Toronto Star

Stronach guilty of sexual assault

One of Canada's wealthiest men has been found guilty of sexual assault and indecent assault after a high-profile Toronto trial examining decades-old allegations concluded Friday with a mixed verdict. Seven women came forward with allegations accusing...

BITTERSWEET

Welcome to life as a footballing nation, Canada. It couldn't just be a celebration, or even a sort of coronation. It couldn't just be the high-water mark for a men's program that had never won at a World Cup, and never advanced to knockout games, and...

The party rolls on

Toronto's second match of the 2026 World Cup played out under steady rain on Wednesday evening in front of thousands of soggy but spirited fans who watched two of the tournament underdogs fight to a dramatic finish. At the end of a mostly scrappy...

`Hockey Night in Canada' as we know it is over on public broadcaster

It debuted with a fizzy picture of Maple Leaf Gardens and the compressed voice of Foster Hewitt. From that night, back in November 1952, the program known as “Hockey Night in Canada” would quickly become a national institution. It was deemed Canada's...

Boy, 12, charged after cop injured in chase

A 12-year-old boy is facing an attempted murder charge after authorities say he struck an officer while fleeing in a stolen car with other youth during an early-morning pursuit that escalated to police gunfire on the Leaside Bridge. The Special...

Playing the long game

Speaking to a small group of reporters following his third round at the RBC Canadian Open, Bud Cauley smiled, paused and spoke of not getting ahead of himself when asked what his emotions might be when he finally broke through for his first PGA Tour...

The loss of a lifeline

Allie Gonidis doesn’t visit the Moss Park Overdose Prevention Site much these days. When she does, it feels like she never left. “Here comes trouble!” she remarks as a familiar face struts along the sidewalk. Another friend approaches to give her a...

KICK STARTER

The preparations are over, the hangover might come tomorrow, but for a sun-drenched afternoon, Toronto basked in its moment on the global sporting stage. The first men's World Cup game on Canadian soil took place on Friday, after at least eight years...

IN THE LINE OF DUTY

The killing of a veteran Toronto tactical officer during a “high-risk takedown” in a raid investigators have linked to a shooting at the U.S. Consulate has been met with a flood of grief and swirling questions. The sun was rising early Thursday...

Closing arguments

A controversial request to consider fencing off Barbara Hall Park in the Church-wellesley Village at night, as a solution to increasing violence and vandalism within, is off the table. Local Coun. Chris Moise had proposed asking staff to consult the...

THE WORLD AWAITS

“You fumble under pressure — all the time.” “Me? I don't fumble, bro!” “You do. You shoulda just asked him, man.” The three school kids leaving Toronto FC'S training base under cobalt and cloudless midday skies were among hundreds who had filled the...

Building their own prom

It was early October and Amelia Gatti, eager to make the most of her final year of high school, wanted to join the prom committee. Talk to the teacher who runs it, guidance told her. But the day got away; Gatti figured she would reach out...

Disorder on the courts

Stuart Teather knows the lengths to which people will go to get a membership at his club. He's heard all the sob stories and elaborate pleas. He's had pregnant women put their unborn children on the wait-list. He's seen adults pretending to be kids to...

Teen flagged before killing senior

Three days before a teenage boy murdered Eleanor Doney in her front yard, a student at his Pickering school overheard him talking to other kids about his interest in serial killers. He said he wondered what it would feel like to kill an...

`Heart beats because of you'

When Laycee Hepworth was woken by her two-year-old daughter Harper's sudden scream early one morning, she thought it was just a nightmare. “She was sleeping in the bed with me, so I kind of rubbed her back to see what was going on,” Hepworth...

Running out of time

With just days to go until Toronto lifts the curtain on the World Cup, a city initiative intended to ensure the tournament delivers lasting benefits to local communities has yet to meet its goals. Last year, Toronto announced plans to build up to 12...

On the dock in dismay

An entrepreneur who wanted to keep operating a Finnish sauna on Toronto's waterfront this summer says he's been put out of business for now by an unfair ruling from the Toronto Port Authority. “It leaves us releasing the 10 staff we had, it leaves us...

The cost of integration

At his Mississauga high school, Garv Shroff is learning life skills that matter deeply to his family: how to wash his hands, use his walker and feed himself with a spoon. He returns home each day happy and cheerful, something his mother attributes to...

The strings of fate

David Vanduzen still goes to the clinic every Friday morning for shots to his shoulder. He wakes up at 3 a.m. every day, too, to take an assembly of drugs. And he has a strong diet of painkillers for when the hurting is worst — when, in the evening, it...

POWER PLAY

Years before he became premier, Doug Ford wrote that he wanted to make Ontario mayors more like American ones: stronger, with veto power over council. In 2022, after he became premier, Ford's government passed a law that did just that. His team sold...

SCORE SETTLING

Bike lanes hit dead end

The Eglinton Crosstown LRT may finally be running, but another transit project on the same street — also more than a decade in the making — will likely never be built. The city quietly announced online that a cycleway along Eglinton Avenue stretching...

A show of their force

Caught at the scene of the alleged crime — an assault against a woman in Barcelona — off-duty Toronto cops identified themselves as police officers to Spanish law enforcement and flashed a Toronto badge, the Star has learned. It's not clear what they...

Chow makes it official

Olivia Chow ended months of speculation Monday by declaring she would seek re-election, setting up a fall mayoral race that increasingly appears to be a contest between two candidates with starkly different approaches to some of the same core issues —...

`How is this possible?'

For nearly two months, Claudia Carvalho avoided the Mississauga tracks where her 13-year-old was fatally struck by a GO train while riding his motorbike. Then, she mustered the strength to go look. Afraid to leave the car, Carvalho received some...

ESCAPE FROM HIGHPARK

The marshy grass where authorities apprehended one of Toronto's most notorious fugitives is marked today with little more than a “No Parking” sign. Still, it's easy to see, even 10 years later, what made this hideout so appealing. The tall fence...

VAPER TRAIL

The sweet scent of raspberries was often the telltale sign. In the school washroom, it usually meant students had been vaping. “It was like walking into a Bath & Body Works,” says principal Kirsty Cunningham. “But it was very difficult to...

A referendum on a referendum

In a televised address, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith edged her province closer to an independence vote on Thursday, saying that residents will vote this fall on whether to start the legal process required for a binding referendum on separation from...

Fears over Ebola's spread

Anxious health-care workers in eastern Congo said Wednesday they are underprotected and undertrained in a rapidly spreading Ebola outbreak of a rare type of the virus in one of the world's most remote and vulnerable places. Long the scene of attacks...

Snowbirds to be grounded for years

Look up, Toronto. This summer's Snowbirds show at the Canadian National Exhibition will be the last chance for Torontonians to watch the iconic air demonstration squadron for years. The Carney government said Tuesday it's grounding the more than...

Students pivot in age of AI Some scramble to `future-proof' careers as technology targets entry-level jobs

By the time Lienke Abdeen graduated from Toronto Metropolitan University's prestigious fashion design program in 2019, she had no interest in working in the industry. “I was over it,” she said. “I'm a terrible designer. If you asked my teachers they'd...

CNE trash is their treasure

After the ferris wheels and carnival games went dark last summer and the 1.4 million people who visited the Canadian National Exhibition headed home, the annual legacy of the Ex could be found in overflowing garbage cans and dumpsters, where tonnes of...

PITCHED BATTLE

Watching her two boys at soccer practice, Laurel Schwartz recalls the baseball fever that gripped the city when the Toronto Blue Jays were in the World Series. “Every young kid was suddenly into baseball,” she says. As if on cue, Levi, 7, offers: “My...

HOT PROPERTY

Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov weren't inside the “Heated Rivalry” cottage when the fans arrived one late afternoon in May — but the characters' presence lingered anyway. Driving through the Muskoka woods, down a muddied gravel driveway and toward...

Man found guilty in random murder of total stranger

Raheem Mclaughlin was either on a sinister mission to murder anyone associated with a Toronto public housing complex, or he was an innocent party suddenly caught up in someone else's deadly actions. Those were the two competing narratives that a jury...

LEAFS AXE BERUBE

So what has Maple Leafs general manager John Chayka been doing since the rough ride of last week's introductory news conference? It sounds like his life — and that of senior executive adviser Mats Sundin — has amounted to one long meeting. “Mats and I...

Lawyers say verdict was based on racism, hearsay

The jury at Chris Sheriffe's trial was never supposed to know about the “hearsay” gang evidence a pair of confidential informants allegedly told a junior Toronto police officer. The judge had already excluded that information from Sheriffe's trial —...

THE SAFER WAY?

Dariusz Nowotny says that in the 23 years he's been patrolling the TTC, he's never seen so many people using drugs on the transit system. “We do have more homeless people and more people who use drugs on the system — 100 per cent,” the transit special...

LONG JOURNEY HOME

Four Canadians who disembarked the cruise ship at the centre of a deadly hantavirus outbreak arrived in Canada on Sunday and will continue their quarantine. The Canadians, who were set to arrive in British Columbia later Sunday after landing in...

SPATSAND DOGS

Self-professed “dog mom” Sarah Gabura would bring her five-year-old cavapoo, Rosie, with her everywhere if she could. A health-care worker who lives in a King West condo, Gabura feels guilty for the hours the pair spend apart while she's at the...

Setting the Tempo

Mother's Day came early for Sasha Rennic-purcell, who was given tickets to the Toronto Tempo's first WNBA regular-season game. She sat in section 102 Friday night alongside her partner and two little girls holding signs that read “She Shoots She...

RECORD DEMAND

Kyle Pugh and his Canadian colleagues from coast to coast are suddenly in high demand from Americans. The Americans are searching for Canadian citizenship, and Pugh and his fellow archivists just might hold the keys to finding the ancestry that would...

EVACUATION AT SEA

The cruise ship MV Hondius is on the move again in the Atlantic Ocean after some passengers and crew fell ill with what has been confirmed as Andes hantavirus — the only kind of the virus that can be transferred from person to person. On Sunday, the...

Beacon of `moral clarity'

Louise Arbour, the pioneering war crimes prosecutor, human rights commissioner and former Supreme Court justice, was named Canada's 31st governor general on Tuesday, when Prime Minister Mark Carney proclaimed the need for someone of “judgment” and...

`They never had a chance'

A young man who killed three children last year in a drunk-driving crash was handed an eight-year prison term Monday — a sentence the victims' mother said falls far short of recognizing the devastation caused by his actions. In sentencing Ethan...

END OF THE ROAD

The head coach laid out his vision on the eve of Raptors training camp. “Everything starts on the defensive end,” Darko Rajakovic said more than seven months ago. “We want to dominate on the defensive end.” It was a noble goal. And at the time those...

Maya's defiant choice

Maya Auchincloss makes her living plunging through the air, twisting in silks. An aerial circus performer and coach, her movements through the hoop are graceful, effortless. You'd never know that for the last eight years of her life she has been in...

DEEP CONCERNS

The air deep in an underground mine hangs thick with heat and exhaust. Diesel from machines sits heavy in the air while dust from exploded rock covers every surface long after the drilling stops and the blast settles. The deeper you go, the worse it...

Two men sentenced in sexual assault of unconscious woman

Two men have been sentenced to nine years in prison for repeatedly sexually assaulting an unconscious woman who has never come forward and whose identity remains unknown. The 2024 incident in the stairwell of a downtown Toronto public housing complex...

RUNWAY INFLATION

Windfall helps trim deficit

New lower deficit. Same budget fight. Heralding the anniversary of his Liberal government's election win with a new spring economic update on Tuesday, Prime Minister Mark Carney found himself in the familiar position of fielding allegations of...

Abuse allegations spark calls for reckoning at conservatory

During her piano lessons at the Royal Conservatory of Music, Margaret Halliwell's teacher would sometimes turn off the lights in the studio and chase her around the piano. Halliwell, then in her early 20s, would turn the lights on and firmly say to...

Raptors claw their way back

Do you know how hard it is to shoot 32 per cent from the field and win an NBA playoff game? Until Sunday afternoon at Scotiabank Arena it hadn't been done since the 1960s, before the introduction of the three-point line and shooter-friendly breakaway...

‘Horrific conditions’

It’s the province’s only high-secure forensic psychiatric hospital, whose patients have some of the most complex mental health needs in Ontario. And it’s behind the historic walls of this Penetanguishene, Ont., facility overlooking Georgian Bay that...

‘My son is going to die in this place’

Audrey Watson-pinnock wasn’t going to let her voice go unheard. It was May 2025, and her son, Camelott Hamblett, was in his 20th year of being detained at Waypoint Centre for Mental Health Care. He had spent that time almost entirely in isolation, or...

RIGHT BACK IN IT

When the book closes on this era of the Raptors, it may be seen as the Scottie Barnes problem. In Game 3 of this first-round playoff series against the Cleveland Cavaliers, Barnes was a balletic battering ram. He smashed his way through Evan Mobley,...

Top homicide cop says antisemitism, racism helped spur his exit

Longtime homicide investigator and former unit commander Hank Idsinga says internal antisemitism, racism and a lack of leadership led to his decision to leave Toronto police after a storied career. He’s no whistleblower, Idsinga insists, as he sits...

The ‘Iceman’ cometh

What began as a mysterious Drake album teaser in a downtown Toronto parking lot turned into a chaotic public spectacle Tuesday, as fans climbed a 25-foot ice sculpture and attacked it with sledgehammers and blowtorches, forcing police and private...

‘At the mercy of Mother Nature’

Homes flooded. Docks underwater. Roads turned to lakes. The start of spring has brought a deluge of water to communities across Ontario, with high rainfall and melting snow stranding residents in their homes and placing towns under states of...

‘I just want our kids not to die. That’s it’

Watching her younger brother cycle in and out of the hospital, Samantha Viarruel had to ask him one question that felt unavoidable. Did he want to live? He told her yes. But only a few months later, Viarruel’s father came to her door to tell her that...

AFTER THE FALL

Carol Murray had never gone skydiving before, but she knew an omen when she saw it — and she saw plenty that week in September 1997. Her first attempt was postponed by rain that didn’t quit until just before dark. Her second attempt, the next day, was...

BEGINNING OF THE END

Canada Post is moving ahead with plans to end home delivery and will begin converting 136,000 homes across the country to community mailboxes this year, including 18,000 addresses in Etobicoke. The announcement Thursday was met with anger from the...

Cup boom ... or bust?

With Toronto set to host six World Cup games this summer, it’s still unclear just how much the city’s and country’s economies will benefit from FIFA’S flagship tournament, say economists and critics. That concern has grown even more since FIFA...

‘Significant’ track failures bedevil UP Express

Flaws in the construction of the UP Express near Pearson airport have led to repeated track failures since the service opened more than a decade ago — baffling a series of consultants hired to fix the problem, according to a confidential report...

Age of majority

OTTAWA Mark Carney’s minority government transformed into a slim but workable majority in Parliament courtesy of two Monday night byelection victories in Toronto, meaning the prime minister can now more easily advance his high-spending economic and...

Back-to-back Masterpieces

AUGUSTA, GA. Rory Mcilroy has never been a bulletproof intimidator in the mould of prime-era Tiger Woods. And you can make the case the Northern Irishman has achieved considerably less in his career than the enormity of his raw gifts once...

Carney calls for unity

On the verge of a likely majority, which will sideline opposition parties in Parliament, Prime Minister Mark Carney spoke to Liberal party faithful Saturday with a pitch for unity that didn’t even mention his opponent’s name. The 4,500 Liberal...

The ugly side of Botox

When Magdalena Chytros woke up with droopy eyelids, she didn't get too worried, thinking it was just a fleeting side effect of the Botox. But over the next few days she started struggling to swallow, and her breaths drew shorter. She slurred her...

SHIFTING GROUND

DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES In a potential boost to Middle East ceasefire efforts, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that he authorized direct negotiations with Lebanon “as soon as possible” aimed at disarming Iranian-backed...

MAJOR SURPRISE

The majority government Liberals hoped for in the last federal election is finally within their grasp. The party technically crossed that threshold Wednesday with the defection of a former Conservative leadership candidate to the government benches —...

Back from the brink

U.S. President Donald Trump pulled back on his threats to launch devastating strikes on Iran late Tuesday, swerving to de-escalate the war less than two hours before the deadline he set for Tehran to capitulate to a deal. Trump said he was holding off...

Catholic school cuts mean a triple blow for some families

For Liliana Cruz's family, the Toronto Catholic school board's latest decisions — cutting international language classes, eliminating an intensive reading support program and shifting bell times — amount to a triple blow. “They're all terrible,” said...

DIRT CHEAP — if you can get it

Nicaragua. Tanzania. Italy. Australia. On a sailboat in Antigua. For almost 18 years, Chiara Falorni, from different countries around the world, has set an alarm come March to wake up early to try to get a spot. It's not for a concert ticket queue but...

A brush with death

She didn't realize what had happened, not right away. It was the calm ocean water turning bright red that told her something was deeply wrong. A bull shark had clamped its jaw around her left leg, the bite causing her muscles to flake away from the...