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Collingwood photographer featured on CBS News for shining a spotlight on the plight of the homeless

At 20 years old, Leah den Bok has made a difference around the world.

For the past five years, the Collingwood woman has gained recognition and acclaim for her photography and the Nowhere to Call Home series of books.

The books feature photos and stories of homeless individuals from around the world and all proceeds from sales are donated to charities that assist homeless people.

She was recently featured on national television in the United States on CBS Sunday Morning.

“I was very surprised and excited,” she said. 

And while the pandemic has brought a number of things to a halt, den Bok said she and her father, Tim, have continued to take photographs of homeless individuals in Toronto.

“We began to realize COVID is really affecting people experiencing homelessness,” she said. 

“It’s making their lives that have already been hard, almost unbearable.”

She said these individuals don’t have access to bathrooms as a result of COVID-19 and people are less likely to give them money because of physical distancing.

“It’s very important for us to go get their stories and get their perspective on how the pandemic is affecting them,” she said. “We’ve got really sad and striking stories.”

Leah has a unique connection to homeless people, as her mother Sara, was homeless as a child before she was dropped off by a police officer at Nirmala Shishu Bhavan (Mother Teresa’s orphanage in Calcutta).

“That’s a huge factor because Mother Teresa cared for people experiencing homelessness,” Leah said. “If she hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t be alive because my mother wouldn’t have been saved.”

When she started photographing homeless people, she was trying to build her portfolio, but quickly learned that many of them were humble people who had a lot of misfortune.

“I had only been told negative things about these people,” she said. “I found it to be a huge eye-opener. Everything we had heard about these people was virtually untrue.”

She is currently working on her fourth book. For more information, visit .

Thousands of Toronto students switch to virtual school as COVID-19 case count rises

Thousands of students in the Toronto District School Board opted to move from in-person to virtual school this week as the number of cases in schools continues to rise.

The TDSB’s first deadline to switch from online to in-person classes and vice versa on Wednesday saw about 7,500 students move from in-person to , while 3,000 students opted to switch from virtual to in-person classes, according to spokesman Ryan Bird.

The changes take effect Oct. 13.

As of Friday afternoon, the board is also reporting COVID-19 cases in 82 school, with 68 cases among students, and 29 in teachers.

The switch, the first one of the year, comes at a time when thousands of students who signed up for virtual in the summer have yet to be assigned a teacher.

Toronto parent Angela Matich, who opted for virtual school in August questions why the board would have allowed students to switch when so many kids — like her two children — are still waiting for a teacher.

“My attitude is you couldn’t handle what you have right now. Clear the backlog, and then move forward,” she said. “I understand there was a demand to move to virtual, but the problem is the TDSB has not been clearly telling those parents that we can switch you, but we have no teachers, we have no class, and your kids could be home one month or more doing nothing.

“The problem is that once they keep allowing people to switch, they have to constantly reorganize not just virtual but also in-person classes.”

Matich said one of her sons was connected to a teacher on Monday, but has yet to actually start the class.

“Just because you have been assigned a teacher that doesn’t mean you have started learning, and if you have been assigned a teacher, that doesn’t mean you actually have that teacher because teachers are getting pulled at the last minute … and then you are in this never-ending revolving door where we don’t actually know what we have,” she said.

Earlier this week, the TDSB said it was still short 80 French teachers and students in the French immersion/extended French program online could not be guaranteed they would be able to continue in French.

Currently, the board says 58,500 of its 174,000 elementary students are learning from home and 18,000 of 73,000 high schoolers are enrolled in online learning.

High schoolers have until Oct. 15 to decide whether they’ll make the switch. That decision would take effect on Nov. 23. The next opportunity to switch will be Nov. 6.

The development comes as Toronto deals with a surge in COVID-19 cases. On Friday, the city recorded an additional 311 cases and two more deaths. It was also reporting four schools with active outbreaks. (The province defines an outbreak as two or more lab-confirmed cases within a 14-day period with at least one case connected to the school, including busing and after-school programs.)

Toronto’s top public health official, Dr. Eileen de Villa, said she respects parents’ decisions to pull their kids out of the classroom.

“I think they should make the choices that make the most sense for their own unique circumstances, what makes sense for their children and what makes sense for their broader family,” she said, noting some kids or their families may be at greater risk of serious COVID-19 symptoms.

“That doesn’t take away from the fact that, from a public health perspective, we completely appreciate the value of schools to our children and to their overall health, so we’re doing everything we can in concert with our school board partners … to create environments that are as safe as possible for our children.”

York Region District School Board’s deadline to switch was on Sept. 22, at which time 5,854 decided to move from in-person to virtual. At the same time, 766 moved from virtual to face to face.

