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CTV News
2 days ago
- Business
- CTV News
The Bay's departure leaves a gaping hole in downtown Toronto. What could fill it?
The flagship Hudson's Bay Company store is pictured in Toronto on January 27, 2014. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette When The Bay finally closed up shop after 355 years, the defunct retailer left more than memories in Toronto's downtown core. The storied department store left in its wake a gaping hole of nearly 700,000 square feet at the corner of Yonge and Queen streets – a massive piece of prime real estate in the heart of the city. Since the doors shuttered to the public at the end of May, the space has been vacant, leaving Toronto residents wondering what might eventually fill the cavernous floors of the designated heritage building at 176 Yonge Street. 'I think that location, in a normal market, would be very, very, very ripe for redevelopment,' says Adam Jacobs, national head of research for Colliers Canada, which specializes in commercial real estate. He says such a project might include an office tower, condo tower, hotel – or a combination thereof – that would incorporate the historic building. But while the space is exactly the sort of location that might attract a grand vision, the timing for that sort of project might not be right. 'So I think the downtown Bay location, yeah, there's a lot of redevelopment potential there, but just right now, there's all these headwinds,' Jacobs says. Those headwinds include a general retreat from massive condo or office tower redevelopments, U.S. tariffs that could drive up supply costs and overall market uncertainty. Not to mention an ongoing subway construction project on the block for the Ontario Line that is expected to keep the street torn up for several years to come. The Bay People walk past the Hudson's Bay store in Toronto on Monday, March 10, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young 'It's just that we happen to be at a moment right now, where the whole condo market is, you know, frozen, and the land market is frozen, and nobody wants to lend money, and suddenly we're building too many apartments instead of not enough apartments. So I think right now, it's quite a bad moment for those big, visionary development projects,' Jacobs says. Still, he notes that large property owners like Cadillac Fairview, which owns the building, have vast holdings and can afford to wait for the right project and market conditions without having to rush to fill an empty building. In a statement to CP24, Cadillac Fairview said it is eyeing options for the site, but hasn't made any decisions yet. 'Cadillac Fairview is constantly assessing the ever-changing retail landscape to ensure the long term success of our shopping centres and the communities where we operate,' wrote Anna Ng, the company's director of corporate communications. 'Our teams are evaluating opportunities to backfill spaces formerly occupied by HBC and we look forward to sharing plans once confirmed.' The Bay walkway A shopper make his way through a walkway connecting Eaton Centre Mall and The Hudson Bay store in Toronto on Monday, May 1, 2023. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young One thing Jacobs is quite sure is not in the future for the building: 'I think it's unlikely that it will end up being a department store,' she said. Department store era over The building in the heart of Toronto has had a life as a department store for around 130 years. Known as The Simpson Departmental Store, the building was first erected in 1894 by Edmund Burke of architects Burke and Harwood. It suffered a fire the same year, but was rebuilt a year later, with various additions over the following decades. A city staff report dating back to 2015 notes the building is 'designated on architectural grounds as an outstanding example of late nineteenth century commercial design.' According to the city, 'it is an early example of the use of steel post and beam construction in Canada and of the work of one of Toronto's most important architects.' While that makes it one of the oldest department store buildings around, it is certainly not the first staring down a potential change of use. 'The demise of department stores has been long coming, and so the interesting thing is, we now have a big history of takeovers and adaptive reuse,' says Karen Chapple, director of the School of Cities at the University of Toronto. The Bay The Roll of Honour, a memorial to employees of the defunct retailer Simpson's who served with the Canadian Forces and were killed during the Second World War, is shown at the Hudson's Bay store in Toronto, Tuesday, April 22, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Giordano Ciampini She points out that when the May department store company went under in the U.S., one of their buildings in Cleveland became a residential development, while another in Los Angeles became the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. Others, she says, became spaces for educational institutions. 