Juno News - July 16, 2024


Chow’s encampments ruining city’s communities and heritage

Topics
nothing has changed
Mentioned
Olivia Chow Adam Waxman Al Waxman
Are you glad Trump's attempted assassin is dead？ True North journalist describes moments during Trump rally shooting

Episode Stats


Length

4 minutes

Words per minute

135.12

Word count

668

Sentence count

47

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Toxicity

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In the heart of Kensington, Toronto, a park is playing host to one of Mayor Olivia Chow s infamous "Free Gaza" encampments. Why would a city icon like Al Waxman, who represented the heart and soul of this once vibrant Jewish community, be targeted by anti-Semitic graffiti near a synagogue?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 This is Bellevue Park in the heart of Kensington, and behind me is the Al Waxman Tribute statue,
00:00:09.020 which has been in existence for 22 years.
00:00:13.180 In the 22 years that the King of Kensington statue has been in this park,
00:00:18.420 it has been vandalized, had anti-Semitic graffiti put on it in February,
00:00:25.820 and now it is playing host to one of Mayor Olivia Chow's infamous encampments. 1.00
00:00:34.280 Our Mayor and Council have decided that encampments are perfectly fine,
00:00:38.660 and will not be cleared and no enforcement taken out under a new policy
00:00:44.100 that basically hugs and strokes the tent dwellers until they can be convinced to go inside.
00:00:52.320 Now, on a lovely day like today, why would they?
00:00:56.200 This encampment, according to City Hall, has about 16 tents, and several have already been cleared out.
00:01:03.880 But as we know, and as I know from my history studying the homeless issue in Toronto,
00:01:09.280 the more you clear them out, the more tents come back.
00:01:15.180 And I have seen tents crop up all over the city now
00:01:18.720 because of the lax and permissive policies of the Olivia Chow regime. 1.00
00:01:24.200 I spoke with Adam Waxman, Al Waxman's son, who is horrified to see what has happened to this park.
00:01:31.920 And I dare say that Al, the king of Kensington, who represented the heart and soul of this once very vibrant Jewish community in Kensington,
00:01:42.920 would be horrified to see these Free Gaza tents right across from a synagogue.
00:01:48.980 A synagogue, by the way, where my parents eloped many, many 70 years ago.
00:01:53.860 So, it's really quite tragic to see what the city has become.
00:01:59.840 I started getting text messages from everybody.
00:02:03.120 I had a friend in Utah who texted me.
00:02:05.360 I had a friend in Tel Aviv who texted me.
00:02:07.120 I was getting texts from everywhere, but there was not one single report about it in the news.
00:02:12.280 And so, I drove to Toronto and I was with my son.
00:02:16.000 So, he, and along with my mother, we went to see it.
00:02:19.280 And I figured it wasn't necessarily someone who is anti-Semitic as much as it might have been someone who had mental health issues.
00:02:27.040 What do you say about the fact that you continue to be defaced?
00:02:32.060 Your lovely, lovely likeness.
00:02:34.220 You look like you're crying because they're vandalizing you. 1.00
00:02:38.700 It's pathetic. 0.99
00:02:40.160 As you can see behind me, the playground in Bellevue Square Park is empty. 0.99
00:02:44.600 I've been told that children are afraid to play here.
00:02:47.620 Parents are afraid to allow them because of the encampment in the park.
00:02:52.780 And that is a tragedy.
00:02:54.680 I mean, I thought we'd got over that since the pandemic of 2020 when the parks were occupied by many, many encampments.
00:03:03.380 Here we are again.
00:03:04.860 And again, it's due to Olivia Chow and her council's permissive policies. 1.00
00:03:10.260 She gave money so we could build more shelters for refugees.
00:03:14.640 No, look at this problem.
00:03:15.860 I think you should deal with Canadians first. 1.00
00:03:18.600 And that's another issue about where the money goes and what's done with the money.
00:03:23.320 So I'm another one that says affordable housing now.
00:03:26.560 But no, I don't think the encampment actually belongs in the park.
00:03:30.100 I agree.
00:03:30.960 Where are they to go?
00:03:32.180 But there are plenty of shelter spaces.
00:03:34.560 If there was a limit put on the number of refugees who can use them, you know, priorities, priorities. 0.99
00:03:41.420 A lot of money was invested in remodeling that park to make it more multi-use.
00:03:49.680 A place where kids could play and where people could gather.
00:03:54.980 Nothing, nothing has changed, you know, and particularly since this encampment, no kid can go play in that park right now and no parent can feel safe letting their kid do so.
00:04:08.940 Welcome to the summer of 2024.
00:04:12.560 And I believe many of our parks will be taken over by similar encampments.
00:04:18.400 And that is a terrible black mark on the city of Toronto.
00:04:24.220 For True North, I'm Sue Ann Levy.
00:04:26.640 For True North, I'm Sue Ann Levy.