Charlotte Hornets at Toronto Raptors NBA Highlights February 28, 2020

The Charlotte Hornets defeated the Toronto Raptors, 99-96. Terry Rozier recorded 18 PTS, 6 REB and 6 AST for the Hornets, while Devonte’ Graham added 18 PTS, 4 REB and 5 AST in the victory. Norman Powell tallied 22 PTS and 3 AST for the Raptors.

Please share this

Gentrification is pulling apart Toronto’s communities

As cities develop, what is protecting the neighbourhoods that make them unique?

It’s a question Toronto is grappling with as gentrification creeps into neighbourhoods around the city.

Little Jamaica

The Eglinton Crosstown project — which is running a year behind schedule and set for completion in 2022 — has had a profound impact on the Little Jamaica neighbourhood, between Allen Road in the east and stretching west to Keele Street.

The project has reduced foot-traffic through the neighbourhood, leading to reduced business in the shops that line Eglinton Avenue. While this is felt across all 19 kilometres dedicated to the Crosstown, businesses closing in Little Jamaica threaten the cultural enclave.

Dalton Higgins is a long-time resident and homeowner in the Little Jamaica area. He has seen firsthand the impact of the Crosstown’s construction on the neighbourhood.

“Every season there’s a batch of new stores — mom-and-pop retailers — that are going under,” Higgins said. “I think that’s having an adverse and extremely negative impact on . . . the morale of neighbourhood residents and local business owners.”

The best way to preserve the neighbourhood is for money to be injected back into the shops that are struggling, Higgins said. Store owners “just want to be able to keep their doors open and weather the storm until 2022” when the Crosstown is now expected to be complete.

Area councillor Mike Colle moved Wednesday to do just that, urging city council to compensate small businesses on Eglinton Avenue after news of the project’s further delay. City council adopted the motion, which also requested a report on the feasibility of opening a section of the Crosstown, and moved to clean up construction equipment that blocks storefronts.

Black UrbanismTO was established in 2018 to help engage the community and businesses “from a cultural heritage perspective,” as a response to the displacement of Black communities.

Dane Gardener, who co-founded the not-for-profit group and has familial ties to Little Jamaica, said the easiest way to engage affected communities is simply through conversations with them.

“Having conversations, having safe spaces, being active on Eglinton and having consistent conversations with the businesses to notify them and bring them up to date” on project developments is crucial, he said.

A major worry for Gardener is that there won’t be a Jamaican cultural area to lean on when he eventually has children of his own. The neighbourhood could be lost, Gardener said, meaning “we’re going to have a bunch of people who are not going to be able to have an identity in the city.”

“I don’t understand why the city isn’t worrying about that,” he said. “We need to have self-identification. People need to know who they are and where they come from, and we need to celebrate that.”

Higgins pointed to systemic anti-Black racism as a contributing factor in the way the government approaches the Little Jamaica community.

“We like to pat ourselves on the back for being the most multicultural city on the planet,” Higgins said, but “urban planning and city building does not live on a separate island when it comes to anti-Black racism. It sort of hits us everywhere.”

If developments were disproportionately affecting a white community, there would be more attention paid by local area politicians to community concerns, Higgins said.

The issues faced by Little Jamaica are a microcosm of a larger issue of gentrification leading to a loss of historically-relevant cultural enclaves.

Parkdale

Chemi Lhamo calls herself a “product of Parkdale.” Lhamo grew up in the neighbourhood and attended Parkdale Collegiate Institute. She said that on-the-ground consultation with the community would help preserve the west-end neighbourhood’s large Tibetan diaspora.

While Lhamo said she couldn’t speak for every individual community member, she said “it would be great to see community consultations with the Tibetan community, specifically with Tibetan translators to speak to the elderly that walk around Parkdale.”

There are monasteries in Parkdale where Tibetan seniors come to pray, Lhamo explained. Going there and speaking directly to them could lead to meaningful discussion about community developments, she said.