'There's so much history too, of malls being transformed into residential use or mixed use with residential. You might have residential, retail, fitness, movie theater, office space – all of that,' Chappel adds. With the attached Eaton Centre acting as a sort of 'public arena,' she says it would be good to keep the space at The Bay public or semi-public as opposed to cordoning it off for an entirely private use. However she agrees with Jacobs that the building's time as a department store is likely over. 'You're just not going to be able to do retail (for the whole building) at this point in time,' she said. Core continues to change Coun. Chris Moise, who represents the downtown ward where the property is located, said he'd like to see any new use take into account the needs of the community, as well as the throngs of people who pour into the area on transit. 'I think we have to think outside of the box and see, what is the missing middle here? And how can we make it work for everybody,' Moise says. Off the top of his head, he says a grocery store and an entertainment complex could be good fits for the area. The Bay People walk past the Hudson's Bay store in Toronto on Monday March 10, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young He says it's unlikely the space will be completely rezoned into a condo development, as some might fear. 'That's an historic building, iconic building, you know, it's on Yonge Street. It's a whole block. I don't think that's going to happen,' Moise says. He points out the site will eventually sit atop two transit lines and is surrounded by theatres, stores, and other spaces that draw people out. In terms of possible city uses, the municipality already has an excess of space nearby. 'Don't forget, the Ontario Line is going to be right there as well and we're looking at Old City Hall to see what to do with that venue,' Moise says. Possible ideas being floated for the Old City Hall site include a museum, an arts facility, an event venue and a library and Moise says he's hoping it will become 'part of the destination' for the area. The Bay Ontario Line construction is seen on Queen Street, between the Hudson's Bay building and the Eaton Centre January 14, 2024. (Joshua Freeman) While the future of the Bay's flagship store is still in the air, Moise says he's in regular discussion with the Downtown Yonge BIA, as well as Cadillac Fairview, which he says is receptive to suggestions. Future uncertain, but reason for optimism Jacobs points out that the dust has not entirely settled on Hudson's Bay's demise. A court battle remains underway between lenders, landlords, and B.C. billionaire Ruby Liu, who wants to buy up to 25 Hudson's Bay leases to open up a new retailer. Whatever the future holds for the site, though, there seems to be consensus that the problem of what to bring to the area is a good one. Chapple says data gathered by UofT researchers show that Toronto's downtown is experiencing a 'slow recovery,' as we get further from the COVID-19 pandemic though the increase in traffic is more attributable to people coming into the core for pleasure rather than work. 'I always see these things as an opportunity. I mean, I think we do too much hand-wringing over change when actually to have a huge site like this open up in the heart of Toronto with incredible transit accessibility, with a rich history (is an opportunity),' Chappel says. Jacobs echoes that idea. 'It's such a unique location, being in the financial core, being right downtown, being right on a subway stop, being a historic building, that I guess I feel pretty optimistic,' he says. With files from The Canadian Press
CTV News
12-07-2025
- CTV News
E-bike rider suffers non-life-threatening injuries after collision at Yonge and St. Clair
Toronto police investigating after a cyclist fell under a vehicle at Yonge and St. Clair on Friday July 12, 2025 (CP24 photo). Toronto police say a cyclist riding an e-bike was injured after allegedly falling beneath a vehicle at Yonge Street and St. Clair Avenue late Friday night. In an email to officers say they were called to the scene at around 11:19 p.m. after reports that a cyclist had been struck. Upon investigation, police determined the rider 'fell off' the e-bike while in motion and subsequently went under the vehicle. The driver remained at the scene, and the cyclist was transported to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. There is no word on any charges laid at this time.
CTV News
09-07-2025
- CTV News
Woman accused of offering fake immigration services in Toronto arrested
Maria Corpuz, 43, is pictured in this police handout photo. (Handout /Toronto police) A 43-year-old woman wanted for allegedly offering fake immigration services to multiple people has been arrested. Toronto police said the suspect offered immigration services in the area of Yonge Street and Eglinton Avenue between May 31, 2023, and May 31, 2025. Her clients include people who wanted to apply for Canadian citizenship and work permits, police said. After paying, investigators said the victims were provided government documents, which were later found to be fraudulent. The victims would also discover that the services were not legitimate, police said. Maria Corpuzhas been charged with three counts of fraud under $5,000, three counts of false pretense under $5,000 and two counts of uttering forged document. Police continue to ask anyone with information to contact them at 416-808-5300 or Crime Stoppers anonymously at 416-222-TIPS (8477).
