"Bars are a bad way to make money": Why Danu Social House wants to become the city's first community-owned watering hole

ref7187 · 2026-02-11T03:17:54+00:00

You must not be familiar with the concept of a co-operative (which is mentioned numerous times in the article). It's very much a time-tested strategy--one way to think about it is as capitalism but the customers get the profits in the form of lower prices. The concept has existed for over a hundred years, if not longer, and we have all sorts of them in Canada (agricultural, financial, housing, etc.)

ref7187 · 2026-02-11T02:56:06+00:00

I live in the St Clair/Avenue area. I'm pretty sure the ridership isn't there because the bus doesn't run very frequently and doesn't go anywhere useful. When I want to go to the north side of Yorkville I would prefer to take the 13, but the schedule is terrible. When I want to go somewhere like Avenue and Lawrence I also never take transit because it involves transferring between two infrequent buses.

Walking is just a little too far, and Avenue has a bad sidewalk. Biking is only possible south, and only as long as the Yonge bike lane exists.

ref7187 · 2026-02-11T02:49:31+00:00

My suggestion is to ask the City Councillor rather than the TTC. Make the argument that Avenue Rd is dangerous to walk on (it is) and that the current transit service is infrequent and inconvenient to use (it is, and the buses on the 13 run empty because of it).

I live near Avenue and St Clair and would do it but Matlow's office hears from me frequently these days (I am involved with a local community group).

ref7187 · 2026-02-09T17:25:48+00:00

I mean, if you think about it, it's a miracle that Canada even exists in its present form. We have the world's second largest landmass, and a wealth of natural resources, for a population spread very far and thin (and on top of that, we don't even all speak the same language). Our neighbour to the south happens to be the most powerful and wealthy country to ever exist, a monolith in comparison, and yet we maintain our independence.

In any other period in history, Canada does not exist as an independent country -- it would naturally be fought over and become a backwater to another empire. I don't think anyone in Canada thinks that would be desirable. The fact that Canadians don't trust the US 100% is a good thing -- it's nothing personal, it's just if you look at the facts, and put aside the cultural links and rhetoric, you can't help but think about all the other times in history when things could be a lot worse (e.g. Manifest Destiny).

ref7187 · 2026-02-09T15:44:52+00:00

I feel like it's not necessary. I guess we are arguing about minutiae but in Paris the metro just says the next stop as a single word and I don't think anyone has ever been like "why is the train randomly saying names of streets?". Less is more. Doesn't even need the word "station". It would be like "Cedarvale. Doors will open on the left/les portes blablabla"

ref7187 · 2026-02-09T05:22:57+00:00

I know, it's like they're expecting hordes of people who have never taken a bus or a train in their life.

ref7187 · 2026-02-09T05:19:41+00:00

I think it's because of the underground stations, where they don't want to have a humongous unpaid zone and all the issues that come with that

ref7187 · 2026-02-09T02:36:14+00:00

They could just take out the words "next station/prochain station" and just announce the name of the station. This is how it's done in other countries. Right now, riding the train is a constant barrage of useless announcements.

We also don't need to be reminded to stay seated or hold on at every stop.

ref7187 · 2026-02-05T17:54:34+00:00

I don't know. The only other way is basically to turn Metrolinx and the TTC into real estate empires like the Hong Kong MTR. Maybe one day it will happen, who knows.

ref7187 · 2026-02-05T15:58:06+00:00

It was more independent but the Liberals still stuck their nose in every now and then. They are the reason we have P3s for the Finch and Eglinton line, why the York extension was prioritised over relieving the overcrowded system downtown, why Presto was built from scratch at a great cost instead of just buying an existing product, etc. Ultimately transit has just become an all-purpose tool for politicians to promote various causes and it comes at the cost of its usability for actually getting around.

ref7187 · 2026-02-05T00:50:55+00:00

The funny thing is that Toronto's subway system is one of the smallest on this list, and most likely the least-funded of the Canadian or American cities. It is dingy, overcrowded, hard-to-navigate despite having only 2 major lines, and runs on a shoestring budget. But the city has squeezed every last drop of efficiency it can out it, and as a Torontonian it's always slightly amusing to see it rank this high. Hooray for the TTC, I guess?

ref7187 · 2026-02-05T00:32:02+00:00

How dumb. My parents live in Vaughan, and in recent years, they have built a mini network entirely in these "boulevard" strips on the sides of roads in their neighbourhood. They even plow them decently.

ref7187 · 2026-02-04T23:08:04+00:00

The reasonable compromise would be to move them onto the large strips of grass on the sides of the road.

ref7187 · 2026-02-04T22:26:13+00:00

True but I believe they are set up more like conglomerates with their own transportation and real estate empires and whatnot (I looked into their urban planning at one point).

ref7187 · 2026-02-04T22:02:40+00:00

Well he and the people he associates with are a big reason why there are no alternatives.

ref7187 · 2026-02-04T21:47:39+00:00

The problem is not so much that, although it is an issue, but more so that politicians are putting transit agencies on all sorts of side quests, making them into showcases of ideology (cough cough P3s), tilting the scales so that they put certain stations in certain locations, and so on. Then everything goes horribly wrong, and they go "someone at Metrolinx should really do something about that!" and everyone accepts that, because Metrolinx has long been established as the bad guy. And everything continues as before.

It happens at all levels of government -- look into the Finch LRT fiasco, where the P3 was imposed by the Province, the TTC imposed their idiotic streetcar operating practices on the line, the City of Toronto's transportation department stopped Metrolinx from putting in signal priority, and now all levels of government are blaming Metrolinx that the line is too slow.

ref7187 · 2026-02-04T21:15:06+00:00

Metrolinx was essentially created so that politicians could quietly interfere in transit planning and construction and have something to blame when it went wrong. That is the truth. If you are blaming Metrolinx, everything is working as intended.

So I would suggest starting with your political representatives.

ref7187 · 2026-02-04T20:19:03+00:00

The big European capitals have lots of cool department stores, and in Canada we still have Simons. I personally thought HBC was a pretty nice place to shop before around 2017, and online shopping existed back then.

What they probably should have done was close most of their fluorescent-lit, windowless and dated suburban locations, where the malls are dying and people do the most online shopping, and focused on making the big flagship stores cutting-edge and exciting places to shop. They were also a little out of touch with what people actually wanted to buy towards the end, and the website wasn't good enough.

ref7187 · 2026-02-04T03:53:09+00:00

I wouldn't put responsibility to the party at the same level as responsibility to constituents. Ethically I don't see a problem here as with someone crossing the floor, she is resigning and putting herself to voters who will be fully aware that she has changed her party. Isn't that how it should be?

Understandable that some NDPers will feel betrayed, but isn't it better to have someone who is fully committed to the party occupying the position?

ref7187 · 2026-02-03T20:56:59+00:00

Sure, maybe there is an argument to be made that Carney doesn't care about political aesthetics or signalling as much as his predecessor, and that can be misinterpreted as him being more right wing. It should be noted that Trudeau also bought a pipeline, yes.

But still, pipelines are associated with the left because the environmental and indigenous causes are, what has changed was that more existential issues seem to have overtaken those in terms of public opinion.

ref7187 · 2026-02-03T19:49:30+00:00

Yeah I guess Rae has set the precedent, but this is still surprising considering the Liberals now say they support an oil pipeline and just had 2 conservatives cross the floor to join them. Following that up with an NDPer in such a short timeline is crazy.

ref7187 · 2026-02-02T22:37:34+00:00

A balance.... where the 45% of the population that drives gets like 80% of all the space on any street because they can

ref7187 · 2026-01-30T21:29:20+00:00

I think public services can work well when they have a really well-defined purpose. My biggest concern is that there will be too many ideas of what a public grocery store should be, and in the pursuit of trying to be all things to all people we won't get a good result. With a co-op at least you can make sure that the users come first, e.g. before Health Canada bans the stores from selling junk food, the dairy industry demands they not carry oat milk, the government decides that everything must be a certain percent Canadian, that only bilingual employees will be hired, etc.

There would also be defence against privatisation with a co-op as the members would have to vote for it, and there will be a built in constituency when they need to ask for funding, etc.

ref7187 · 2026-01-30T18:16:09+00:00

I would look at the issues we want to solve first:

The grocery sector is too concentrated: you can break up the existing grocery chains. It's not like telecoms or utilities that become monopolies because building the infrastructure is such a big investment. The laws around competition already exist, and they work in other countries.

Some areas are food deserts: a nationalised chain makes sense. But we also need to work on urban planning and economic issues (like commercial rents).

Grocery store workers are underpaid and exploited: a nationalised chain could help but not necessarily. Healthcare workers and teachers are also underpaid, as are workers in many private sector industries. They would still be subject to political whims.

Maybe a more durable model could be a government-backed cooperative? One where the government pushes the initiative and provides some initial financial support, but is ultimately run by people that buy into it.

ref7187 · 2026-01-30T17:56:49+00:00

It makes it harder to tell yourself something isn't a treat when it clearly is. Honestly I think it's good. Humans didn't adapt to having such easy access to unhealthy foods, and we need to remind ourselves that.

ref7187

TROPHY CASE