Peel Region District School Board saw a huge influx of 10,000 students move from in-person to virtual in September, delaying the start of school. The next switch date for PDSB students is Oct. 14.

With files from The Canadian Press

Noor Javed is a Toronto-based reporter covering current affairs in the York region for the Star. Follow her on Twitter:

Calvin Little died alone this fall at 63, his past a mystery. His passing has raised questions about early deaths among those who have lived on Toronto’s streets

When Calvin Little died, no one noticed for a while.

For the last two years of his life, the 63-year-old Torontonian lived in a nondescript east-end apartment — alone, save for a rotating cast of animals he would watch for periods of time.

Little had lived inside the building since August 2018: a place for him to land after a decade of episodic homelessness.

He was funny, friendly and charming, those who knew him said. But he kept his past close to his chest. Sometimes, he’d disappear for a day or two, or venture out to panhandle in the Beaches. When he died, he died in his apartment, quietly and alone.

Neighbours were only alerted that something was wrong when a strange odour floated through the halls, police said. From there, they faced a challenge — no one knew how to find his next of kin.

On Nov. 5, nearly a month after his death was first discovered, police turned their fruitless search over to the public — issuing a rare appeal for information leading to Little’s family.

The investigator tasked to his case was puzzled. “Usually, it’s people in the building that give us good leads to the next of kin,” said Det. Const. Dennis Inniss.

But none he spoke to seemed to know anything substantial about Little’s life. They couldn’t find a phone book, and had no luck via doctors, social services or the public trustee’s office.

It took weeks of searching. Eventually, a spokesperson for the police force confirmed that Little’s next of kin was found.

But his case, according to the head of the agency that housed him, is an illustration of a broader trend.

“Throughout the city, vulnerable, older, single adults pass away, and too often, it’s totally anonymous,” said Mainstay Housing’s Gautam Mukherjee, adding that many who were once homeless were dying prematurely. “You see that here … it’s not just the hidden death, or the unacknowledged or unknown death, but also everything leading up to it that’s part of the story.”

Before Calvin Little, there was John Cunningham. And before him, there was Harold Dawes.

Each of the three men — Little in his 60s, the other two in their 70s — lived along the same streetcar line, and died at home. And each time, Inniss was tasked with finding their families.

More than a year after Dawes died in 2018, Inniss said police decided to try something new by issuing a public appeal.

Within a day, Dawes’s family was located. Deeming the tactic a success, Inniss asked police brass to do the same after Cunningham died in January.

The plea did coax out some people who knew him. Neighbours, , painted a picture of a loner: a limo driver who told elaborate tales but, like Little, kept his personal life private.

But none of the information led to his family, Inniss said. So in March, his remains were claimed by social services to be put to rest.

While police appeals are rare, unclaimed remains are not. Coroner’s data shows that, in 2006, there were 145 unclaimed bodies across Ontario. Last year, there were 438, and so far in 2020, there have been more than 630, though there were some carry-overs from last year’s deaths.

Separately, the number of Canadians living alone has risen from nine per cent of the population aged 15 or older in 1981, to 14 per cent in 2016. The data stoked concern about isolation and loneliness, especially among seniors, even before COVID-19 cloistered households away.

Innis wishes apartments would keep records of their tenants’ family contacts for these situations. Little was asked repeatedly to give an emergency contact to staff, Mukherjee said, but he always declined.

“We were it,” he said.

Little was born March 5, 1957. Records tell part of his story, but there are gaps that those who spoke to the Star couldn’t fill.

When his housing worker, Ben Kershaw, asked on occasion about Little’s past, he said the older man would brush the questions aside. “We have to respect other people’s way of life. Everyone has their reasons for doing what they do,” Kershaw said.

Some of their tenants, he added, just wanted a fresh start.

By the time he arrived at Mainstay, Little had been well-known to Toronto’s Streets to Homes team for years.

To many, he was known as “Papa Smurf,” a kind man who would give his own clothes and belongings to others, and make dream catchers or carvings for those he cared about. He tried to make people laugh, staff recalled, and focus on what good fortune he had.

The Kingston Road unit was one of those strokes of good fortune. Kershaw remembers Little’s joy moving into unit 421, one of 136 bachelor apartments in the building. “He’d had enough of life on the streets. He wanted somewhere to call a home, somewhere to keep warm.”

The east-end site offers various supports in addition to shelter. It’s unique among Mainstay’s buildings in that it accepts new tenants, including Little, by referral from Streets to Homes, instead of just through a waiting list.

Little had been housed in at least two other locations before, between periods of homelessness — including in social housing. But it didn’t last.

