The Toronto skyline as viewed from Front & Bay. Union Station runs along the left, the Royal York Hotel to the right (with a black construction fence obscuring the view along the bottom). In the distance, the CN Tower and a couple of glass towers rise into the evening sky.

The Front Street canyon.

Just did my “Toronto vs The US” tour for two families: one Canadian, one American — which makes for an interesting way of seeing the city.

The U.S. Military Is Picking Up mRNA Vaccine Research That RFK, Jr., Defunded The Department of Defense funds biomedical research to ensure military and pandemic preparedness. This includes mRNA vaccine projects that RFK, Jr., recently defunded

Finally.
Some HOPEFUL NEWS

The Department of Defense funds biomedical research to ensure military and pandemic preparedness.

This includes mRNA vaccine projects that RFK, Jr., recently defunded

www.scientificamerican.com/article/u-s-...

Leaving an ER without being seen is riskier than you think.

It’s linked to a 14% higher risk of hospital admission & death.

Clinics are the one place patients should be SAFE

Colds, flus & coughs are the #1 reason why Canadians see a doctor

…so where did masking in healthcare go?

It’s political.

To our U.S. Colleagues,

Condolences on the loss of the CDC’s MMWR.

3 resources that may help
🇨🇦

Deep cuts made to CDC's flagship MMWR publication, a cornerstone of public health CDC staff behind the agency’s flagship publication have been fired amid drastic cuts to the HHS promised by the White House due to the government shutdown, according to five people familiar with the s...

🚨A cornerstone of 🇺🇸 public health has been DECIMATED

Nearly the ENTIRE staff of CDC’s MMWR was FIRED

This publication was a go-to for information on
🇺🇸 DISEASE OUTBREAKS

What’s next?

www.statnews.com/2025/10/11/c... via @statnews.com

This is why I find archival photos of the city from, say, the 1990s or 1980s so fascinating and weird. It's the same city, not "historic" like those from well before, but just different enough to be weird. Dream like. Take the subway to the uncanny valley stop.

What a great news story! LRT canopy is salvaged for reuse in the community and currently stored at the zoo! 🎉🎉🎉

“They also include cases where she says instructors are being made to teach two classes simultaneously, in the same classroom.”

A photograph of Maggie Helwig alongside friends, encampment residents, and readers.

A photograph of the notice given to clear the encampment with less than 24 hours notice.

Maggie Helwig's ENCAMPMENT has won the Toronto Book Awards!

The city has also just given notice that the encampment beside her church (St. Stephen-in-the-Fields) is to be cleared TOMORROW MORNING (Thurs., Oct. 16). If you're in Toronto, support the encampment and its residents at 103 Bellevue Ave.!

my Mom was a teen in TO at that time. She remembered those underpasses off of Lakeshore, east of High Park, being water up to the overpass.

Good reminder of what a hurricane can do, even to Toronto.

The suspense is killing me! The thread ends with Toronto thinking it was safe …

A great young teen novel describes the devastation on Raymore Dr. "Safe As Houses" by Eric Walters. Well worth a read.

Hurricane Hazel (Raymore Dr) YouTube video by TRCA

13. As the flooding began, only a few cautious residents fled to higher ground. But over the course of just a few minutes, the community was completely overwhelmed by water.

The TRCA has created an animation to show us what it looked like: youtu.be/PcNEQkniFi0?...

A view across the raging Humber River. A few people walk along what's left of the bank in the foreground. Trees standing in the middle of the waves. In the background, some homes stands among the trees and the water.

12. An entire block of Raymore Drive had been built at the bottom of the Humber Valley.

That quiet residential neighbourhood now found itself in the middle of the raging river.

A photo of an old street sign reading "Raymore Dr," which has been damaged by the storm.

11. And quiet Raymore Drive, just across the river from Weston, became the scene of unspeakable horrors.

(I should probably mention at this point: some of the following tweets will be pretty upsetting.)

Two archival photos show homes ripped apart by the storm. On the left, a house has been torn open to reveal a bedroom pitch onto its side a bed still inside. On the right, another home's roofs has been turned 90 degrees.

