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Toronto Life - The Wire

The comprehensive index of every blog post, magazine story and restaurant review that appears on Torontolife.com

All stories by Jan Wong

The Informer

From the Print Edition
May 14, 2012 | 11:30 am

49 Comments

Jan Wong: Why the LCBO—the antiquated, paternalistic monopoly that’s deliberately gouging us—has got to go

Body Politics

By Jan Wong | Photograph by Daniel Neuhaus

On a recent Sunday afternoon, I stopped by the LCBO’s flagship Summerhill store.
A glorious 35,000 square feet of creamy Italian porcelain floors and sparkling lights, the refurbished Canadian Pacific Railway station is adjacent to a cluster of gourmet shops that affluent shoppers call “The Five Thieves.” Here you pay dearly for ready-to-heat osso buco or a square of chocolate cake sprinkled with edible gold leaf. Despite its prime location, this outlet, the LCBO’s largest, is no pricier than any other location in the province. You pay the same fixed $12.60 for a 2009 Louis Bernard Côtes du Rhône here as you would at Scarborough’s lowly Cedarbrae Mall.

Nice, huh? But wait—you and I are paying for those pot lights, the Martha Stewart–style test kitchen (used for cooking demos and wine appreciation classes) and the standalone tasting bar, not to mention the lease on this prime piece of real estate. We all pay—whether we’re teetotalers or boozehounds—because higher overhead reduces the annual dividend the LCBO remits to the province. That in turn means less money for everything from social services to infrastructure.

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The Informer

From the Print Edition
February 3, 2012 | 8:05 am

10 Comments

Jan Wong: Why aren’t schools teaching kids about the pleasures and perils of sex?

Body Politics

The answer is simple: our curriculum is shamefully outdated, and the Liberals are too scared to fix it
By Jan Wong | Illustration by Jesse Lefkowitz

Adam and Eve nibble an apple from the Tree of Knowledge and suddenly realize they’re both naked. Unfortunately, sex ed isn’t part of God’s plan, and He evicts them from the Garden of Eden. These days, some folks in Toronto are acting quite God-like themselves, insisting that the next generation live in innocence and ignorance. Heaven forbid our youth get to know themselves in the Biblical sense.

Our public schools are under attack by an evangelical Christian organization called the Institute for Canadian Values, whose leaders believe, as a basic ideological tenet, that teaching up-to-date sex education in schools will corrupt and confuse our children. The institute is run by a man named Charles McVety, who is quite skilled at getting media attention. Shamefully, most journalists have checked their brains at the door, blandly covering the institute’s actions and claims without questioning their legitimacy or standing up against the influence of the church on the state.

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The Informer

From the Print Edition
September 29, 2011 | 10:25 am

24 Comments

Jan Wong: how the rise of horticultural training at Toronto schools is bad for students

While we’re busy teaching our kids to tend school gardens, they’re failing provincial tests in reading, writing and math. The folly of the new enviro-propaganda

The Horticultural Revolution

(Illustration: Tavis Coburn)

This fall, hundreds of Toronto students are harvesting beets and zucchini from their school gardens. I say: nice photo op, bad idea. The argument for school gardens assumes that by grubbing in the dirt, kids will learn to love eating vegetables. They won’t think chickens hatch into this world as deep-fried nuggets. And they’ll develop a respect for nature.

Here’s the counter-argument: our students shouldn’t be out scrabbling in the hot sun when one in five can’t pass the Grade 10 literacy test administered by the provincially funded Education Quality and Accountability Office. And while Canadian students score high internationally in reading, mathematics and the sciences, Statistics Canada says our relative ranking is declining due to improved performance by other countries. In this era of global competition, we can’t afford to let other nations nip at our heels.

Half of Toronto’s population was born outside Canada, and it’s a safe bet many of them came here for a better life, including a good education for their offspring. A lot of immigrants originate from agrarian regions of countries such as India, Pakistan, China and the Philippines. The last thing these newcomers need is a morality crusade about carrots. Yet more than 200 of Toronto’s nearly 600 public schools now have gardens, and an army of well-meaning parents, volunteers, activists and advocacy organizations with a social agenda is successfully lobbying for more.

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The Informer

From the Print Edition
September 1, 2011 | 10:30 am

4 Comments

How academic pressure may have contributed to the spate of suicides at Queen’s University

By Jan Wong

Jack Windeler

Jack Windeler was 18 years old and in his first year of university when he died. (Image: courtesy of the Jack Foundation)

Early one Saturday morning in March 2010, Eric Windeler and his wife, Sandra Hanington, arrived home after a spinning class at the Granite Club to find an urgent message from the police. They called back, and the police said they’d be right over. Windeler and his wife quickly took inventory: grandparents fine, two of their three children safely at home. Only the eldest, 18-year-old Jack, was unaccounted for, away at Queen’s University in Kingston. “We texted him and called him. There was no answer.”

