We just wrapped our sports issue at @thelocal.to with this excellent profile of one of Canada's best wheelchair rugby players. This story avoids all the clichés you've heard about para athletes and instead presents you with a complex image of a young man at a crossroads—don't miss it.

“He has to keep winning, keep winning, keep winning.” Team Canada's youngest wheelchair rugby player is driven by a need to dominate. It's also what seems to bring him the most grief, writes @wencyleung.bsky.social in the final story from our sports issue: thelocal.to/wheelchair-r...

Fuelled by waves of South Asian immigration, cricket has become one of Canada's fastest-growing sports, writes Vikram Nijhawan. But overcrowded fields, failing businesses, and allegations of corruption are threatening the game from within. thelocal.to/cricket-popu...

Womens sports are booming in Canada right now. But without female coaches at the helm, a generation of young athletes may miss out on the opportunity to learn a new way to play, writes @curiouslana.bsky.social. New from our sports issue: thelocal.to/womens-sport...

I wrote about my beloved baseball Maple Leafs signing Yasiel Puig. thelocal.to/yasiel-puig-...

Trans-inclusive health care is already hard to find in Ontario. Now, growing anti-trans rhetoric is making physicians more hesitant to get trained in gender-affirming care, experts tell @ziyajones.bsky.social. A new feature published in partnership with @script.health: thelocal.to/trans-health...

Kids aren’t moving or playing enough. Part of the problem, argues Rachel Giese, is the rise of the massive competitive youth sports industry. thelocal.to/youth-sports...

Making it pro as a soccer referee in Canada is in many ways harder than making it pro as a player, writes Sam Rosati Martin. That doesn’t stop this corps of ambitious, self-serious officials from trying. thelocal.to/soccer-refer...

Wait, how much are we spending on reusable cups? @michaeldeforge.bsky.social and @wencyleung.bsky.social make sense of the costs and payoffs of hosting the World Cup in seven illustrations. thelocal.to/fifa-world-c...

Today we launch our latest issue, “Sports and the City.” The World Cup is a reminder of the massive influence sports can have over a place like Toronto—reshaping our geography, sparking celebration or mourning, and remaking our experience of the city. thelocal.to/summer-2026/

“It feels hyperbolic, it feels morbid, but I'm very concerned that my day-to-day life is gonna require stepping over dead bodies.” Don't miss @emmapaling.bsky.social's stunning feature on the impending closure of Moss Park's safe consumption site, your Sunday #longread. thelocal.to/moss-park-sa...

I've been thinking of The Local's sports issue as 'sports from the margins'—every Toronto sports story you won't have heard about during FIFA, but ought to know. The issue just wrapped this week. If you missed it, now's your chance to take a look: thelocal.to/summer-2026/

I'm so happy to share that my 2025 feature on Ontario's worm industry won gold at the Canadian Association of Journalists awards and silver at the National Magazine Awards! What an honour. Thanks to the judges, my sources, the worms, and my wonderful team for allowing me to pursue this wacky story.

Impressive new series on the lack of oversight and resource shortages plaguing Ontario’s long-term care system, meticulously reported by @royinori.bsky.social in @thelocal.to

Last night, our Wild Wild City issue won Best Editorial Package at the National Magazine Awards! @nickhunebrown.bsky.social also won gold for his story from the issue, Breakdown at the Racetrack, and @royinori.bsky.social silver for hers, The Worm Hunters of Southern Ontario. Congratulations! 🎉

So much great work to celebrate from last night's NMAs... Big love to the whole team @cangeo.bsky.social for awards in feature writing and photo essays!! And huge congrats to pals including @nickhunebrown.bsky.social, @royinori.bsky.social, @arnokopecky.bsky.social, and @patkanephoto.bsky.social!

Congratulations @royinori.bsky.social! 🎉

@thelocal.to's first audio story! Listent to the great @royinori.bsky.social read this powerful piece.

He Complained About His Mother’s Care. The Long-Term Care Home Restricted Him From Seeing Her. Five years after Ontario banned the practice, families still being punishment for complaining about inadequate care, by @royinori.bsky.social thelocal.to/ontario-long... via @thelocal.to

If you've ever wished you had more time to read our work at The Local, we've now made it easier for you, debuting a new audio version of our latest story today - with ✨ no AI! ✨ Just hours of hard work from our team and me getting slightly dizzy staring at thousands of words on the page!

This story is the kind of work that made me want to become a journalist - to be able to bring to light an intimate, human story, something that few know about but that may in time affect all of us. I'm very grateful to my sources in this piece, who made room for me in the midst of their grief:

My latest, for the weekend crowd:

At a time when governments are withholding data and information at every level, building an algorithm to scrape data from 17,500+ documents—with no AI—is an unparalleled skill. It's something not a lot of journalists in Canada can do. A privilege to team up with Xavi for a project of this scale!