“There’s a difference between consultations and meaningful consultations. If consultations are happening just because you need to meet the quota of saying that you’ve (spoken) with community members on the ground, that doesn’t do it for me,” Lhamo said.

As Parkdale continues to gentrify, Tibetan-run restaurants have faced massive rent hikes that make it too expensive to stay in business.

“We had Tibetan restaurants . . . (that) because of the rent hikes almost closed down multiple times,” Lhamo said. “I remember the times where a lot of other restaurants that tried to open up . . . weren’t able to keep up with the business because the rent was just too high.”

Lhamo said the rapid change in the community has made her reflect on the systemic issues that exist for racialized Torontonians.

It “really makes someone like me reflect on some of the systematic barriers that exist for racialized people but also for Tibetan refugees that had to be displaced not once but more than twice, from Tibet to India to Nepal,” Lhamo said. “Coming to Toronto for a better life and then being again systematically wiped out” through rent hikes or building managers that don’t handle the most basic of maintenance.

“That is a way to push them out — because once the low income families that had been here for many years are driven out, they make minor renovations to apartments and then they hike up the rent by $500,” Lhamo said.

There’s no clear answer on how to avoid gentrification and a loss of culture, said Ute Lehrer, professor at York University’s faculty of environmental studies. “There’s two different things that come together,” said Lehrer.

“One is the infrastructure investment that is needed for the city to grow. And, at the other end, the economic interest of small business owners that don’t have a lot of extra capital on their side.”

“I think it is very, very important for the well-being of this city that we have these pockets of neighbourhoods where we have strong cultural identities,” said Lehrer.

Projects like the King Street pilot are examples of situations where those with political and media connections could get rapid response from government officials. “There was some outcry of some people who had direct links to the media and were very loud and were heard,” Lehrer said.

The need for grassroots community engagement is what has prompted groups like Black Urbanism, an urban planning group which facilitates community engagement events about culture and identity.

But if you’re a community without the connections, “then you are not heard,” Lehrer said. “The natural effect of this is that yes, there will be some businesses will stay on, they will survive. But others will go under and the neighbourhood will change.”

Regent Park

In the downtown community of Regent Park, the story of neighbourhood redevelopment has echoes of the issues faced citywide. Efforts to revitalize the neighbourhood came with community consultation and plans to build not only new buildings, but also social programs, said Ismail Afrah, a community member and volunteer with the Regent Park Neighbourhood Association.

“Revitalization was a two-pronged approach,” Afrah explained. As the project continued, it became clear that “one prong was forgotten.” While the building projects were completed, the social projects were not fully realized, though “there are some remarkable community benefit initiatives that came through (from developers),” Afrah said, pointing to Daniels Spectrum, an arts and culture centre that opened in 2012.

Whil Afrah is hesitant to say he’s optimistic that social programs will be fully implemented, he said the association is keeping an eye on things and holding the city accountable. “When they’re held accountable, they perform better.” Afrah and the RPNA attend community update meetings about the revitalization and negotiating with Toronto Community Housing to ensure resident needs are addressed.

One group that Afrah works closely with is Access to Recreation, where community members are fighting for better access to the Pam McConnell Aquatic Centre. Given the city’s centralized program registration system, Regent Park is battling all 2.5 million Torontonians for access to services. Data provided to the Star last winter shows that only about a quarter of registrations at the aquatic centre are for registrants who live in or near Regent Park.

“The facilities have been built, they’re beautiful but . . . some of our kids have never been in the pool. So the physical development has happened. You’ve built the facilities. However, given the policies and the institutions and the structures and the technology, we can’t access it. So that’s gentrification,” Afrah said.

“We are fighting a big machine” when it comes to gentrification, said Zhixi Zhuang, associate professor with Ryerson University’s school of urban and regional planning.