Globe and Mail
27-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Globe and Mail
Viletones founder helped kick start a punk rock movement in Toronto
On May 4, 1977, Toronto punk rock pioneers the Viletones played the Colonial Underground, a basement club on Yonge Street. Singer and group founder Steven Leckie had previously typed up a manifesto criticizing the city's rock music elite as being antiquated. 'The war must start,' wrote the 19-year-old who controversially called himself Nazi Dog. 'The new order is the Viletones.' Wearing a sneer, black eyeliner, and gaffer's tape around his bare torso, Mr. Leckie sang Heinrich Himmler Was My Dad, slashed himself with the jagged edge of a broken beer glass and otherwise abandoned all decorum. Fans shouted, 'No more Beatles, no more Stones, we just want the Viletones,' but not everyone was on board. A week later, The Globe and Mail's weekly Fanfare section featured a photo of Mr. Leckie on the cover page accompanied by just two words: 'Ugly music.' Music writer Paul McGrath reported on the concert (which included another punk band, the Poles) with a tone of pearl-clutching and contempt reflected in the over-the-top headline: 'Not them! Not here!' Deeming the bands to be 'unnecessary,' Mr. McGrath described the Viletones as a spectacle, not musicians. 'The music is just background, a foil for a performance that is aesthetically, morally and politically as reactionary as a roller derby match,' he wrote. The Huns, in leather and safety pins, were at the border. It was the band's second ever show, and although the article was decidedly negative, Mr. Leckie saw the coverage as a sign the punk revolution had arrived in Toronto and that the Viletones were at the bleeding edge of the spear. 'We were number one in Toronto,' the singer would later say in Liz Worth's book on the city's punk beginnings, Treat Me Like Dirt. Mr. Leckie died on June 12. Lung cancer diagnosed in 2023 had spread to his liver. He was 67 and had been living with multiple sclerosis. The Torontonian was a leading figure in the city's first-wave punk scene sparked by the arrival of the U.S. stars the Ramones at the New Yorker Theatre in 1976. Bands such as the Viletones, the Diodes, the Mods and Hamilton's Teenage Head were inspired by the landmark concert. 'It was a race for Toronto punk bands to start doing shows,' said Toronto producer/musician and photographer Don Pyle. None of the other acts had a front man as charismatic and dramatic as Mr. Leckie, more an aggressive performance artist than a singer. Appearances by the Viletones suggested danger and incited violence. Mr. Lecke's intense two-chord anthem Screaming Fist was a rally call for an outsiders' community that excited some and frightened others. 'The Viletones pushed boundaries in a way you didn't see the other band's doing, and Steven took things to a whole different level,' Ms. Worth told The Globe. 'Punk was about making people feel uncomfortable. Steven did that, and I think he did it really well.' Juliette Powell, former Miss Canada and MuchMusic host turned tech critic, remembered for challenging biases Holocaust survivor David Schaffer shared his harrowing story in a graphic novel Mr. Leckie was the son of a businessman who seemingly inherited his father's marketing savvy. Founding the Viletones in 1976, he put guitarist Freddie Pompeii, drummer Mike Anderson and bassist Jackie Death in leather jackets emblazoned with the band's name immediately. 'They were putting it out there before they even played a note,' said musician Chris Haight, who replaced Mr. Death after just one show to form the classic, if short-lived, Viletones lineup. 'It created interest.' In 1977, the Viletones released the 7-inch single Screaming Fist, one of the first Canadian punk records. 'They were a perfect band for the burgeoning teenage angst of a 16- to 18-year old, and a great reason to go out on a Monday when you had school the next day,' said Mr. Pyle, who saw the original Viletones more than 70 times as a teenager. 'Screaming Fist set the template for the level of intensity outside the U.K. or the United States. There was nothing like the Viletones in Canada." In the summer of 1977, Mr. Leckie arranged a Canadian showcase at New York's punk mecca CBGB. He later explained that the Viletones had an 'American attitude' that set them apart from their Toronto counterparts: 'We didn't think, 'Oh, let's get a gig in Peterborough.'' The CBGB poster advertised a weekend of shows with California rockers the Cramps hosting 'three outrageous punk bands from Toronto, Canada,' the Viletones, the Diodes and Hamilton's Teenage Head. The 'Canadian invasion' drew notice from mainstream media including Variety magazine. Noted rock critic Lester Bangs would later write in The Village Voice that Mr. Leckie 'hung from the rafters, crawled all over the stage, and hurled himself on the first row until his body was one huge sore.' Mr. Leckie was an image-conscious artist who courted the press and was given to self-mythologizing. About the trip to New York, he told one journalist that he had robbed gas stations on the way down to cover expenses. He was committed to chaos, prone to self-sabotage, and burned career bridges with an arsonist's enthusiasm. A typical antic was spending the advance money for a recording session before the band could get into the studio. 'He would do something to create some kind of falling out with the band or create some kind of drama that would cause things to go sideways,' Ms. Worth said. 'I don't know if he was afraid of success or if he was afraid of the vulnerability and the closeness it requires to work with people for a long period of time.' In 1978, Mr. Leckie's bandmates left him to form their own group, the Secrets. 