10. But the worst was the Humber. That night, 150 billion litres of rain fell into the river’s watershed.

The river became a deadly torrent. Roads destroyed. Trees snapped like matchsticks. Cars swept away. Homes ripped from their foundations.

A man in a suit — with a hat, pipe and dress shoes — crouches atop what looks like the top of a barrel surrounded by water. He's got a metal can in his hand and pumps water into it from a spout at the top of the barrel. Behind him, a house sits in water that comes nearly up to the first floor windows.

9. All over the city, rivers and creeks began to burst their banks. The Don, the Rouge, Etobicoke Creek, Mimico Creek, Highland Creek…

Even the Garrison, buried for nearly a century, sent sewer grates flying atop geysers in Trinity Bellwoods Park.

An archival photo of flooding. A car stands in the water hood open, with two people in raincoats up to their shins in water.

8. The last official weather report came at 9:30pm: Toronto would get winds & rain, but nothing like the devastation to the south.

By then, though, the flooding had already started. Hazel *had* crossed the Alleghenies, hit a front of cold Canadian air & stalled above Toronto.

A painting of the Allegheny Mountains, slopes covered in trees, a river winding through the distance, a few wisps of cloud in the air.

7. Toronto wasn't worried.

Hazel wasn't supposed to be a threat to our city — we're protected by the Allegheny mountains, which usually break up big storms or push them to the east.

Two photos: on the left, downed trees in front of the Capital Building in Washington DC; on the right, a 1950s TTC subway rolls into a station as commuters line the platform on the far side of the tracks.

6. By dinnertime, Hazel was tearing through Washington D.C...

And Torontonians were arriving home at the end of a soggy commute on the brand new subway system, with no clue what was about to happen to their city.

The storm battering the American coast; small buildings, telephone poles and trees being lashed by wind and waves.

5. On Friday morning, the storm crashed into the coast of the southern United States.

Dozens of Americans died over the course of the day.

A neighbourhood in ruins, with a damaged church standing in the middle of the scene.

4. On Tuesday night, Hurricane Hazel tore through Haiti, killing hundreds.

On Wednesday afternoon, it hit the Bahamas and killed six more.

A map showing the hurricane's path from the waters north of South America, through the Caribbean, and north through the eastern U.S. and Canada.

3. Hurricane Hazel had first been spotted off the coast of South America, and it had been gradually heading north over the course of the week.

A newspaper headline reading "Floods Roads, Stalls Cars, Soaks People, More Due" above a pair of black and white photos of 1950s cars driving through flooded streets.

2. The storm arrived in the darkness of a Friday night in 1954.

All week it had been raining, a miserably grey October that was about to turn deadly.

A police officer in a raincoat stands knee-deep in flood water at night, an open garage behind him.

1. On this day 71 years ago, Toronto woke to discover the city had been devastated by a terrible hurricane.

Here's my annual thread about the horrors unleashed by Hurricane Hazel...

A poster for the event, with a backdrop of candles and cobwebs. The logo for the Town of York Historical Society and Toronto's First Post Office appears at the top. Below, it reads: Discover what lurks in the darkness. Shadows of the Past. A Haunted History of Toronto with Adam Bunch. October 21 & 23, 7pm–8:30pm, Toronto's First Post Office.

Next week! I'll be talking about the history of Toronto ghost stories at Toronto's First Post Office!

Happening Tuesday night, then again on Thursday.

Learn more here: www.eventbrite.ca/e/shadows-of...

I’m not a fascist but if I was I would send the military into cities to squash protests against my authority. In my more revealing moments I might even call them anti-fascists. But all this is just hypothetical …

I'm open to industry and engineering experts explaining carbon capture potential to me but at this point, I see it as capturing a small proportion of harmful emissions. The analogy that comes to mind is cigarette makers who claimed filters would make cigarettes safe. (They didn't, millions died.)

I am fortunate to live in a country with a reputable Public Health agency. I invite American citizens and health professionals to use this site in place of less credible US government sites.

www.canada.ca/en/public-he...