At Mainstay, Little cared for multiple animals — at first a dog, and later a cat that scampered out when Little answered his door, prompting Little to hurry down the corridor after it.

He had challenges still. Inniss noted that Little battled cancer many years ago, and was in remission for five years before it returned again.

“He dealt with it better than I imagine I would, or most people,” said Kershaw. The diagnosis didn’t seem to dampen his mood.

To Mukherjee, Little’s death at just 63 years of age speaks to the toll that homelessness can take, even after someone is housed. In 2007, a Toronto street health report found that, compared to the overall population, homeless people were 20 times as likely to have epilepsy, five times as likely to have heart disease and four times as likely to have cancer, among ailments.

It’s unclear whether Little’s health challenges were connected to the periods of time he spent homeless, but Mukherjee has found himself wondering. The average man’s life expectancy in Canada was 79 as of 2017. Little’s death, he noted, was more than a decade premature.

Cancer and cardiovascular disease are the most common causes of death among older people who have been homeless, said Dr. Stephen Hwang, director of St. Michael’s MAP Centre for Urban Health Solutions, who described stark inequalities.

“The life expectancy of someone who is homeless is comparable to someone living back in the Great Depression, before we had antibiotics or pretty much any of the effective medical treatments that we have today,” he said.

Even if someone got into better housing and had more care, it may not be enough to undo the damage inflicted on their body — and their mind — during years of homelessness, said Dr. Sean Kidd, a senior psychologist with Toronto’s Centre for Addictions and Mental Health.

COVID-19 may change things. Kidd expects it will take a year or two to see the impacts of economic instability and job losses on homelessness. But he also believes the pandemic has prompted officials to focus more on creating permanent housing, rather than temporary fixes.

“These are the things that will turn the boat around,” Kidd said.

Joe Cressy, Toronto’s health board chair, noted that public health data shows homeless men in the city living 20 years less on average than the overall population.

“Entrenching homelessness, simply sheltering the homeless, does not reduce the lower life expectancy rates — ending homelessness does,” he said.

For now, in far too many cases, people were dying without anyone to remember them, said Mukherjee. Toronto’s homeless memorial lists dozens of John and Jane Does for 2020 alone.

But Little won’t be one of them. To those who knew him, he will be remembered for the animals he doted on, the artwork he made for those around him, and his perpetual sense of hope.

“He was a really nice guy,” Kershaw said. “We miss him.”

Victoria Gibson is a Toronto-based reporter for the Star covering affordable housing. Her reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative. Reach her via email:

‘None of the other kids feel safe.’ Hundreds of elementary school students forced into oversubscribed classes in TDSB

As cases across Ontario, hundreds of elementary students across the Toronto District School Board have been forced into oversubscribed classes where they may be so close to their peers, they feel unsafe.

When Anjula Gogia’s 12-year-old daughter, a Grade 7 student at Winona Drive Senior Public School, came home from class last week, she told her mom she and her classmates could not maintain a proper physical distance while studying.

“My daughter is safer going into a liquor store or a grocery store than she is going into her own classroom every day,” Gogia said. “She doesn’t feel safe. None of the other kids feel safe. What happens if a kid tests positive?”

Less than two months after the Toronto board approved a plan to reduce class sizes in kindergarten to Grade 8, nearly 4 per cent of its roughly 7,600 classes, both in-person and virtual, exceed the size limits promised at the start of the year, according to TDSB data released last week.

That amounts to roughly 300 classes, both in-person and virtual, that have too many students, the data show, some with as many as five extra kids.

As well, roughly 40 of these oversubscribed classes are located in communities Toronto Public Health identified as high risk for spreading the coronavirus. Fifteen “high priority” kindergarten classes have more than the targeted 20-student limit. One virtual classroom in Grades 4 through 8 has 38 students. The cap is 35.

TDSB spokesperson Ryan Bird said the vast majority of oversized classes only have one extra student. As part of its commitment to keeping kids safe this year, Bird said the board spent $30 million of its reserves to reduce class sizes, approving 20-student class size limits for in-person kindergarten and Grades 1 to 3.

Most other classes were capped at 27 students. Most virtual classes have been capped at 35 students.

“From the beginning we did say that it was a possibility that one or two students may be over that targeted class size limit,” he said.

The new, unexpected bigger class sizes are a direct result of a massive reorganization of elementary school teachers and students earlier this month to accommodate an overwhelming demand for virtual learning. Nearly 10,000 students switched learning modes in October with close to 8,000 kids leaving brick and mortar classrooms for online school. 

Oversized classes are just one more issue the TDSB has been forced to grapple with since the start of the school year. The board is scrambling to deal with a shortage of tech devices and now a budget shortfall of roughly $41 million.

