The first-ever look at all 65 Toronto mayors — the good, the bad, the colourful, the rogues, and the leaders — who have shaped the city. Toronto’s mayoral history is both rich and colourful. Spanning 19 decades and the growth of Toronto, from its origins as a dusty colonial outpost of just 9,200 residents to a global business centre and metropolis of some three million, this compendium provides fascinating biographical detail on each of the city’s mayors. Toronto’s mayors have been curious, eccentric, or offbeat; others have been rebellious, swaggering, or alcoholic. Some were bigots, bullies, refugees, war heroes, social crusaders, or bon vivants; still others were inspiring, forward looking, or well ahead of their time. One Toronto mayor attempted to kill a predecessor, but his pistol jammed. Another simply beat up the councillors he didn’t like. One committed murder, while another carried out a home invasion. And under the threat of capture and certain death, two mayors were forced to escape the city and live for years in exile, while another had 18 kids and cried poor, yet died on a luxury European vacation (minus the kids). One mayor was involved in the brutal torture of an opposition candidate. Another went insane while in office due to acute third stage syphilis. Each mayor is the inheritor of a rich legacy of hopes and dreams, ambitions and efforts, successes and failures. From the first mayor in 1834 — the firebrand rebel William Lyon Mackenzie — to those of the 21st century — Mel Lastman, David Miller, Rob Ford, and John Tory — Toronto Mayors looks at where each came from, how they came to lead the city, what issues they dealt with, and how they steered Toronto’s City Council.

His drug and alcohol-fuelled antics made world headlines and engulfed a city in unprecedented controversy. Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s personal and political troubles have occupied centre stage in North America’s fourth largest city since news broke that men involved in the drug trade were selling a videotape of Ford appearing to smoke crack cocaine. Toronto Star reporter Robyn Doolittle was one of three journalists to view the video and report on its contents in May 2013. Her dogged pursuit of the story has uncovered disturbing details about the mayor’s past and embroiled the Toronto police, city councilors, and ordinary citizens in a raucous debate about the future of the city. Even before those explosive events, Ford was a divisive figure. A populist and successful city councillor, he was an underdog to become mayor in 2010. His politics and mercurial nature have split the amalgamated city in two. But there is far more to the story. The Fords have a long, unhappy history of substance abuse and criminal behavior. Despite their troubles, they are also one of the most ambitious families in Canada. Those close to the Fords say they often compare themselves to the Kennedys and believe they were born to lead. Regardless of whether the mayor survives the scandal, the Ford name is on the ballot in the mayoralty election of 2014. Fast-paced and insightful, Crazy Town is a page-turning portrait of a troubled man, a formidable family and a city caught in an jaw-dropping scandal.

Since 2010, Toronto's headlines have been consumed by the outrageous personal foibles and government-slashing, anti-urbanist policies of Mayor Rob Ford. But the heated debate at City Hall has obscured a bigger, decade-long narrative of Toronto's ascendance as a mature global city. Some Great Idea traces how post-amalgamation, and under three very different mayors, Toronto managed to so quickly oscillate from one extreme to another, and how the city might proceed from here. Some Great Idea includes behind-the-scenes tales from the Miller and Ford campaigns, and explores recent turning points like the city's core service review and the mayor’s con?ict-of-interest trial. Through personal history, keen reportage and revelatory analysis, it shows how the fundamental principles of diversity and democracy that have made Toronto such a vibrant, dynamic 21st-century city can produce an unlikely politician like Ford. And how those same principles have vividly and repeatedly insisted that such politicians are only part of a larger, messier and more productive urban politics. This is a story about both Toronto's past and present, how the city has relentlessly and collaboratively reinvented itself. But it's also a story about Toronto's future, and what that future might mean for all global cities. This is a story that says you can ?ght city hall. Edward Keenan serves as senior editor and lead columnist at The Grid magazine in Toronto, Ontario. An eight-time finalist at the National Magazine Awards, he has written for and edited at Eye Weekly, Spacing magazine, and The Walrus.

The Beijing-Vancouver Express: Connecting Toronto To Dalian, China To Canada is an imaginative work of poetry inspired by the plans for a real train line and by an old book of poetry by Richard Brautigan.

At the beginning of 1793 Toronto was the gateway to a distant portage to the Upper Great Lakes, its permanent population a lone fur trader. One hundred and twenty-five years later it was a solid, vibrant metropolis, an industrial powerhouse supporting half a million residents. Toronto is a city built by its people, from the original colonial aristocracy of the Family Compact, to the masses of British and Irish migrants who forged its profound links with Empire, to the polyglot flow of international migration that would ultimately transform the city in the twentieth century. This book recounts their stories, and their stories are the history of Toronto's emergence as a world-class city. In Toronto to 1918, distinguished historian J.M.S. Careless expertly draws Toronto's stories together, creating an illuminating and entertaining portrait of the city. The text is complemented with more than 150 historical illustrations.