Mayor Chow Champions Hope Over Fear

“Toronto; are you ready to choose hope over fear?;  Unity over division? To move forward not backward? Are you ready to win?”

That question rang out inside the Danforth Music Hall and still hangs in the air today. Nearly one thousand people filled the room. The energy was thick, the kind that sits in your chest after a long week and reminds you why you still care about this city. Local artists played. Neighbours leaned in, and Mayor Olivia Chow spoke like she was talking to family rather than performing for cameras.

It was a conversation the city is having with itself, and Mayor Chow is simply the one holding the mic long enough for everyone to hear the same words at the same time.

Jim Cuddy opened the night with the kind of voice that has soundtracked Toronto for decades. Sunthar V, the Scarborough comedian, landed jokes that only people who know this city from the inside would catch. DijahSB brought the room into the present with bars that felt like walking down any main street after dark. Pan Fantasy Steelband closed the musical portion the way only steelpan can: bright, communal, impossible to sit still through. Then the speakers stepped up. Randell Adjei, Ontario’s first Poet Laureate, Laurel Rothman, who has worked beside Mayor Chow for years in the social-work trenches, and Ryan Endoh, the ACORN leader and tenant organizer who lives at 500 Dawes Road and knows exactly what it means when a building finally gets fixed. Each of them told stories about the work, not the myth.

Then Mayor Chow took the stage.

Photo Courtesy of Mayor Olivia Chow

She began with love.

“I love Toronto! I love the vibrancy and energy from the millions of people who come to our street festivals , from all over the world. From every culture, heritage and language.”

She talked about learning to skate at Nathan Phillips Square and how the free ice made a young immigrant kid from St. Jamestown feel like she belonged. Learning to ride a bike on Centre Island. She talked about the Reference Library and the old art books that helped a struggling artist build a career. She talked about kayaking on the lake and made sure everyone heard her say it the way she means it; “It will always be Lake Ontario!”

Those memories are the foundation she keeps returning to. Every good thing that happened to her, she said, happened in public space. Public space is what made an immigrant kid into the mayor of Canada’s largest city. That is the through-line.

Then the tone shifted, the way it has to when you live here and pay attention.

“Too many kids are lined up with their moms at the food bank. Too many go to bed hungry. They cannot concentrate at school because their bellies are empty and grumbling.”

She told the Christmas Eve story again, the one from thirty-five years ago, after dinner with Jack Layton, when the two of them sat with the knowledge that other children would not have the same feast. They mapped a plan, costed it, and they fought for it at City Hall. Now, as mayor, that dream is real: food in every classroom, in every school, for every child.

She did not rush past the milestone. She let the room feel the weight of three and a half decades. Then she kept going.

“We are going to build more affordable housing,  keep our streets safe,  support public transit and make it even more affordable!”

She listed the changes that have already happened since she walked into the mayor’s office. There was no affordable housing being built when she arrived. That was a choice, she said. She made a different one. Thousands of new affordable homes are now under construction. Seven out of ten cranes in the sky exist because of the work currently underway.

TTC riders were angry about higher fares and cut service. She kept the fares low and put money into faster service. Libraries that used to close on Sundays and evenings are now open seven days a week with longer hours, all one hundred of them. 911 wait times that once sat well above the national average are now ninety percent faster. There are more first responders, including mental-health crisis workers city-wide.

“Toronto, we have turned the corner, and we are feeling more optimistic. We have momentum. Now we have to keep that momentum going.”

She did not pretend the outside world is gentle. Trump and the tariffs create uncertainty. Everything costs more. The ground under people’s feet feels less steady. So the choice, she said, is still in front of us.

“We can work together, support each other, keep building a city that invites and welcomes, that cares and stands up. A city that remains ambitious, hardworking, ready to win, ready to go forward. A city that builds more housing and lowers the cost of living and decides its own future as Torontonians.

Or we can go backward. Leaders who starve public spaces and cut services. Division instead of unity.

That is not what I want. I do not believe it’s what you want either.”

She painted the picture of the city she believes is still within reach: a mother shopping for groceries who does not have to put anything back because the city is feeding kids at school; reliable public transit with fares that stay low; landlords who can no longer ignore neglected buildings; seniors able to age in their own homes and neighbourhoods; local government that keeps pushing the cost of living down by building affordable housing faster; grocery chains that do not get to snoop on shopping habits and quietly raise prices.

“We have built the foundation. Let us finish what we started. Choose to be confident and hopeful. Let’s choose to make our city more affordable. Choose to care. Let’s choose to keep moving forward and keep building a Toronto we love, together.”

That is the speech, almost word for word, the way it landed in the room.

Photo Courtesy of Mayor Chow

What made the night matter is the fact that the mayor of Toronto stood in a hall on the Danforth and spoke about public space as the thing that made her possible, then connected that same public space to the daily reality of kids who still line up at food banks, renters who still live with broken elevators, and families who still do the math at the grocery store and put things back.

She did not claim the work is finished, but the direction is set and the momentum is real. Whether that momentum holds is decided in the ordinary places she keeps naming: school cafeterias, library branches, TTC platforms, apartment hallways, the free ice at Nathan Phillips Square on a winter afternoon.

For people who have watched this city for a long time, the language felt familiar. Chow has been talking about the same things for decades: the link between a full stomach and a child’s ability to learn, the dignity of a well-maintained building, the quiet power of a public library that stays open when people need it. The difference now is the title and the budget and the cranes.

Ryan Endoh’s presence on the stage mattered for that reason. A tenant organizer who lives at 500 Dawes Road  shows up because the buildings in his own neighbourhood are finally being forced to improve. Laurel Rothman’s presence mattered for the same reason. Long-time social-work partners do not lend their names lightly. Randell Adjei’s poetry reminded the room that language itself is one of the public spaces we share.

The night was designed to put the choice in plain language and leave it there. Hope or fear. Unity or division. Forward or back. The mayor asked the room which one they wanted and then told them which one she intends to keep choosing.

Outside the Music Hall the street carried on the way the Danforth always does: streetcars, late-night food, people heading home in every language this city holds. Inside, for a few hours, the conversation was focused. Public space made one immigrant kid into a mayor. Public space, she argued, is still the only thing that can give the next generation of kids the same chance.

That is the story she told, and that is the story the room heard. Whether the rest of the city decides to finish what was started is the part that remains unfinished,

 “We have built the foundation. Let’s finish what we started.”