The TDSB expected about 5,500 more students than are enrolled this year. That figure includes roughly 4,700 elementary school students, including 2,000 kids who were expected to enter kindergarten.

Jacob Beck, 43, was angry when he found out a couple of weeks ago that his son’s 16-person class at McMurrich Junior Public School near Oakwood Avenue and St. Clair Avenue West would swell to 22 students, two students over the 20-kid limit.

It was a shock to Beck and his 6-year-old son Emil because earlier that same week the school board sent out an email reiterating its promise to keep class sizes within the reduced caps. The email, in fact, uses the words “will not exceed” in bold and underlined font. It felt like insult added to injury the week Emil’s class grew because that’s when the school reported a positive case of in another Grade 1 classroom. 

“The whole point is that having the bigger classes increases the risk of contracting the coronavirus,” he said. “The fact that my son has not come down with coronavirus yet does not mean the risk is any lower.”

That’s why Gogia was furious when she heard about her daughter’s class. To express her frustration, she wrote letters to Premier Doug Ford and Education Minister Stephen Lecce.

In the meantime, it seems her daughter’s class may have shed a couple of students because, she said, parents were unhappy. Gogia said she appreciates how hard teachers and principals are working to keep her kids safe and learning properly, and that the provincial government should step up to give schools the resources they need to reduce class sizes once again.

In a statement emailed to the Star on Tuesday, Minister of Education spokesperson Caitlin Clark did not address the oversized elementary schools specifically but said the government’s plan to “safely reopen schools is fully endorsed by the Chief Medical Officer of Health and it includes every layer of prevention — including the hiring of over 1,000 new custodians to clean schools, over 2,000 educators to enhance distancing, and over 600 new public health nurses to support our school communities. This is supported by our government’s $1.3 billion investment to keep students safe.” 

Michele Henry is a Toronto-based reporter for the Star, writing health and education stories. Follow her on Twitter:

How will COVID-19 affect you? Your postal code matters as much as your genetic code, says Canada’s top doctor

OTTAWA—When it comes to getting hit by , Canada’s top public health doctor says your postal code matters as much as your genetic code.

“Where you live … or where you don’t have a home” is a critical factor affecting health, said Dr. Theresa Tam, as she released a sobering report that outlined the destructive swath cut by COVID-19 across Canada, with worse outcomes in neighbourhoods of cities like Toronto and Montreal, where lower income and racialized workers often don’t have the luxury of working from home, and face worse outcomes from the disease.

Using data from the start of the pandemic to the end of August, Tam said COVID-19 slammed Canada’s socially and economically disadvantaged groups, with seniors, women, disabled people, and immigrant or racialized workers who deliver essential services in health care and agriculture all bearing the brunt of the pandemic.

The 86-page report bolstered Tam’s call for more public health spending, greater co-operation at all levels of government, and for better national health data collection and pandemic preparedness.

Tam said COVID-19 “didn’t create new inequities, it exposed them.”

Among the report’s grim statistics is a finding that 98 per cent of Canadians who died of COVID-19 in hospital had at least one underlying medical condition.

The echoed conclusions by academics, outside researchers and media outlets like the Star which have reported that 80 per cent of COVID-19 deaths in Canada occurred in long-term-care homes for seniors. It cited several factors, including residents’ advanced age, higher prevalence of chronic underlying medical conditions, a lack of pandemic preparedness plans, shortages of personal protective equipment for health-care workers, overcrowding, old infrastructure with poor ventilation, or chronic understaffing in some facilities.

It said more than 10 per cent of national COVID-19 cases were long-term-care workers.

Tam said she wants to be “optimistic” that some of the lessons of the first wave were learned to prevent a repeat of the overwhelming number of seniors deaths in this second wave. However she worried that current numbers show the high number of infections found in younger adults this fall are beginning to “penetrate into” older populations. Not only are outbreaks occurring again in long-term-care homes, but several facilities have had more than one, she said.

Tam said the pandemic hit hard in racialized neighbourhoods, and pointed to a Statistics Canada Wednesday that found communities with the most visible minorities in the country’s four biggest provinces — Quebec, Ontario, B.C. and Alberta — had the highest infection and mortality rates in the first wave. The report said they experienced higher poverty rates, were more likely to live in overcrowded housing conditions and to work in jobs associated with greater risk of exposure to the virus.

In Toronto, the second wave is starting to look like the first wave in some neighbourhoods.

Mayor John Tory said Wednesday that in the past few weeks the number of positive COVID-19 tests has “drastically” increased in the northwest part of Toronto.

He outlined steps the city is taking to expand space for pop-up testing sites in Rexdale and Black Creek, to boost food banks and to support agencies “serving mainly black Torontonians in northwest Toronto, to provide family support, mental health, social connection and community safety services.”

