iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Shane Gates 🇨🇦 @shanegates.ca · 28/09/2026

I absolutely love that Gord Perks got to do the voiceover for this Olivia Chow ad. His last swan song against Ford/Tory municipal politics.

Olivia Chow ad depicting Brad Bradford's voting history on Instagram with the caption: "Brad Bradford is a flip flopper. He will say anything to get elected. That's just who he is."

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Reposted by Shane Gates 🇨🇦

Mark Shaw 🇨🇦✌️🇪🇺 @markshawtoronto.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

"The most absurd deadline lands, appropriately enough, on April Fool’s Day, which is when bidders have to tee up proposals for “alternative” north-south bike routes to Yonge and Avenue Road"

Bike lane alternative North-South route.

There’s major traffic on Avenue Road, Mt Pleasant road.

There’s shops and restaurants on Yonge street, the commercial strip.

The alternative is a zigzag that’s basically impossible and involves hopping your bike over gated cemeteries.

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Shane Gates 🇨🇦 @shanegates.ca · 28/09/2026

I think even bidding on this should ban the company from ever being hired by the City of Toronto to do work.

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Reposted by Shane Gates 🇨🇦

How-Sen Chong @how-sen.com · 27/09/2026

This tool from @observingthecity.ca is fantastic. It shows the traffic mode share by intersection using City data. Many downtown areas are dominated by pedestrians (in green). Yet *we still give most of the space to cars on almost every street.* www.observingthecity.ca/intersection...

Map of downtown area of Toronto. Pie charts show the mode share at every intersection.

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Shane Gates 🇨🇦 @shanegates.ca · 25/09/2026

Not a fan of TOGCs? Transit Oriented Golf Courses?

Google Maps screenshot of Pinehurst Station in Seattle. Massive golf course in its catchment area, rest of it low density homes.

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Shane Gates 🇨🇦 @shanegates.ca · 24/09/2026

It's weird how accessibility on the TTC is somehow a user problem, not an institutional problem. @ttcriders.bsky.social

Chat with TTC Transit Control via the SafeTTC app:

Me: "Doors to the elevator [at TMU] to NB platform/Green P parking garage locked from the underpass level (level 4). Thankfully I am able bodied so I could check that it's locked from both sides, but those in a mobility device would be trapped there."

TTC: "TTC does not manage Green P Parking, you would need to contact the Toronto Parking Authority"

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Reposted by Shane Gates 🇨🇦

Matt Elliott @graphicmatt.com · 22/09/2026

Over the weekend, the Bradford campaign challenged the media to do this "scavenger hunt" to uncover supposed places where Olivia Chow frittered away the provincial New Deal money. Challenge accepted. From my newsletter this week, here’s what I found.

An infographic for a City Hall scavenger hunt titled 'Where did the Money Go?' showing eight locations throughout Toronto where city budget expenditures are hidden, with clues and dollar amounts for each stop, ending at the Mayor's Office, and promoting Brad Bradford's mayoral campaign.

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Shane Gates 🇨🇦 @shanegates.ca · 21/09/2026

It doesn't help these things' credibility when I saw two staff and a supervisor leaning on one and laughing at how stupid they were. $2 million is no small cost and would've paid for 1/25th of PEDs at TMU.

One of the waist high platform barriers at TMU station.

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Shane Gates 🇨🇦 @shanegates.ca · 21/09/2026

This article reads like PP discovered the word Euroscepticism and pulled an all nighter jotting down notes from Wikipedia.

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Shane Gates 🇨🇦 @shanegates.ca · 17/09/2026

It's obvious why Putin wouldn't want 🇦🇲🇬🇪🇺🇦🇲🇩 etc to join the EU since it would bring stability, peace, and wealth that would prevent Russian subversion, dismantle oligarchic control of institutions, and wane reliance on Russia. I can only assume Trump doesn't want Canada to join for the same reason.

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Shane Gates 🇨🇦 @shanegates.ca · 15/09/2026

They were so ahead of their time

The car dangling off the bridge from 2018

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Shane Gates 🇨🇦 @shanegates.ca · 15/09/2026

Toronto transportation philosophy in one picture

Driver blocking intersection delays three streetcars and a bus from advancing through a light

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Shane Gates 🇨🇦 @shanegates.ca · 12/09/2026

Every year I fill out the Downtown Yonge BIA's survey about safety. Every year I try to fit in how cars are the biggest safety threat into questions that are clearly fishing for blame towards those experiencing homelessness.

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Shane Gates 🇨🇦 @shanegates.ca · 11/09/2026

It's as if the plethora of private security, TTC Special Constables, GO Special Constables, respective fare inspectors, and the City's Corporate Security at Union don't exist. The latter even has an office there.

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Shane Gates 🇨🇦 @shanegates.ca · 11/09/2026

This goes above and beyond MTA's already formidable 12 trips/week and would kick in for every single person commuting to work and school 5 days/week.

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Shane Gates 🇨🇦 @shanegates.ca · 11/09/2026

Surely the geese are our country's greatest military asset.