Then a police officer was at their door. “I’ve got terrible news,” he said. “Your son has died…We think it was suicide.” The couple called their other kids into the room and told them what happened. Then the four of them collapsed in a tangled heap in a single chair.

Jack Windeler’s was the first of a string of deaths at Queen’s. In the ensuing 14 months, five more students would die, three by suicide, two by what the cops call misadventure (likely alcohol related). Queen’s, widely considered one of the best universities in the country, is a popular destination for students in the top five per cent of their graduating class. The entrance grade average in 2008 was 87.3 per cent. These were kids who seemed headed for success, which made their deaths all the more shocking.

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The Informer

From the Print Edition
August 2, 2011 | 11:15 am

7 Comments

How to treat the scourge of modern medicine—bad bedside manner

By Jan Wong

Illustration by Florian Bayer

When I was pregnant and working as a foreign correspondent in Beijing, my obstetrician suggested an amniocentesis test for Down’s syndrome. Afterwards, I was told to call in three weeks for the results, by which time I could already feel the baby’s first kicks. “There’s a problem,” the nurse said when I phoned, adding that the doctor was out. She advised me to call back in an hour. I hung up the phone and burst into tears. Worst-case scenarios overwhelmed me. Did “a problem” mean I’d have to terminate the pregnancy? Did it mean this, my first pregnancy, would be my last?

One hour later, I dried my eyes and phoned back. “Everything’s fine,” my doctor said. I was too relieved to complain about the nurse. Eventually it dawned on me that all she had meant by “problem” was that the doctor was out.

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The Informer

From the Print Edition
July 4, 2011 | 11:30 am

15 Comments

Is a Toronto woman’s right to testify in a niqab an unreasonable accomodation?

A case involving a Toronto woman’s right to testify in a niqab is now headed for the Supreme Court. Maybe it’s time to acknowledge that some accommodations are just plain unreasonable By Jan Wong

Veiled Threat

(Image: Jillian Tamaki)

Naiyra Fatah smiles when she recalls the year she first started wearing a burka, the Islamic garment that’s the sartorial equivalent of a tent. She was 13, and she loved cracking up her stepsister, then 15, as they walked to Lady McLaughlin Girls High School in Lahore.

It wasn’t easy clowning around when neither sister could see the other’s face. “So I would suck the fabric in through my mouth,” recalls Fatah, who is now 84. “My sister would always laugh so hard she would drop to the sidewalk.” Seeing my puzzled look, the elderly woman tosses a filmy floral scarf over her head and demonstrates. The effect is hilarious: a flowery ghost with a mouth that resembles the wrong end of the alimentary canal.

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The Informer

From the Print Edition
May 31, 2011 | 8:21 am

21 Comments

Why educational apartheid is not the answer to curbing dropout rates for specific racial and ethnic groups

By Jan Wong

Students stand in segregated lines at a school entrance

(Illustration: Taylor Callery)

The tall black man was angry. “I want to propose 10 seconds of silence in memory of Brother Dudley Laws,” he said into the microphone, his voice booming through the auditorium at Oakwood Collegiate. It was question period at a raucous, emotionally raw public meeting in March, called after news leaked that the Toronto District School Board had recommended embedding the city’s first Africentric high school inside Oakwood. Parents, students, teachers, alumni and neighbours had filled every creaky, green-leatherette flip-up seat.

Laws, the civil rights activist, had died the week before. The man hoping to commemorate him applauded his own suggestion, smacking hands the size of baseball mitts together, before returning to his seat. I half hoped that Karen Falconer, the school board superintendent who was chairing the meeting, would rule him out of order. But Falconer immediately rose to her feet and announced a moment of silence.

It was like a scene from the American pre–civil rights era of the 1950s and ’60s, except that this time the tables were turned: angry blacks demanding segregation before a shell-shocked mixed-race community, while uniformed cops kept wary watch.

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The Informer

From the Print Edition
May 4, 2011 | 8:56 am

40 Comments

Welcome to Toronto the Rude

We swear at each other from cars, bark at each other on the TTC and yell into our cellphones. How a supposedly livable city suddenly turned boorish By Jan Wong

Torontonians cursing each other in a traffic jam, illustration

(Illustration by Kagan McLeod)

I got into a cat fight the other day at the Bolshoi ballet, one of those live satellite transmissions at my local Cineplex, where people arrive an hour early to get a good seat. The orchestra in Moscow hadn’t yet begun warming up when one balletomane barked at me for sitting in her territory, a 10-seat swath ambiguously marked with scattered scarves and hats. “You can’t sit there,” she said, with surprising nastiness. When I chose a seat farther down the row, she snapped, “That’s taken, too.” Steaming, I moved to a third spot and plunked my bag down on the seat beside me, not to save it for anyone, but to ensure zero human contact after being bullied by Lady Ten-Seat.