Medical officer of health Dr. Eileen de Villa said her current data shows 30 per cent of people living in Toronto are classified as living below the low-income threshold, but they accounted for 50 per cent of COVID-19 cases.

“Over the course of the pandemic so far, northwest Toronto stood out for higher rates of COVID-19, lower testing rates and higher positivity rates in comparison to other parts of our city.” But de Villa cautioned that “where a person lives is not a reliable indicator of where they got infected with COVID-19. The people of the northwest of the city are like everyone else, as likely to live in one part of Toronto but travel throughout it.”

Tam said the data show the difference in who gets COVID-19 and how severely they are impacted “is not random.” It depends on factors like income, the type of work people do, how many people they live with, and if they depend on someone else for day-to-day living.

COVID-19 is clearly worse for groups such as seniors, workers provide who provide essential services such as in agriculture and health care, for racialized populations, people living with disabilities, and women, she said.

Tam quoted a University of Calgary sociology professor, Dr. Naomi Lightman, saying “the most vulnerable workers provide the most essential services to the most vulnerable clients under the worst working conditions.”

She said Canada needs to embrace a “health equity agenda” that will require sustained efforts “to improve employment conditions, housing and access to social and health services” to better protect people from “health crises, build resilience and create lasting equitable opportunities.”

Tam said nobody can now ignore the reality. “Before it may have been invisible. Now it’s blatantly obvious. And I trust that everybody wants to reverse those kind of trends.”

Tam flagged another parallel public health crisis unfolding among opioid drug users, as the pandemic has disrupted illicit drug supply chains. Tam said the street drug supply has grown “more unpredictable and toxic” and reversed progress that had been made on fighting the opioid crisis.

Before the pandemic, there had been a 13 per cent decrease in opioid overdose deaths in Canada between 2018 and 2019. The report says now, B.C. Ontario, Saskatchewan, and Alberta are reporting record high deaths, with “the situation most stark in British Columbia.” There were more than 100 “illicit drug toxicity deaths” on average for six consecutive months from March to August in that province.

Preliminary data from Ontario show that the number of confirmed and probable deaths from opioid-related causes increased by almost 50 per cent from January to May.

Tam noted at least one supervised consumption site in Ottawa “dispensed with physical distancing measures after several clients overdosed while waiting in line to get in.”

It was not all bleak.

Tam said she sees the pandemic “as a catalyst for collaboration between health, social and economic sectors” and wants to see the kind of intergovernmental and interdepartmental co-operation in place now continue “beyond the crisis and into recovery.” She added “the economic case” for better preparation is “evident,” a dollar spent on public health can save $14 dollars in health care down the road.

Tam took a not-so-veiled shot at decisions made to allow her agency’s own capacity to dwindle, saying the national emergency stockpile and the Global Public Health Information Network — the virus early-warning system that was silenced, had to be strengthened. She said at the Public Health Agency of Canada, “we need to continue to remember this moment in history and why we need those capacities.”

Tonda MacCharles is an Ottawa-based reporter covering federal politics for the Star. Follow her on Twitter:

New COVID-19 cases at schools in Innisfil and Barrie

There are new cases of COVID-19 connected to schools in Barrie and Innisfil. And the caseload has increased at a public school in Barrie and a high school in Alliston. 

Bear Creek Secondary School has one case of COVID-19. There are no classrooms closed.

Nantyr Shores Secondary School in Innisfil reports one student case of COVID-19. One classroom is closed.

Cases of COVID-19 are increasing at these locations:

Steele Street Public School in Barrie now has three confirmed cases. One classroom is closed. The school remains open. 

Banting Memorial High School in Alliston has three cases of COVID-19. Three classrooms are closed.

These locations are reporting the same caseload as Tuesday (Dec. 1):

Eastview Secondary School in Barrie has one student case of COVID-19. There is one classroom closed. 

There are two students with COVID-19 connected to Innisdale Secondary School in Barrie. Two classrooms are closed.

An outbreak of the virus was declared at Nottawasaga Pines Secondary School in Angus on Nov. 15. The outbreak is active. There is one case of COVID-19. No classrooms are closed.

St. Peter’s Catholic Secondary School in Barrie has confirmed one student case of COVID-19. One classroom is closed. The school is open.

One student at East Oro Public School in Oro-Medonte has confirmed positive for COVID-19. One classroom is closed.

Portage View Public School in Barrie has confirmed one case of COVID-19. The case involves a student. One classroom is closed.

Twin Lakes Secondary School in Orillia has one student case of COVID-19. One classroom is closed.

