all election in 2026.

we've got to keep our eye on this, okay? Because we've had many passionate conversations about what's happening at Ontario Place. And we've got to keep our good eye on what's going on with this. Is it an Austrian company? I'm trying to remember. Thurme? Austrian? Possibly?

You Google that. Okay, so. Yeah. So I'm going to now read a nice... It's hard to Google because there are a lot of other companies that use that same name, including even one in like the 905 somewhere.

Oh, geez. Austria thermae, I don't know But something smells There's something rotten In the state of Denmark Some wise British guy wrote that once So keep your eye on it Now speaking of wise people

I don't think he's British though But Lannrick Do you remember he was the bicycle mayor of Toronto I don't think that's an elected position But Lannrick He's been over for many a conversation I'm going to read something he wrote for you Okay but I know you're multitasking here

But keep one ear open here Lanrick writes Ed Keenan That's you Ed Keenan wrote the book The Art of the Possible An Everyday Guide to Politics I'm going to pause and ask you

Is he correct? Did you write that book? Yeah, it came out like I guess 10 years ago I know, I'm just setting up to 10 years ago last week. Oh, happy anniversary. Happy anniversary. If he had a chance to update the book,

what chapters would he include for the 2025 edition? So that's an actual question. But then he has something to say, so I'm going to kind of throw it in here. But he says, Lannrich again says this. I think local politics is broken. I also think it's the most important aspect of living in a democratic society. So maybe the ultimate question is, how do we fix it?

Because selfishly, I've got kids and I need this shit to work for them. So I did get a chance to update it. before the last American election because they were doing a paperback American edition. And, you know, there was already some things that needed updating just about like I had used as a little case study, some things that happened in Iran that turned out to not be like a success story

in the end and all of that. Some of the language was already needed to be updated to current sensitivity guides and whatnot. But I mean... it's hard because I think a lot of this stuff and I'm going to ask you to repeat part of what Lannrick wrote there just because trying to determine where Thurham was I was partly distracted

I think I missed the most important part I enjoy channeling my interlander yeah yeah like starting with I think local politics is broken I think local politics is broken I also think it's one of the most important aspects of living in a democratic society so maybe the ultimate question is how do we fix it because selfishly i've got kids and i need this shit to work for them yeah and i i think local politics is broken or is appearing to be broken but

but also like like man what's happening in the united states tonight now is is like showing a lot of ways where like politics in general is broken like what what we thought of as liberal democracies are potentially fracturing and breaking and like being exploited and then and then perverted right and it's interesting because I know this started and maybe it was a launching point but like I wrote that book to not be sort of like this is how a bill becomes a law or this is how our system like works I wanted you to be able to read it about principles of what what politics is about um that would apply equally across the western world for sure the english speaking world but also referring to the like the concept of politics in a in a

pluralistic democratic society right like that's really what the book is about um and part of the things i talked about it but how politics breaks down is like when corruption is allowed to flow when when people become cynical and apathetic it creates a cycle that then that then degrades the whole system and it and it starts to break and about how how we can on a mass level be led in the wrong direction you know by psychological tricks and things right and I mean I was trying to write that at a middle school level of understanding of the basic principles of it and so I don't know how much I would like update it to but I think a lot of the things that are in in passing and I think most of a chapter I actually cut out of the finished product which maybe I would want

reinsert it if we're doing an update about downsides that can really emerge like how corruption can can set in and why it needs to be avoided Maybe if I was doing another edition, I'd put that back in. But, I mean, the more interesting question is, like, how do we fix it, right? Like, because this is, and I don't know the answer. Like, I think that for local politics in particular, because that's what Landrick mentioned, It's like, local politics works best, really, when decisions are made closest to the people. Like, when the people have an actual voice in that decision.

I think actually, like, in cases like nimbism and whatnot, it can be the most frustrating and it can be a big obstacle to actually getting things done, right? But I do think that, like, having people in a neighborhood help decide how their neighbors, should be governed, like what to put in the local park and what to, like, that more participation makes for a better government, like less corruption, but decisions that more reflect what the people here who live in this place want. It gives them more pride of place. It actually makes it responsive to them.

And yet we have devolved decision-making further and further way so that our local city counselors represent over a hundred thousand people in in most cases in all cases i think like often represent more like than the like some wards are more populous than some provinces right like it's like uh and and they've got one city counselor for that and so then there's 25 of them making decisions for the whole city um and there's no like equivalent of like london has these like like boroughs and and like, you know, hundreds of mayors for like little subdivision parts of London, right, and their own little councils. Like New York City has like borough presidents and borough councils.

And then they have beyond that, like little neighborhood councils. And a lot of those are like, you know, like elected but volunteer, like unpaid positions. But you have like these ward councils making actual decisions about how to allocate some of the money in their area and all of that. And through that, you have a system where people can be involved and decision-making reflects, you know, somewhat, like, the will of the people. And not just, like, the will of the people in some, like, yes, no referendum sense, but, like, actually involves them, right? Like, or involves somebody that they know or somebody that they might meet, right, regularly. Um, and I don't know how we get back to that. but I also think that like

the media landscape we live in I don't even mean I don't even mean the news media I mean like our information uh like digital landscape our culture is increasingly moving away from the kinds of things that that would lead us to a more responsive and like less broken local politics

I mean I work at the Toronto Star where we have four I'm trying to think now four full-time reporters working in the bureau at City Hall. We have a well-staffed from Queens Park Bureau, right? Like, we're covering local politics. But nobody else at City Hall has that. They all have one reporter there, right? But beyond that, that's not just, it's like,

how many full-time people are there covering Mississauga City Hall? How many full-time people are covering Ajax City Hall? Like, I doubt one. Like, I doubt there's any. Right. Maybe one. Like the Star has a reporter covering the 905, right? We have, we'll send reporters if we know something's going on.

But like a lot of these small places that don't even have an news organization representing them. Like not even the CBC. Like Perry Sound or whatever. There's no local newspaper left in Perry Sound, I don't think. You know, there's a regional CBC somewhere there. But like, like who's covering their local politics? Nobody. Nobody, right?

like and that's that's just one part of it so like so part of that is like are there watchdogs there but even like if you live there how are you even supposed to know what the hell is going on like like um and in a so man sounds dire man right you're bumming me out you're bumming me out and how to fix it is the is the really good question i feel like in toronto there are things we could do if we wanted to as a city and it maybe it would be hard to get a mandate to do these things. But I think, like, there are ways where you could try to, try to consult people more, like get decision-making closer to them. And the question is just going to be whether we can actually get citizens to still be, still want to be involved in that stuff other than

standing up to say, no, no big buildings in my neighborhood. Right. I don't want that shelter in my neighborhood. That's what gets them out. Yeah. Like, those people will always show up to meetings, right? Right. Right. And the problem is you can't just let them be the only voices at the meetings. Not them and the rich developer and nobody else, right? But how do we get them to the meetings? I feel like there's stuff Toronto could do. I think it's harder as a more general, broadly applied situation, and I honestly don't know the answers.

I would have to do the kind of research that would lead me to write a new book. This is what gets you back every quarter. So I've decided we're heading to rapid fire. Okay, okay. So again, you may want to, especially, for 15 minutes on this topic, but you're not allowed to, okay? We got 20 minutes to go, and I have a few quick hits. One is, an Ontario court has deemed the province's plan to remove three major Toronto bike lanes unconstitutional.

Yeah. Isn't that delicious? I didn't think that was going to happen. But yeah, I mean, a judge, and if you read that decision, or the details of that decision, what you see too is that it's not that we have some inherent right to bike lanes it's that in a case where a public policy that that is in existence is shown we're removing that policy changing that policy is shown to like endanger lives and and that doing so without a proper rationale

without solid reasons is unconstitutional. And they're appealing it. It may lose on appeal. Of course. It may lose an appeal. But it is like specifically that the provincial government disregarded like even the advice of their own experts, their own henhouse people. Right. And that this policy would not serve any public purpose because it will not actually improve. travel times.

Right. Like it will not speed up. There's no reason to believe that it will achieve the goal of making traffic move any faster. Right. Car traffic move any faster. And it will endanger the lives of cyclists. And so having just like disregarded all the evidence and standard ways to do that to kind of meddle in the city's affairs, the judges said they can't do it. And it's like kind of satisfying to see them say that.

It's satisfying to see a judge say what some of us have been saying all along, is that like, this isn't just, like, mean-spirited. It's not just like, oh, you're taking the side of car drivers over cyclists, because guess what, I'm both, right? And I'm both as well. And it's also that you will not achieve your goals. Like, you're going to screw up a bunch of people's lives, and nothing is going to be better for anyone, right?

It's going to be worse for some people. and just as bad as it is now for the other people and yet you want to confidently march ahead and do it anyway and they you know they probably will eventually do some version of it anyway despite like but they're appealing but I think on Blue or West they are going to go ahead and try and add back an extra lane of traffic without removing the bike lanes in the meantime

like that's still to be confirmed but like which would be a major victory for Olivia Chow Well, and also... Because she's been lobbying for a potential compromise on the Kingsway area in exactly that way. So on the note of the bluer bike lane, which Toronto Mike uses so regularly, he forgets what it was like before they were implemented. But is there any update at all in this lawsuit against Amber Morley, the city councilor for the blueer bike lane here? Is there anything in that note or is that still active or was that throwing out or I assume it's still progressing? I have not.