Rudeness is contagious. When another woman arrived a minute later and needed two seats, I set my jaw. “You’re not going to move your bag?” she asked, incredulous. “Nope,” I replied. We exchanged sharp words. “I’m tired of being pushed around by your friend,” I finally hissed, nodding at Lady Ten-Seat. It turned out not only did they not know one another, but my newfound adversary had just received the same rude treatment. “Now I’m totally edgy, too,” she confessed, suddenly extending her hand. “I’m Jane. Let’s be friends.” Mortified, I shook her hand, apologized and moved my coat. Then we all settled in to watch Giselle.

I wish such hostile encounters were rare, but it’s hard to navigate the city these days without experiencing friction. At least that’s my observation. Perhaps I’m just a magnet for trouble. Perhaps you, on the other hand, float through winter with people politely stepping into snowbanks to let you pass; perhaps you’ve never been held captive to a cellphone user’s inane conversation on a streetcar. But I say civility is on the decline, and the evidence is everywhere.

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The Informer

From the Print Edition
March 9, 2011 | 9:03 am

23 Comments

For sale by owner: realtors are still trying to keep the public’s hands off MLS, but you can’t hoard information in the information age

(Image: Brian Rea)

I’m not a do-it-yourself type. The one time I wallpapered my basement, I ended up with a stiff neck, peeling corners and a marital spat. Nevertheless, if I had to sell my house tomorrow, I’d be tempted to do it myself.

The main incentive for selling your own home is, of course, to avoid paying the real estate agent’s fees, which can be enormous, usually amounting to five per cent of the value of your biggest asset. A DIY seller of a $431,000 house (the average house price in Toronto in 2010) would save $24,350 (including HST). You could buy a new car for that. Even if your buyer uses an agent, which most buyers do, and you’re on the hook to pay a 2.5 per cent commission, you’d still save more than 10 grand. In the same dramatic way consumers dumped travel agents to buy cruises, hotels and plane tickets over the Internet, I expect that we will soon be rethinking the way we use real estate agents, if we use them at all.

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The Informer

From the Print Edition
March 8, 2011 | 3:05 pm

21 Comments

Not Asian enough: Jan Wong on the phenomenon of “Tiger Mom” parenting

The furor over Tiger Mom parenting ignores one awkward fact: academic success doesn’t guarantee a sparkling future. Confessions of a delinquent mother

(Image: Peter Arkle)

I freely admit that I’m a bad Chinese mom. I do not whack my sons with chopsticks; neither of them speaks Chinese; and a couple of years ago, I was thrilled when one of them doubled his math mark (at summer school—don’t ask). Which is why I’m bemused by all the angst, outrage and uproar over super-achieving Asian kids and their Genghis Moms.

Culture and competition make for a volatile mix, especially in Toronto, where we come from every part of the world, and especially during uncertain economic times, when people are worried about job security and who’s outperforming whom. It’s at moments like these that politicians and the media, consciously or unconsciously, tend to exploit the West’s simmering insecurities about The Other. They hint, for instance, that we are losing ground to China and even to our own Chinese-Canadian population.

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The Informer

From the Print Edition
February 3, 2011 | 8:53 am

13 Comments

The woman behind the mayor: who is Renata Ford?

For a political wife, Renata Ford is an enigma—neither humanizing homemaker nor independent careerist. So who is she?

(Image: André Carrilho)

Renata Ford is the invisible wife. Most Torontonians caught their first glimpse of her on election night: a smiling, slender blonde, wearing a jacket constructed of leathery gold leaves and standing one step back from her triumphant husband. Immediately afterward, she disappeared from public view. Today Renata remains an enigma, the first mayoral spouse about whom almost nothing is known, including her age, background and occupation.

In Canada, the media generally regard political spouses as off limits. They are, after all, unelected and unpaid. Nowadays, as women out-earn their husbands, head up political parties and dominate graduate-school enrolment, there is less of an obligation or even an expectation for a political wife to play a public spousal role. David Miller’s wife, Jill Arthur, declined, but at least we knew she was a lawyer at the Ontario Court of Appeal.

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The Informer

From the Print Edition
December 3, 2010 | 9:10 am

4 Comments

Fight or Flight? Jan Wong meets two black Torontonians with different solutions to troubles in their communities

New books by two black Torontonians propose radically different solutions to troubles in their communities By Jan Wong

(Image: Taylor Callery)

It’s a gorgeous summer day in 2003. Imagine you’re 21 and with your extended family and a few friends at a backyard barbecue in Rexdale. Suddenly you hear shots being fired. Your neighbourhood is locked down, everyone is sent inside, and an emergency task force surrounds your home. Guys in flak jackets barge in and make your entire family—including your sister, who was mid-shower, your mom and your four-year-old nephew—walk out of the house with their hands in the air. They fling you and a friend against a neighbour’s door and demand to know what gang you belong to. The whole neighbourhood watches as you’re escorted to the police cruiser. You’re in handcuffs and feel mortified.

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The Informer

From the Print Edition
November 10, 2010 | 8:55 am

23 Comments

Monster jam: Jan Wong on the tear-down real estate trend in Lawrence Park

In my neighbourhood, century-old houses are being knocked down to make room for super-sized faux chateaux. Something is lost, and something gained Jan Wong

(Illustration: Emiliano Ponzi)

When I was house-hunting in Toronto in 1994, my real estate agent routinely pointed out the highlights of each prospective property. At one house, she said helpfully, “There’s a Chinese family next door.” I grimaced. I’d just wrapped up six years working as a foreign correspondent in Beijing. Quite frankly, I’d had my fill of squeezing up against a billion or so neighbours who looked just like me.

What I yearned for, after living in a soulless concrete apartment inside a bleak walled compound, was a bit of green. Lawrence Park, with its wide lawns and winding streets, was the polar opposite of Beijing. I snapped up a 1938 four-bedroom Cape Cod–style house with eight towering oaks and a 95-foot frontage (which was affordable only because it faced Lawrence Avenue and needed lots of work). From my front door, I could see the Don River ravine, and from my kitchen window, I could glimpse a gigantic willow a block away at Cheltenham Park.

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The Informer

From the Print Edition
September 28, 2010 | 8:57 am

11 Comments

What evil lurks: sexual assault is a serious problem at universities, and our schools are overlooking the solution

(Illustration by Clare Mallison)

York University’s Vanier College welcome brochures contain helpful information for frosh week. They list clubs to join and an orientation lunch for parents. They also tell you what to do in the event of a sexual assault. What they don’t mention is the statistical likelihood of a sexual assault or the violence that has occurred at York in the past.

During frosh week of 2007, two young men, Daniel Katsnelson and Justin Connort, entered Vanier under the guise of helping a drunk resident and began wandering the halls, trying the dorm room doors to see if they were unlocked. At roughly 2:45 a.m., they entered a room on the seventh floor and woke the 17‑year-old student inside. “Do you want to get lucky with a couple of Jewish guys?” one of them asked. She said no, but the men took turns with her anyway. Katsnelson raped her and then snapped photos on his cell of Connort assaulting her. Afterward, they entered a second room. The occupant, also a first-year student, woke up to one of them rubbing up against her and told him to leave. They entered a third room, sat on the bed of a sleepy young woman, and spoke briefly with her before moving on to the room of an exchange student, where one of the attackers announced, “I’ve never made out with a black girl.” When the student resisted, the men walked out and entered their fifth and final room. Katsnelson raped the 18-year-old inside. The first rape victim bled for a week. The second has since left York. Both are still in counselling.

These men roamed that dorm unimpeded for two hours, from the seventh floor down to the fourth, the third, and then back up to the 13th. All five of the women whose rooms were invaded were first-year students. None had locked their doors.

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The Informer

From the Print Edition
September 1, 2010 | 2:59 pm

51 Comments

Get off the Road: Toronto street festivals take the whole city hostage. Jan Wong says that it’s time we learn to say no

Illustration of Toronto road closures due to festivals

(Image: Jack Dylan)

One of Toronto’s biggest, most aggravating problems is traffic. In a recent poll about the upcoming mayoral election, Torontonians ranked congestion as one of their most significant concerns, above even the economy. Gridlock costs Toronto untold millions in lost productivity. Then there’s everyone’s wasted time, not to mention missed flights and appointments, and overall frustration. “Our roads and transit systems are strained,” says Julia Deans, CEO of the Toronto City Summit Alliance, who believes efficient roads are critical to our competitiveness and quality of life.

This summer, if getting from one part of the city to another seemed particularly hellish, that’s because it was. The 2010 municipal capital budget is 50 per cent larger than last year. In addition, road repairs ramped up as the city eagerly spent federal infrastructure stimulus funds that will expire at the end of March.

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