St. Michael the Archangel Catholic School in Barrie has one case of COVID-19. There are no classrooms closed. 

St. Paul’s Catholic School in Alliston has one student case of the virus. One classroom is closed. 

St. Joan of Arc Catholic High School in Barrie has seven cases. Five classrooms are closed. An outbreak was declared here on Nov. 23. The outbreak is active.

The Government of Ontario lists two cases of COVID-19 at the Simcoe County District School Board education centre in Midhurst. Two staff members have tested positive.

There is one case of COVID-19 at the Simcoe Muskoka Catholic District School Board office in Barrie. A staff member has tested positive for the virus. 

Reporter’s note: Simcoe.com can only report whether the case is a student or a teacher when the information is available on the province’s website. 

More COVID-19 restrictions in store for Toronto within days, mayor says

New for Toronto are expected within days, Mayor John Tory said Monday as Canada’s biggest city suffered a record-high 538 new infections.

Tory told reporters at an afternoon briefing that weekend discussions between city and provincial politicians and health officials focused on possible new rules to discourage people from gathering in “crowd scenes” where the virus can spread.

Enforcement teams, meanwhile, continue to break up already-illegal crowd scenes including, on the weekend, a birthday party with more than 100 people crowded into a commercial storage unit in Etobicoke.

Tory said early Monday the new measures could include limits on the number of people inside stores or malls. At the later briefing he called his suggestion “hypothetical” because discussions on restrictions were still ongoing.

Dr. Eileen de Villa, Toronto’s public health chief, refused to suggest which new rules could be placed on top of extending the closure of indoor dining and allowing gyms to reopen with no group classes.

“Enclosed indoor spaces and for prolonged periods — those are the kinds of circumstances we need to consider,” de Villa said, seeming to agree with a reporter that weddings pose a greater virus risk than shoppers coming and going.

One thing the pair agreed on is that COVID-19 is spreading too fast in Toronto, risking a sharp rise in hospitalizations and deaths unless the virus is contained.

De Villa announced an “alarming” day of 500-plus new cases in Toronto on Monday. Toronto Public Health said the seven-day daily average for new infections was to 453, up from 370 a week ago and 326 two weeks ago.

Toronto hospitalizations hit 176, with 42 of the ill people in intensive care.

Tory told CP24: “I am trying my best with the medical officer, as are all the other people, including the premier, to keep people healthy and to stop this very alarming situation from turning into a much-worse disaster that would take more lives.”

The virus is “getting into long-term-care (homes) again and that would make many more people sick. And we want to keep the schools open too, that’s what we’re really trying hard to do,” with the escalating restrictions, he said.

They both continued to beg Torontonians to stay home as much as possible and to not socialize — even outdoors with masks — with people from other households.

The spread of the virus accelerated during the fall amid the indoor dining ban and other restrictions. But data shows Toronto’s perilous situation would be even worse if no action had been taken, de Villa said, laying groundwork for new measures.

Tory said he expects the new restrictions to be announced any day. He said he prefers the order come from the Ontario government, but if not Toronto will act.

He was joined by other mayors and regional chairs from the Toronto and Hamilton areas on Monday to ensure that workers have access to paid sick days to ensure they aren’t going to work infected and sicken others.

Fire Chief Matthew Pegg, heading the city’s COVID-19 emergency response, told reporters the organizer of the storage container party near Kipling Avenue and Bloor Street West faces charges under the provincial Reopening Ontario Act.

Enforcement teams also visited 80 bars and restaurants in the downtown Entertainment District, charging operators of five of them with infractions related to the ban on indoor dining and issuing warning letters at four other businesses.

Toronto got one rare bit of good COVID-19 news. De Villa told the board of health committee that she’s hopeful a vaccine for the virus will start to be available in Toronto within the first three months of 2021.

De Villa previously suggested in a mass immunization expected to take months.

with files from Ed Tubb

Correction – Nov. 16, 2020: This article was edited to correct the attribution of a quote.

David Rider is the Star’s City Hall bureau chief and a reporter covering city hall and municipal politics. Follow him on Twitter:

We can’t let our guard down on COVID, warns Midland mayor

Thanksgiving is a time to give thanks for what we have. The prime minister, the premier and medical advisers are asking us to limit our gatherings to no more than 10 people indoors.

After all, smaller is safer. A virtual Thanksgiving dinner is one alternative, with less cleanup for you.

As infection rates rise and a second wave looms, remember that we are all in this together, and together we will stop the spread of COVID.

Simple things will keep us safe: Wash your hands frequently, keep a social distance, and wear a mask! Now is not the time to let our guard down.