If there was any update, I don't have it. to provide, but that lawsuit was like just the worst kind of garbage, right? Like, come on. Yeah. I mean, but I don't even think they would have standing to sue her personally over it. But I'm surprised it hasn't been tossed out in some... Yeah, yeah. Like, I think it will get tossed as soon as it's there.

Like, I don't think you can personally sue politicians over public policy decisions made by the city council. Could you imagine? Like, I don't think you can. Could you imagine? Okay. So, again, these are rapid fire questions. So, so, yeah?

Which means I think, this is the rapid fire answer. That lawsuit was a publicity stunt, not a lawsuit, right? Eglinton Crossdown LRT. You almost got away a whole episode about me bringing it up. But I don't know, another delay? Like, do you have a succinct update on the most current delay? Well, it's good news, folks. Metro Lanks is doing revenue service testing,

which means they're running like full service. Like it will be when it goes into service. So it's like every three minutes or every five minutes or whatever the scheduled time is. They're just running the trains on the full service now. They've got the drivers out there. They've got the station staffed up. They've got to do a 30-day simulation of full service

before they can hand it over to the TTC. And then the TTC has to do its own revenue service demonstration for, I don't know, maybe 30 days, maybe 60 days, maybe 90 days. they have to do their own testing. If those two phases of testing don't uncover new problems that further delay it, then we'll be probably,

so we're like looking at what? Early new year, I think. But I mean, who knows at this point, right? But I was like, I try to, like, look on the bright side at this point. is that like we're seeing delays

about a fully constructed thing that they're capable of running full service on, which means like we're not as far away as we were. The end is nigh. Yeah, yeah, but it's not nearly as nigh as we'd like it to be, man. Right. Wild. Okay, that's wild. We'll be talking about that in January. Don't worry.

Fun fact, Daniel Dale, who you replaced kind of as the D.C. guy, the guy covering Washington at the Toronto Star. He was still in D.C. Well, he moved to, yeah, yeah. but he's back here now. So the fun fact is that he's still doing his CNN fact check thing,

but he's doing it from Toronto now. So Daniel Dale now lives in Toronto again. Oh, okay. Just a fun time. Since the summer. Yeah, invite me to that. I want to get Daniel Dale on the program. Help me do that.

Okay. Imperial Pub. Closing after 81 years. You save this to the end, rapid fire. I'm so sad. I went to Ryerson University. For decades,

that has been a hangout of Ryerson University people. It was also the home of the art bar poetry series. I used to read there. I used to go watch people read there. I have one of my favorite, like, dive bars, just a whole cross-section of society, the aquarium bar downstairs,

the library pub upstairs, and that it survived, like, the redevelopment of Ryerson and TMU's campus, and then also survived the redevelopment of Young Dundas Square into what it is now made you think it was going to be there forever

and yet it's like a great memorable example of a type of beloved local bar that is an endangered species in Toronto and I'll probably write about it before it closes

I got to go back there. I know you will because you've written about the old young street vanishing and yeah you'll definitely write about the Imperial Pub closing after 81 years a couple of notes from listeners and then we did it we did it in two hours here

unless there is anything on your mind but the two things I'm bringing up is one is Joe Louis just sent in a comment for us he says city councilors should be subject to a three term limit one term to learn the ropes and two more terms to get shit done

that's Joe Louise's opinion do you have any thoughts on that well Joe I'm a big fan of your cakes but beyond that like yeah I mean I think I like his cakes too voters

increasingly I do come around to like considering these kinds of things like term limits I used to be more like hey let's look at the principle

of this thing and all of that and I would say like voters could impose own term limits right and instead what happens is that voters keep returning the same people

again and again you could say it's through apathy or simple familiarity or whatever I used to be really against it. I will say, like,

do city counselors really do take a while to learn the ropes, right? Like, there is something valuable about some of the veterans. There's drawbacks to them having been there forever, but it's also like, they know how things work,

and so for their team, they're really valuable to have around to, like, say, this is how we can get stuff done. But, I mean, it's three, I would be more in favor of a third. three-term limit than a two-term limit

and it might be something really worth looking at. Okay, Joe Louis hit it out of the park there. Walk of Life. That's a good Dire Straits song, right? Walk of Life. Brothers in Arms. I had the cassette. I have that on vinyl.

Very good. I think like yeah, yeah, never mind. Well, you're going to give me some dire straits hot Mark. No, no, no. It's not even a hot take. It's like, I think if you listen to it on a good stereo, from not the radio edit the full record version

the intro to money for nothing is like just such a perfect rock and roll moment like when it comes up that humming I can hear it in my head right now and you know whose voice that is sting yeah I know and it uncrediting I know I wondered a few minutes

but then it comes to that and then that riff and the tone on that riff and just like and when it comes after all that buildup and that D-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-A-N-N-N-A-N-N-A-N-N-A-N-N-E.

So, so perfect. Also, you know, the rest of the album, good, too. Even the rest of that song, not terrible, but perfect rock-and-roll moment. No argument for me. Love it very much. But Brothers in Arms had a question or a statement. No, it's the walk of life. A walk of life, sorry.

But Brothers in Arms, which is the name of the album and a cut on the album, was used effectively one of my favorite scene of all time in the West Wing I don't know if you remember this President Bartlett smoking a dart and throws down the cigarette kind of stomps it out

I think this is when he's going to run again but he promised his wife he wouldn't because he has multiple sclerosis as I recall and stalker Channing is his wife and I think she has a great line about like we had a deal or something like that

but brothers in arms is plain I have altered the deal Pray I do not alter it further. The famous President Bartlett quote, yes. President Bader. No, sorry, so what happens in Walk of Life comes on? Yeah, Walk of Life. No, walk of life, yes, that's fine.

See, we got time here. Okay, Walk of Life says, I'd love to know if there is any, if Ed Keenan has any information on the new Toronto Island fairies. They look cool, but I'm no sea captain, er, lake captain. Yeah, I'm going to have to,

I should have more information than I do. I have looked at them and nothing beyond that. So I should look closer at them. When they first ordered them, I thought they had made a mistake that they should have gone with much larger, much faster fairies. They didn't.

That decision is beyond us. It seems to have taken an absurdly long amount of time for us to get them. But next time. time, if you're sending questions the next time I'm coming in, send the same one, and I'll try and have more of an answer.

I want those gondolas that Josh Matlow promised me. Sorry, at least, you know I want to be able to bike to the island, so that's really my big thing. Last on the island, so I think this is since your last visit. I got a tour of the island from Professor Pricklethorn. I hope I've got his name

right. Professor Pricklethorn, who's an arborist and he was for 25 years. He was I don't know. Like the island The island parks guy He was running the show over there And he's a big deal But he gave me this tour So we took a little water taxi

A tour of the island What struck me from this tour Is the part of the island That is almost You almost can't visit it anymore Because of the cormorants So I don't know who's on the cormorant case here But I'm told

They were the Leslie spit They were in Tommy Thompson Park Like they were there And it all was fine Then they found They liked a part of this island and now they're there in many numbers. And they're guano.

You know, that's a polite way of saying shit. Okay, the guano, it's rancid. So it does two things. One is it's destroying the trees. Like, it's like acidic. So the trees are all barren. Like, they look like they've been destroyed. It's terrible for the trees.

But also, stinky. Like, super sweet, stinky. The worst smell. Like, some people on this boat we were going through simply, like, could barely handle it. so I wonder if we need to figure out what the hell we do with the cormorans apparently bounty on the cormorans have a mass call there was apparently they had a plan to just make them like uncomfortable so they move right because you can't go killing these cormorans

having for a bit but apparently a bald eagle showed up and they had to abandon the plans to make these cormorants uncomfortable indifference to the bald eagle because it was an endangered species that showed up like so I'm going to put it on the radar I don't know now we're heading into the winter here. If anybody has a sound that bald eagles love and cormorans hate,

this is your moment. That's what we're looking for. That sound might be snow's informer. Like, if we blast snow's informer, I think the bald eagles are okay with it and possibly the cormorants don't like it. They'll go back to the Leslie spit there

where they seem to be okay over there. Ed Keenan, you hit it out of the park again. That doesn't mean you have to wield the bat for the photo. I wanted to bring it back to baseball, but is there anything that you were, like, driving here saying, I need to mention this or say this, and then Mike didn't prompt me for it. No, no, I knew we were going to talk about speed cameras. I, you know, we got onto it.

I was thinking about the Leafs and the Blue Jays on the way in here, and we touched on those. So I think we're done. I think we're good. We got our Pearl Jam conversation in. Are you going to attend any Blue Jays playoff? games at the dome. Uh, it's unlikely but possible. And that.

Everything's kind of unlikely, but, I'm not everything, but many things. No, no, but I mean, if, if I haven't made any, uh, preparations to try and purchase tickets, uh, but I do have some friends who are season ticket holders, they'll probably be using their tickets, but if, if the opportunity to buy some at a price that is reasonable comes my way, I will definitely take it up, but I haven't. I think I'm a little late in the game to try and make plans for it. And that brings us to the end of our 1,773rd show. Go to tronomelmike.com for all your Toronto mic needs.

Thank you, Great Lakes Brewery. Thank you, Palma Pasta. I do have a lasagna for you, Ed Keehani. Nick Aini's, thank you. Recycle My Electronics.ca. Blue Sky Agency and Ridley Funeral Home. Here's a measuring tape for you. See you all tomorrow for FOTM cast. with the VP and Cam Gordon.