Conscientious planning is the easiest way to develop cities in a way that preserves neighbourhoods for community residents. “Whenever we do some big projects . . . Think about ‘what is the impact on the people and the local community?’ ” Zhuang urged.

If small, locally-owned businesses diminish, “the collective history of that neighbourhood, of (that) space will be gone. And it’s kind of destroying the urban fabric.”

Consultation with communities needs to go beyond simple public meetings, and urban planners can’t take it for granted that everyone affected by a development will show up, let alone know the schedule of when public consultations are being held, Zhuang said.

“You have to go to them,” she said. Instead of simply meeting at city hall or in board rooms, going into stores and public spaces to have these conversations is a better way to engage the public, Zhuang said.

“Any time the city has . . . long term construction like this, they need to plan that very carefully , because things get destroyed and we’ll never, ever get them back.” In turn, developments harm people and the community — especially underrepresented groups, Zhuang said.

“That’s really problematic because we pride ourselves as one of the most diverse and multicultural cities in the world. But when it comes to saving these cultural neighbourhoods, we are not doing anything and that’s a shame.

If we’re not even saving our cultural heritage, how can we claim that we are the most diverse and multicultural city?”

Please share this

Toronto Mayor John Tory appears to reverse course on protecting Downsview lands for jobs

Land at the Downsview Airport set currently aside for employment will “more than likely” be redeveloped to include residential uses says Mayor John Tory — a reversal of his previous position that the site be protected for jobs.

Future redevelopment of the 150-hectare site — currently operated by Bombardier — is now being overseen by Tory’s former chief of staff, Chris Eby. Eby is executive vice-president of the company set up to develop the land for PSP Investments, the investment arm of the pension plan for federal public servants, which bought the land from Bombardier in 2018.

“We have always expected and anticipated that the redevelopment of this Downsview site will result in it being the location of thousands of jobs,” Tory’s spokesperson Don Peat said in an emailed statement. “It will also, more than likely, include a significant number of residential units, including affordable housing.”

Tory’s recent comments, first reported by the Globe and Mail, seems to contradict what the mayor himself said about the site in March 2018. They also appear at odds with council, as the city is actively fighting appeals by PSP Investments and others over the city’s policy of protecting employment lands.

“That is employment land and I hope it will continue to be,” Tory told reporters in 2018.

“I don’t accept the notion that every single piece of land without exception … should just be allocated because we decide we’re going to have condo towers and apartment buildings everywhere. We need places for people to work.”

The conversion of land designated for employment to allow the building of more lucrative residential developments as the city grows at an unprecedented pace has been a contentious issue since council approved updated policies to protect sites like Downsview in 2013.

The process for converting employment lands for other uses is a lengthy and difficult process, subject to a comprehensive review by the city.

In May 2018, PSP Investments announced it had entered into an agreement to buy the Bombardier lands — sandwiched in the northwest elbow of where Allen Rd. meets Wilson Ave. just north of Hwy 401 and accessible by Line 1 — with options to continue operations at the manufacturing facility for several years. In December, Bombardier said it planned to open its new plant at Pearson Airport in 2023.

Canada Lands Company, a Crown corporation that manages properties on behalf of the federal government, owns 230 additional hectares, including Downsview Park, and is responsible for plans to develop pockets for new residential, commercial and park space.

Eby, now executive vice-president of PSP’s Northcrest Developments, told the Star it believes that with the aerospace uses being vacated and recent transit improvements to the area there is “an opportunity to revisit the land use framework in this area.”

“As we explore this opportunity — and to be perfectly clear, we are at the beginning stages — we will be working closely with the local community and other stakeholders, including the City of Toronto,” he said in a statement, adding those discussions will be about how PSP can support “important public policy priorities,” including economic development and also increasing the supply of affordable

Peat, Tory’s spokesperson, said any formal application would go through all the regular city processes.

“City planning staff are working with PSP to determine the right mix for this site, consistent with city policy and other developments elsewhere,” he said.