Sept. 14 saw the municipal office fully reopen to the public. Except for a one-hour daily cleaning, between 1 and 2 p.m., we are open, but we are advising that you book appointments for in-depth services, such as planning, building services, marriage licences and commissioning of documents.

Council voted on Sept. 16 to eliminate the ward system in favour of an at-large vote for your council representation starting in 2022. This means that you can vote for all nine council seats. Councillors will no longer represent specific wards — they will represent the entire town.

A public meeting is scheduled for Oct. 21 to hear from you on this matter, prior to council considering the proposed bylaw.

Remember, the extension for COVID-19 relief on property tax and utility bills ends Oct. 31. The relief measures waiving budgeted penalty/interest also ends. Rent relief continues for tenants at the NSSRC, who are negatively impacted under the provincial emergency closures.

hosts our Customer Experience Survey, your chance to provide feedback. Our Budget 2021 Survey is also online.

I was reminded recently of the remarkable generosity of the Georgian Bay Gals. They have gifted almost $138,000 to Georgian Bay General Hospital, Hospice Huronia, Georgian Bay Cancer Support Center and Huronia Transition House.

The Guesthouse Shelter and Community Hub are the focus of their Oct. 19 gathering. For more, visit .

Stewart Strathearn is mayor of Midland.

A glitch in the system meant the switch from CERB to EI wasn’t seamless for everyone

When Mollie Jacques signed onto the Service Canada website to check if her Employment Insurance (EI) had come through last week, her heart sank.

The veteran chef got a notice that she’d need to reapply, and that it might take 28 days to start collecting money again.

Two days later, she checked again, and breathed a sigh of relief when she saw her original application, made in March, had been approved.

“Those were the worst two days of this entire pandemic for me. Not knowing if I’d have any money coming in for a month was just awful,” said Jacques.

Adding insult to injury, Jacques’ final CERB payment was just $500, not the $1,000 she’d been expecting and believed she was entitled to.

Like many in the restaurant industry, Jacques had been collecting the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) since it was introduced in late March. When CERB ended Oct. 3, it was supposed to be a seamless transition to EI for anyone who had been receiving CERB through Service Canada, which administers EI. (Millions of other workers, who wouldn’t ordinarily be able to qualify for EI, were collecting CERB through the Canada Revenue Agency, and were only allowed to apply for the new Canada Replacement Benefit on Oct. 12).

Instead, many workers say they got similar notices when they logged in.

Having eaten through any savings they had, and facing another series of COVID-related restrictions , those notices added an extra level of anxiety when they least needed it.

For sommelier Teressa M. Stone, it was several demoralizing days before the message on her Service Canada account changed.

“At first it said ‘your benefits are done’ and didn’t even give me the option of reapplying. It took well over a week to update to ‘your claim has been approved’ and I still don’t know exactly when the money will come,” said Stone, who is worried about paying her rent.

“It’s been pretty stressful,” Stone said.

A spokesperson for federal social development minister Ahmed Hussen, who’s responsible for Service Canada, said the government is confident the EI program is helping people it’s designed to assist, but acknowledged it might not have been a perfect transition from CERB.

“Our priority is in ensuring Canadians have access to high-quality programs and services they need and expect during these difficult times. We have taken important measures to ensure a seamless transition from the CERB to EI, and are working hard so that every worker who is entitled to benefits can receive them. We sympathize with Canadians who had issues reapplying, and remain committed to providing them with the benefits they are entitled to,” said Hussen spokesperson Jessica Eritou.

It wasn’t immediately clear how many people were affected by the apparent glitch.

Simao Pires, a cook at the InterContinental Hotel on Bloor Street, had been collecting CERB since being laid off in March. While the transition from CERB to enhanced EI was supposed to be automatic, that didn’t go according to plan for Pires.

“They emailed and said they needed to reconfirm my province of residence. I called to ask them why and they said I needed to reapply. If I hadn’t called and sat on hold for two and a half hours, I wouldn’t have known,” said Pires. Despite the added stress, Pires reapplied and got his first EI payment Wednesday.

Some workers, including waitress Emily Feist, also worries about another change: Under CERB, people could earn up to $1,000 a month while still collecting the benefit. Now, though, it’s back to the EI rule: 50 cents of every dollar earned will be clawed back from the benefit payments.

“Are they going to be clawing back half of anything that I make? Really? That’s the scariest part of this,” said Feist, who took a part-time, minimum wage job while collecting CERB. “I feel like I’m looking off the edge of a cliff and one of these days I’m going to jump off.”

The Canada Replacement Benefit, which is only open to people ineligible to collect EI doesn’t start clawing back earnings until someone makes at least $38,000 per year.