'It just got to a point where it was a constant difficulty to work with the guy,' Mr. Haight said. 'But the three of us also wanted to expand musically. We didn't see ourselves playing Screaming Fist in five years." That same year, the Viletones released the five-song EP Look Back in Anger on its own label, Vile Records. Included was the song Swastika Girl. In a 2010 interview with Vice, Mr. Leckie explained that he was neither antisemitic nor pro-Nazi, and that in an era which saw punk rockers calling themselves Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious and Rat Scabies, he was simply upping the ante. 'I wanted to say to the '70s as a decade, tease them and say, 'Are you really liberal? Can you really take this?'' Mr. Leckie and a revamped Viletones played the famous Last Pogo concert at Toronto's Horseshoe Tavern in 1978. Documented in two films by Colin Brunton, the show was something of a last hurrah for a punk movement that came fast and furious but soon fizzled. 'Steven tried to play hardball with me, asking for money that I didn't have,' Mr. Brunton recalled. 'He got over it, though. His ego would not allow him to not participate in what was being billed as the last punk show.' It was not until 1983 that the Viletones released their first full-length album, Saturday Night, Sunday Morning, recorded live at Larry's Hideaway in Toronto. By that time, punk had fallen out of fashion in favour of new wave music. 'Steven planted his flag on that punk music hill and stayed there,' Mr. Brunton said. 'Others left. He did not.' In 1992, with the Viletones no longer active, Mr. Leckie and girlfriend Helene Maksoud opened Fleurs du Mal, a clothing boutique and gallery on Queen Street East named after an 1857 volume of verse by French poet Charles Baudelaire. The Viletones reunited occasionally, performing publicly as late as 2016. On his own, Mr. Leckie dabbled in rockabilly and art rock. He was preoccupied with his legacy from the beginning. 'All I wanted in '77 was to be thought of in the future,' he said in 2010. His wish was realized. The Viletones' Screaming Fist was referenced in William Gibson's dystopic sci-fi novel Neuromancer, and a computer virus was also named after the song. Some will remember Mr. Leckie as a complicated presence with a ferocious front who stirred up good trouble and bad. He frustrated those who believed his full potential wasn't realized. Concert promoter and film presenter Gary Topp knew Mr. Leckie as a teenager who came to see a Christmas afternoon screening of Marcel Carné's 1945 French romantic epic Children of Paradise at the New Yorker. 'He loved that film,' said Mr. Topp. 'He talked about it every time we spoke.' Mr. Topp views Mr. Leckie as a one-of-kind performer who enabled the punk genre in Canada to 'not only survive but grow,' and as an artist was constantly aware of his reputation. 'He wanted to be a rebel, and he wanted to be a legend, and he went full tilt to be that.' He was born at Scarborough General Hospital on Sept. 19, 1957. Though his birth certificate established him as Stephen Mitchell Leckie, he later insisted on the 'Steven' spelling. His father, David Leckie, was an executive with Benson & Hedges cigarettes in Montreal and an event producer in Toronto. His mother, the former Beverly Brewer, was a social worker with the Canadian National Institute for the Blind and a pair of Toronto hospitals. He suffered from spinal meningitis at a young age. The divorce of his parents later was another blow for him and his brother and sister. 'We all had a tough time, as kids do, but we stuck together,' said Susan Leckie-Ponting, his sister. As a style-obsessed teen, he was enamored with David Bowie. 'People remember seeing Steven at glam shows with a Diamond Dogs-era haircut before he was in the Viletones,' Mr. Pyle said. 'He was very compelling.' Though Mr. Leckie was well read and considered a student of history as an adult, he determined at a young age that 'school was for squares.' Though Mr. Leckie was well read and considered a student of history as an adult, he determined at a young age that 'school was for squares.' He began drinking alcohol before he was 15 and later participated in 12-step programs. He did not drink for at least 10 years before he died, according to his sister. Mr. Leckie served time in Mimico Correctional Centre and the Don Jail for petty theft. 'Both times I went to the jail with our father, who sat with him and read from the Bible,' his sister said. After Mr. Leckie's father died of COVID-19 in 2020, he became reclusive. His own health deteriorated. The twice-married musician had no children. He leaves his mother, Beverly McKnight; and siblings, Scott Leckie and Susan Leckie-Ponting. You can find more obituaries from The Globe and Mail here. To submit a memory about someone we have recently profiled on the Obituaries page, e-mail us at obit@
CBC
24-06-2025
- Climate
- CBC
More than 6,700 customers without power in Toronto, utility says
More than 6,000 customers are without power in Toronto on Tuesday and the outage has caused the TTC to turn off emergency lighting at two Line 1 subway stations. Toronto Hydro said on its outage map that the power went out at 6:25 p.m. and is expected to be restored by 1:25 a.m. Crews are said to be en route. Customers who live in the area of Yonge Street from south of Lawrence Avenue to north of Gerrard Street are affected. The TTC said there are lower than normal levels of lighting at Wellesley and College stations. Subway trains are currently bypassing College station because of the lighting issue, but the lighting levels at Wellesley station are sufficient enough to continue normal service, the TTC added.