Toronto’s chief planner Gregg Lintern told the Star that it remains the city’s goal to “protect and maintain employment areas.” But with an active appeal over the future of the Downsview site, he said “consideration of other land uses does occur.”

Coun. James Pasternak, who represents the area in his Ward 6 (York Centre) and is a member of Tory’s executive committee, said residential development is not in the cards.

“We already have enormous residential intensification under the Downsview Secondary Plan with neighbourhoods built in Stanley Green, and planned for William Baker and Allen District,” he said referring to the Canada Lands development plans. “That is all that is on the table right now. These lands have great potential as a transformational employment and light industrial zone.”

He said while he looks forward to public consultations and working with the owners, “the local community has been assured there would be no further intensification.”

Maria Augimeri, who previously represented the area, had warned that the land was being privately shopped around as having potential for housing, despite the employment area designation. She has advocated for increased park space.

“I’m very disappointed and suspicious of what the mayor’s office is really up to,” she told the Star Tuesday. “He should tell Downsview residents what he’s planning.”

Since 2013, when council approved policies by city planning staff to protect various employment lands, including at Downsview, developers have launched dozens of appeals of that decision at the Local Planning Appeal Tribunal — the quasi-judicial body made up of provincial appointees who have the final say on land planning disputes.

Earlier this year, tribunal adjudicator Gerald Swinkin agreed with key tenets of the city’s position on the broader policy issues and knocked down a common argument from developers.

“There is no evidence to support the view that there is a need to convert employment lands to non-employment uses to meet the land supply necessary to create the dwelling units that are necessary to accommodate the city’s forecast population growth,” he said.

That decision concluded just one phase of the appeals. Site-specific concerns, like those at the Downsview site, have yet to be adjudicated.

Please share this

Three pedestrians hit in Toronto as car breaks gas line, strikes building

TORONTO — Police say three people are in serious condition after being hit by a car in Toronto’s north end.

The vehicle then slammed into a building and gas line, causing a leak.

Officers say the crash happened just after 8 a.m. in North York.

The two men and one woman were rushed to hospital.

Roads in the area remain closed as crews repair the leak.

The driver stayed at the scene and police say an investigation continues.

Please share this

Toronto Maple Leafs @ Florida Panthers NHL Highlights 2/27/20

Please share this

Tough year for Torstar as revenue challenges continue

Torstar Corp., owner of the Toronto Star and other Canadian newspapers, announced its fourth-quarter results on Wednesday, posting a $51.9 million net loss for the year as operating revenues slid nearly 12 per cent amid declines in print and digital advertising.

Revenue from subscriptions provided the lone major source of revenue growth during the year, up one per cent, as digital revenue in the category increased while print decreased.

For the fourth quarter, the Toronto-based company posted a $14.1 million profit, boosted by one-time gains from changes to its pension plan and the sale of properties in Ontario, but it made clear that it faces a challenging operating environment in which print advertising, still its largest source of revenue, is declining and “global technology giants” dominate the digital advertising sphere.

Looking forward, the company said that harnessing “data as a key asset” to grow digital subscriptions is central to its business strategy. In a nod to the significance of the challenges ahead, Torstar flagged a new risk, warning it is in danger of being delisted from the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) as a result of thin trading of its shares.

“The TSX has broad discretion regarding delisting,” the company said in its earnings release. “If the TSX determines that we no longer meet the applicable listing requirements, including with respect to the public distribution or liquidity of the Class B non-voting shares, there is a risk that the TSX may delist them.”

Torstar’s shares, which fell 6.8 per cent to close at 41 cents on Wednesday afternoon, have lost 58 per cent of their value over the past year and are down 94 per cent over the past five years.

The company has made numerous attempts to reverse its fortunes since announcing it was selling its Harlequin book publishing company to News Corp. for $455 million in 2014.