Josh Rubin is a Toronto-based business reporter. Follow him on Twitter:

Thousands of kids are waiting years for mental health care in Ontario. A new Toronto-based online program aims to fix that

A new program based in Toronto aims to rectify the years-long wait times for thousands of youth seeking access to mental health care across Canada.

Through an eight-week, intensive, online therapy platform, the New Start Digital Youth Intensive Outpatient Program is hoping to provide mental health care hundreds of youth aged 14 to 18 who are struggling with stress, anxiety and risky behaviour. The first group enrolled in the program began receiving care on Monday.

The program — the first of its kind in Canada — draws on existing approaches to virtual mental health care while also offering an education component to parents or guardians. It also uses a mobile application to appeal to its young participants.

The program is mainly funded by private donors, but there are hopes it will expand and reshape the future of youth mental health care in Canada.

“We’re able to access clients in remote areas who previously had barriers to accessing mental health, be it geographic barriers, financial barriers, and even emotional barriers,” said Toronto psychotherapist and National Director of Outpatient Services at EHN Canada Lanie Schachter-Snipper.

“Personally, I am very enthusiastic about online care,” she added.

Schachter-Snipper and Kalandra Roach, the executive director of New Start Foundation for Addiction and Mental Health — the organization behind the virtual program — said they were inspired to start an online platform for youth due to the notoriously long wait times to access mental health care in Ontario.

A estimates there are 200,000 kids with serious mental health issues in the province who have had no contact with services. The longest wait time to access care in the province is 2.5 years for children in York Region. In Toronto, the wait is almost two years.

The average wait for counselling and therapy is 67 days, CMHO’s report said. For intensive treatment, it’s 92 days. , Roach said.

“It’s pretty unacceptable in our opinion,” Roach said of the wait times. “We need a better system. The system is not working and we need to get kids the right, effective treatment as soon as possible.”

Roach said the New Start Foundation has a few goals in mind to reduce the waits for youth mental health care: one is to fund 500 youth from across the country to enrol in the digital program by 2021. The other is to build a new youth mental health care facility in Toronto.

Twenty youth across Ontario are participating in the inaugural version of the intensive outpatient program through a subsidized fee of $50 to ensure they stick with it, though it can be waived if money is a severe barrier.

The youth were screened by a clinical psychologist to assess their suitability, and lower-income participants from historically underserved communities were prioritized, Roach said.

The youth will participate in two-and-a-half hours of individual and group therapy sessions a week for eight weeks, Schachter-Snipper said. Meanwhile, parents or guardians will receive 16 hours of caregiver support over the course of the program.

“When mental health issues arise, it’s easier to have conversations about what’s going on, because the families or the caregivers have been provided psycho-education on mental health,” Schachter-Snipper explained.

Youth also have access to a mobile application in addition to the face-to-face online counselling they receive, which helps them work on the skills they’ve learned through therapy, Schachter-Snipper said.

The program is designed for young people who struggle with stress, anxiety or sadness, or may be engaging in risky behaviours to cope with their emotions, Roach said.

It teaches a combination of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy — a standard in mental health focused on challenging negative thoughts that alter behaviour, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy — an approach that teaches people to accept their thoughts, encouraging mindfulness and discouraging guilt associated with negative emotions.

Another criteria for enrolment, Schachter-Snipper said, is that youth need to have access to technology to support the program’s online platform — a criteria she acknowledged is a barrier to many who need this type of treatment, despite the

“We’re really trying to reduce barriers,” she said, adding the foundation is working on building a tech library that can lend youth the hardware necessary to access this type of care.

“But at this point, [virtual care] is really the only barrier-free way to provide mental health services given the uncertain nature of the pandemic and everyone’s emphasis on being safe,” Schachter-Snipper said.

Both Roach and Schachter-Snipper said the nominal cost is key to ensuring more youth can access this type of mental health care — which is usually expensive since services by clinical psychologists and psychotherapists are not covered by OHIP.

The program has been mostly funded by private donors, said Roach, who has worked in Toronto’s health care fundraising sphere for the last seven years. The foundation hopes to secure funding from the province to continue programming and help fund its tech library.

Overall, Schachter-Snipper said the program is an example of how mental health care could live online even beyond the pandemic. It increases access for people who are otherwise physically far away from mental health professionals, or have other barriers to reaching mental health centres, she said.

“There’s a high degree of excitement and enthusiasm,” Schachter-Snipper said. “We know that we can just provide services to so many more people, and it works.”

Correction – Oct. 21, 2020: This article has been corrected to reflect that Lanie Schachter-Snipper is the National Director of Outpatient Services at EHN Canada.

Nadine Yousif is a Toronto-based reporter for the Star covering mental health. Her reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative. Follow her on Twitter: