Toronto

The rejuvenation of Lawrence Heights

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Friday, February 26, 2010 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY

A modest urban tweak it isn’t.

The city’s plan for the Lawrence Heights area aims, over a quarter-century and multiple construction-intensive phases, to build a model community from scratch and revolutionize the way people live, shop, work and commute in the 110-acre area.

There is no price tag on the project.

The 1,208 units of social housing alone will cost an estimated $350-million.

But it’s unclear how much it will cost to build the other 6,300-odd units of condominiums and townhouses the city envisions or for the green space and other renovations planned.

But the city and Toronto Community Housing Corporation officials who unveiled the latest plans yesterday were optimistic the long-term vision will become a reality.

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Urban renewal in ‘the Jungle’: Toronto’s plan to redevelop Lawrence Heights

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Thursday, February 25, 2010 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY

In the centre of what’s set to become Toronto’s massive social-engineering experiment, Hersi Abdirizack reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out two vials: tiny red specks in clear liquid.

Bedbugs in alcohol, he explains, shaking them slightly.

For the Somali entomologist turned tenant advocate, this is part of what community revitalization will mean in Lawrence Heights.

Today, the city will unveil its latest plans to reinvent one of Canada’s largest social-housing complexes and the chronically marginalized neighbourhood around it.

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Encouraging Toronto’s entrepreneurs, one microloan at a time

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Saturday, February 20, 2010 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY AND TAVIA GRANT

TORONTO — No conventional bank in its right mind would give Cleoni Crawford a loan.

And she can recite, from memory, the responses she got when she tried.

” ‘You’re going to need a co-signer, there’s nothing we can do.’ ‘Do you have any assets, do you have any savings?'”

She rolls her eyes, holds her hands up, empty. “Um, hello?”

Ms. Crawford was operating her fashion-design business out of her home at Jane and Sheppard, lugging clothing samples on the bus to visit potential clients.

She also had a credit rating that would give a banker the shakes. In 2006, within seven months of graduating from the University of Toronto with a pile of student loans, she defaulted on her credit-card debt.

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Cities taking the lead on climate change

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Saturday, December 5, 2009 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY

They can talk about the environment at a United Nations summit, but the action is at your local recycling depot and bus stop, and in your water taps, light bulbs and street-side bike stands. That’s why the real show during the Copenhagen talks might be on the sidelines – at a parallel summit of cities. And there, Canadians are at the forefront.

Cities argue that in an urbanizing world where at least half of emissions are created in municipalities, they are best suited to fight climate change. Just give them the resources and clout.

“We want to show the international community that cities are acting,” says Martha Delgado Peralta, environment minister for Mexico City, once the most polluted municipality in the world.

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Private-clinic patients jump the line for flu shot

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Monday, November 2, 2009 – Globe and Mail
KAREN HOWLETT, ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY AND DAWN WALTON

TORONTO and CALGARY — Patients at private medical clinics in at least two provinces have jumped the queue for H1N1 vaccine during a nationwide shortage of the flu shot, rekindling a debate about the perils of two-tier health care in Canada.

Copeman Healthcare, a private clinic in Vancouver that charges patients annual membership fees of $3,900 in the first year, has already received its first shipment of H1N1 vaccine and is hoping for more soon, said chief operating officer Chris Nedelmann.

Medcan, a clinic in downtown Toronto that charges just under $2,000 for a head-to-toe checkup, received 3,000 doses last Friday, enough for 8 per cent of its patients.

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Church officials alerted to pornography allegations against bishop 20 years ago

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Tuesday, October 6, 2009
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY AND OLIVER MOORE

TORONTO and HALIFAX — Two decades ago, a young man poured his heart out in Rev. Kevin Molloy’s Portugal Cove rectory.

Father Molloy said he was “appalled” to hear about the pornographic images the man allegedly found, as a teenager in the home of a fatherly clergyman, who would befriend boys at Newfoundland’s Mount Cashel home and often take them out to movies or to his home for the weekend.

“Just the fact that he was a priest and this young boy would find this kind of material in the priest’s rectory appalled me terribly,” Father Molloy told The Globe and Mail in an interview last night.

Father Molloy immediately told then-Archbishop Alphonsus Penney about the allegations about what had been found in Rev. Raymond Lahey’s house. Then he phoned Father Lahey, who was in Cornerbrook at the time.

“I said, ‘Bishop Lahey, I’m calling you on a very serious matter…’ He was quite aware of what I was saying.”

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A father’s loss in Gaza, a major win for Canada

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Friday, September 18, 2009 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY

TORONT and O — At his comfortable Toronto home, the star recruit of Canada’s most ambitious graduate public-health program is the perfect host: He pours tea and arranges chairs; his eldest children bring out plate after plate of food, and his youngest daughter entertains guests with living-room acrobatics.

Izzeldin Abuelaish, who made headlines around the world as a peacenik and vocal advocate of Israeli-Palestinian détente, starts teaching today at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health. It’s a hopeful new beginning nine months after a blast ripped his world asunder on the other side of the globe.

The Israeli shell that hit Dr. Abuelaish’s apartment and killed three of his daughters was one of innumerable human tragedies in the midst of Gaza’s bloody conflict last January, which elicited a United Nations report this week slamming both Israel and Hamas for war crimes.

But this particular incident caused a media firestorm that crystallized the conflict internationally.

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