In 2015, it paid roughly $200 million for a 56 per cent stake in VerticalScope Holdings Inc., a digital media company with 600 consumer enthusiast forums and content sites. VerticalScope posted an operating loss of $3.6 million in its most recent quarter and Torstar said revenues there “continued to be impacted by the ongoing transition of user forums to a new technology platform.”

Torstar also invested tens of millions of dollars in Star Touch, a tablet-only app that was launched in 2015 and scrapped in 2017 after it failed to attract as many readers as management had hoped.

If the TSX determines we no longer meet the listing requirements, including with respect to the public distribution or liquidity of the Class B non-voting shares, the TSX may delist them

This past December, one year after a rebranding effort that doubled the number of journalists at its StarMetro commuter daily newspapers, the company stopped their print editions and also announced voluntary buyouts for other editorial employees.

That came a few months after the company suspended its 2.5-cent quarterly dividend in an effort “to preserve cash and strengthen our financial position,” after posting a $40.9 million quarterly loss in October.

Suspending the dividend saved millions of dollars per year, but also started the clock on a potential shift in the company’s governance structure: There are about 10 million class A shares with voting rights, mostly held by families of the original owners through the Torstar Voting Trust, which is chaired by the company’s board chairman, John Honderich.

There are also about 71.5 million class B shareholders without voting rights, that are freely traded.

If the dividend is not paid out for eight consecutive quarters, the class B shareholders would gain voting rights.

Bob Hepburn, director of communications at Torstar, said the company is sticking to its plan to review its dividend policy before the end of 2020.

Torstar said restructuring in 2019 reduced 640 positions, which will result in $41.3 million in annualized cost savings.

The efforts tie into other cost-savings measures: It also transferred eight pension plans to the College of Applied Arts and Technology Pension Plans, which reduced its exposure to defined benefit pension liabilities and resulted in a $24.6 million gain in the fourth quarter.

Earlier this month, it announced a $25.5 million sale of the land and building used by the Hamilton Spectator newspaper, which followed a decision last year to close its print and mailroom operations there.

Lorenzo DeMarchi, chief financial officer of Torstar, said during the earnings call Wednesday that sale is expected to close in the first quarter of 2020.

“We continued to face a challenging print advertising market in 2019 resulting from ongoing shifts in spending by advertisers,” DeMarchi said. “Similar trends have continued early into 2020 and it is difficult to predict if these trends will worsen, improve or continue.”

Print advertising still accounted for 32 per cent of revenue, followed by print and digital subscriptions at 25 per cent, flyer distribution at 22 per cent, and digital advertising at 13 per cent.

Looking at all of 2019 compared to the previous year, print advertising declined 21 per cent to $155 million, digital advertising declined 8.1 per cent to $60.3 million, and flyer distribution revenue declined 11 per cent to $103.5 million. Print and digital subscriptions increased one per cent to $119.7 million, but the company did not separate them out.

Overall, operating revenue in 2019 declined 11.8 per cent to 479 million.
Please share this

Potentially deadly fentanyl batch leads to 12 overdoses at T.O. injection site

An alleged drug dealer faces charges after 12 people overdosed on a potentially lethal batch of fentanyl at a supervised injection site in the heart of the city.

Toronto Police say emergency crews were called to The Works — located at Yonge Dundas Square — on Wednesday evening after people started overdosing and couldn’t be resuscitated by naloxone, which can reverse an opioid overdose.

There are currently no fatalities.

“Of particular interest is the fact that despite being administered naloxone, none of the individuals recovered in a way that is typical for a fentanyl overdose,” Supt. Steve Watts, who heads up the Organized Crime Enforcement, said Thursday at police headquarters.

“This leads us to believe that the substance distributed was a mixture of fentanyl and another undetermined substance.”

A sample of the drug has been sent to Health Canada to be analyzed.

A man was arrested for trafficking the drugs soon after police arrived on site.

Whanny Mymuller, 38, is charged with two counts of possession for the purpose of trafficking and possession of proceeds of crime.