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Shane Gates 🇨🇦 @shanegates.ca · 10/09/2026

This government? Science? nahhhh

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Shane Gates 🇨🇦 @shanegates.ca · 09/09/2026

Pedestrians and streetcars regularly occupy the same space elsewhere, even during high-traffic events, and somehow without disrupting the commutes of 60,000+ people/day.

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Shane Gates 🇨🇦 @shanegates.ca · 09/09/2026

Repost to scare TIFF organisers

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Shane Gates 🇨🇦 @shanegates.ca · 04/09/2026

So basically, Hungary is getting a discount on the participation fee for them to return. Likely the same case for Romania, Bulgaria, and Moldova to return last year. I assume Canada is paying for this, since the Netherlands, Spain, Iceland, Slovenia, and Ireland are not? telex.hu/after/2026/0...

telex.hu

Kevesebbet kellene fizetnie a közmédiának, ha Magyarország visszatér az Eurovízióra

Magyarország 2019 óta nem vett részt az Eurovízión, most azonban megnyílhat az út a visszatérés előtt.

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Shane Gates 🇨🇦 @shanegates.ca · 03/09/2026

idk both might involve railing and/or running a train

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Shane Gates 🇨🇦 @shanegates.ca · 02/09/2026

Its a special kind of freaky hearing everyone's emergency alerts go off when your phone is dead. A nuke could've been dropped and I'd have been none the wiser.

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Shane Gates 🇨🇦 @shanegates.ca · 31/08/2026

When the next best option is Swiss Chalet, something has gone terribly wrong.

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Shane Gates 🇨🇦 @shanegates.ca · 30/08/2026

Making a point to only eat at CNE vendors that don't use AI-generated posters... I think I might starve.

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Shane Gates 🇨🇦 @shanegates.ca · 25/08/2026

Crazy how it manages to both blame the cyclist and imply the door opened by itself.

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Shane Gates 🇨🇦 @shanegates.ca · 22/08/2026

Some kind of equivalent to the Finnish blasting TV and radio signals across the Gulf into Soviet Estonia

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Shane Gates 🇨🇦 @shanegates.ca · 22/08/2026

Winner gets their provincial government to leave them alone

U of T vs McGill at Varsity Stadium, football. Scoreboard shows 13-1 in favour of McGill

U of T vs McGill at Varsity Stadium, football.

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Shane Gates 🇨🇦 @shanegates.ca · 21/08/2026

Gabe, your campaign has been so incredibly inspiring. It gives me hope that there is actually a chance for young progressives. You running has no doubt made my old ward of Uni-Rosedale tangibly better (506, etc.) I'm really excited to see what you do next.

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Shane Gates 🇨🇦 @shanegates.ca · 20/08/2026

They'll have to send a SWAT team to Doug's cottage to rescue the removed alcohol from last March

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Shane Gates 🇨🇦 @shanegates.ca · 19/08/2026

I was just thinking the same thing

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Shane Gates 🇨🇦 @shanegates.ca · 19/08/2026

Everything they've been posting for the past year seems to point closer to a future ONDP leadership bid if anything. They seem content with being a face of the opposition.

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Shane Gates 🇨🇦 @shanegates.ca · 17/08/2026

How do you deal with the visceral hate re: shelters when you are just trying to do what is ethical, moral, and sane.

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Reposted by Shane Gates 🇨🇦

School of Cities @uoftcities.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Our new policy brief summarizes research on transit enforcement which found that mechanisms vary widely across Cdn cities; tickets are higher than for parking infractions; costs exceed generated revenue; marginalized populations are disproportionately impacted ow.ly/FHQN50ZvVoF

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Shane Gates 🇨🇦 @shanegates.ca · 17/08/2026

I can't watch Law and Order Toronto like a normal person because the entire time I'm just like

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Shane Gates 🇨🇦 @shanegates.ca · 16/08/2026

Surely CTV/TSN don't *have* to get the feed for an event a few km from their headquarters from FOX, right?

Honda Indy in Markham on CTV/TSN, feed provided by FOX

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Shane Gates 🇨🇦 @shanegates.ca · 16/08/2026

I've been to a number of world capitals... except Ottawa. It seems like a long weekend-type jaunt instead of a vacation destination, but I've never had a free-enough weekend to go :(

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Shane Gates 🇨🇦 @shanegates.ca · 15/08/2026

Currently on the 509/510 bus from Union (only a few buses according to Transsee). It was so packed it left people behind. The majority got off one stop later at the Ferry Terminal bc Google Maps suggested this route. If only there was some sort of redesign to let people walk via the PATH instead.

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Shane Gates 🇨🇦 @shanegates.ca · 11/08/2026

The University of Waterloo weeps

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Reposted by Shane Gates 🇨🇦

Jay Pitter @jaypitter.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

My Toronto Star take on festival challenges: 1. Crowds aren’t the problem; poor spatial planning is. Many festivals have outgrown the car-centric streets and spaces where they began. Their growth needs to be matched with permanent pedestrianization, better design, and placemaking approaches.