“While we arrested one alleged drug dealer, there is the possibility that there are further batches of this substance remaining on our streets,” Watts said.

“As we have stated on numerous occasions, purchasing and ingesting street drugs is truly a form of Russian roulette,” he said. “The risk of public safety ingesting street drugs is critically high.”

Watts said many more people could have overdosed if police weren’t quick to react.

Unlike other jurisdictions, he said Toronto has no safe zone at supervised injection sites.

“We will enforce right up to the doorway and that needs to be done in light of (Wednesday) night,” Watts said.

Toronto’s Medical Officer of Health Eileen de Villa issued a statement saying her office has shared information within the harm reduction community about the tainted local drug supply.

“The events that unfolded clearly demonstrate the need for supervised consumption services and the life-saving benefit they provide,”de Villa said.
Please share this

Killer drunk driver Marco Muzzo could be free in April

On April 28, drunk driving killer Marco Muzzo will make another bid for early release from the minimum-security prison where he’s serving his 10-year sentence for a crash that killed three children and their grandfather in 2015.

It’s hard to imagine the heir to a billion-dollar construction empire won’t be successful this second time around — not when he’ll have served almost half of his sentence.

As unfair as it may seem, that’s considered a long time for a first offender — even for a horrific crime we will never forget.

On that bright Sunday afternoon of Sept. 27, 2015, Muzzo had just flown home on a private jet from his bachelor party in Miami when he got into his Jeep and headed to King City with almost three times the legal limit of alcohol in his system.

His poor victims didn’t stand a chance.

Muzzo, 29 at the time, blew through a stop sign and T-boned a family minivan at the intersection of Kirby Rd. and Kipling Ave. — north of Kleinburg — killing driver Gary Neville, 65, and grandchildren Daniel Neville-Lake, 9, brother Harrison, 5, and sister Milagros, 2.

The children’s mother, Jennifer Neville-Lake, had to learn her entire world had just been destroyed when she saw her van’s twisted metal on the news.

To his credit, Muzzo never tried to evade responsibility or even seek bail. He pleaded guilty and didn’t appeal his 10-year jail term, believed to be the stiffest on record for impaired driving causing death.

So how much time is enough time?

Whatever it is, it’s certainly not the scant three years that he had served when Muzzo first applied for day and full parole in November 2018.

The board took just 20 minutes to deny his release. No one questioned Muzzo’s remorse but rather his lack of insight into his issues with alcohol.

Insisting the tragedy was an isolated incident and he didn’t need alcohol counselling, Muzzo then stunned the parole hearing when he said he’d need to consume eight or nine drinks before considering himself too impaired to drive.

And for the first time, Muzzo had disclosed that three years before the crash, he’d been jailed briefly for public intoxication after being denied entry to a Vaughan strip club: When arrested, he was “belligerent and rude” to police and tried to kick out the cruiser windows.

No, he still didn’t get it.

“It would seem you were trying to present yourself as a modest and responsible drinker who had simply made a terrible mistake on the day of the fatal decision,” the two-member panel said in its written decision.

“In the board’s view, you intentionally failed to disclose key information as you were hoping to paint yourself in a better light. In reality, you were simply impeding the progress you might have otherwise made.”

Muzzo isn’t likely to make that mistake again come April. A year and a half will have passed since he was last before the parole board and you can be sure he’s been doing all the alcohol abuse counselling he can find.

Not surprisingly, Neville-Lake believes he’s yet to pay his debt to society.

On her Facebook page, she’s asked her many supporters to write the parole board to oppose Muzzo’s release: “I am asking if you would share your stories with the Parole Board and Corrections Canada about how my family’s chapter in impaired driving has affected and changed you,” she wrote. “Please tell them if you are afraid of what the offender represents or may do if he is released and comes back into your community.”

An online petition opposing Muzzo’s parole has garnered more than 27,000 signatures.

But Muzzo has been eligible for full parole since May 2019. Assuming he’s now done the necessary counselling and can convince the parole board that he now has insight into his problems that he didn’t have before, there’s little chance he won’t be set free.

He will get his second chance. While the mother and daughter of his victims will not.

As Neville-Lake wrote in her heartbreaking victim impact statement at his first hearing:  “I don’t get parole from this life sentence of misery and despair.”
Please share this

Victoria Smith said she was defrauded by Shaun Rootenberg

A romance con-artist deserves at least six years in prison for defrauding a woman of hundreds of thousands of dollars, leaving her feeling broken and suicidal, his sentencing hearing was told Monday.

In a victim impact statement read through the prosecutor, Victoria Smith said Shaun Rootenberg engaged in an elaborate plan of deception while he romanced her and another woman at the same time.

“I feel like I was raped by Shaun over the course of a year and a half,” Smith said in her statement. “My life story has been written by a villain.”

Superior Court Justice Beth Allen had convicted Rootenberg, of Thornhill, Ont., of defrauding Smith, despite his contention that frequent strip searches in detention had violated his rights and that the judge was biased.

Prosecutor Mitchell Flagg urged Allen to sentence Rootenberg, alias Shaun Rothberg, to between six and seven years in prison. He also called for him to pay Smith $622,000 in restitution.

“Mr. Rootenberg ruined a woman’s life, not just financially but emotionally and psychologically,” Flagg said. “He just keeps offending.”

Flagg said a greed-driven and remorseless Rootenberg had previously scammed close friends and family. He’d been convicted for multiple frauds, including one involving his psychiatrist brother worth $1.2 million, court heard.

The Smith scam came shortly after Rootenberg had finished serving a four-year penitentiary term for a 2009 conviction. It was, Flagg said, not a commercial transaction gone sour.

“This misuse of her money ... was not some kind of error in judgment,” Flagg said. “Mr. Rootenberg took every last dollar this woman had.”

Defence lawyer Bryan Badali denied the fraud was sophisticated and complex. It involved only one victim, who failed to do due diligence before handing over her cash, the lawyer said.

“Ms. Smith, as Your Honour found, failed to protect herself,” Badali said. “(But) I’m not saying she should be blamed for it.”

Badali submitted letters supportive of the father of two in calling for a sentence of three and a half to four years for his client, who still insists he’s innocent, and a fine or restitution of $558,907.25.

Smith, a divorced mother of two, met Rootenberg on the e-Harmony dating site in July 2013. Believing him to be a financier, she would soon give him $595,000 to invest for her. Instead, Rootenberg bought himself a new BMW and paid off gambling debts.

Smith, who initially believed she was involved with a Shaun Rothberg, complained to police about 18 months after meeting him, when she accidentally discovered his real identity.

“I received a shock that changed me forever,” Smith said in her statement. “I was in a relationship with a man that had been lying to me and stolen my life savings.”

Smith said she suffered a nervous breakdown, almost succeeded in killing herself, and still has unrelenting anxiety and difficulty trusting anyone.

Rootenberg, she also said, was having unprotected sex with her while also sleeping with another woman.

Toronto police initially charged the repeat offender with defrauding a second woman, Dr. Kim Barker, but those charges were dropped.

Barker resigned under a cloud as medical officer of health for the Algoma Public Health Unit in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., in 2015 after her affair with Rootenberg became known. She had hired him as Shaun Rothberg, to be interim chief financial officer of the unit.

Recently disclosed documents show Barker, who says he preyed on her vulnerability as a legally blind woman, hid her close personal relationship with Rootenberg from the health unit board.

On the stand briefly on Monday, Rootenberg told court that frequent lockdowns in pretrial detention and issues with disclosure had hampered his ability to defend himself properly.

Allen reserved her sentencing decision.
Please share this

Anaheim Ducks @ Toronto Maple Leafs February 7, 2020 NHL Game Highlights

Please share this