@royinori.bsky.social started talking about this incredibly ambitious project months and months ago. Today, @thelocal.to is launching its Inspecting Long-Term Care issue, which she single-handedly wrote. It is phenomenal data journalism. thelocal.to/spring-2026/

The Local does this thing where they'll publish an investigation and I'll be like "is this the most crucial work I've read this year?", and then they'll publish another and I'm like "is THIS the most crucial work I've read this year?" and so on until the sun explodes. LOOK at the work they did here!

EXCLUSIVE: In the wake of the pandemic, the Ford government set the target of one proactive inspection a year at every long-term care home. But our analysis of thousands of inspection reports reveals less than 40% of LTC homes received a proactive inspection in 2025. thelocal.to/ontario-long...

Tens of thousands of Ontarians are on #longtermcare waitlists. Gathering never-before-seen data on performance indicators, @xavierrichervis.bsky.social, Ilyass Moffadel, and I have created a tool to help people make informed choices about where to place their loved ones: thelocal.to/long-term-ca...

With data from 17,500 inspection reports, five months of work, and dozens of sources—families, health care workers, experts, policy makers—our new investigation on the state of long-term care reveals broken promises, and seniors being left behind by an inequal system. thelocal.to/ontario-long...

From Safe Parkside: look what happened on Parkside Drive after Premier Doug Ford banned speed cameras.

The Local is expanding! After seven years focusing on hyper-local reporting from Toronto, we're going (very slightly) west. We're thrilled to introduce our first Peel Reporter, @prarthanapathak.bsky.social! thelocal.to/the-local-ex...

personally I think it's a very big deal that the Canada bureau chief for the @nytimes.com — certainly one of the highest-paid journalists in the country — asked an unspecified "AI tool" what Poilievre said & published its AI-hallucinated quotes in her reporting.

Best Feature Article (Long): “Why Did a Group of Teenage Girls Kill a Man in a Downtown Toronto Parkette?” by @royinori.bsky.social. Editor: Dafna Izenberg; fact checker: Amarah Hasham-Steele; and illustrator: Alexandra Newbould. thewalrus.ca/why-did-a-gr...

Love that our issue about urban wildlife got so many nominations. Especially glad to see this story, in which @royinori.bsky.social hangs out in a field in the middle of the night picking worms, get the respect it deserves

So happy for @thelocal.to! Congrats to my amazing colleagues and our excellent contributors! 🎉 Especially to @royinori.bsky.social, @nickhunebrown.bsky.social, @kunalchaudhary.bsky.social, and the whole team behind our Wild Wild City issue

Every day with this team is a marvel, especially when you get to celebrate the work of your amazing colleagues and contributors. Check out our stories that received national nods last week, and congratulations to all the nominees 🥳

I've been offline on a deadline the past week so I'm only now getting to express how thrilled I am at being nominated for two National Magazine Awards, for stories in @thelocal.to and @thewalrus.ca. Honoured to be named alongside so many brilliant people. Unreal! magazine-awards.com/en/2026nomin...

Another year, another wonderful roundup of talent in the NMAs noms. @nickhunebrown.bsky.social! @royinori.bsky.social! @arnokopecky.bsky.social! @marcellodicintio.bsky.social! @alisonmotluk.bsky.social! @tajjaisen.bsky.social! @juliesobowale.bsky.social! @patkanephoto.bsky.social! + so many more...

Incredible story out in The Local today from @wencyleung.bsky.social and @chloeellingson.bsky.social about the human cost of cuts to refugee supports. The individual fallout of a decision like this is, for already marginalized refugees or asylum seekers, in the hundreds or thousands of dollars.

Being trusted to do this story, which was unlike anything I'd done before, was a privilege, and I'm grateful to now be recognized among an amazing group of fellow nominees. Congrats all, and special thanks to my editor Dafna and fact-checker Amarah, both extraordinary individuals and collaborators ❤️

Correction: that's five DPA nominations, not four, with our nomination for General Excellence for small publications (an award we've won four of the past five years!) Thanks to all the staff and contributors who make The Local generally excellent!

And our summer animals issue, Wild Wild City, is nominated for best editorial package. Congrats to all the nominees! thelocal.to/summer-2025/

@nickhunebrown.bsky.social's "Breakdown at the Racetrack" is nominated for Best Feature Article: Long. thelocal.to/breakdown-at...

@wencyleung.bsky.social's "Bird Flu Comes For Toronto’s Wildlife" is nominated for Best Science and Technology Writing. thelocal.to/avian-flu-to...

Quick 🧵 of the nominees: @kunalchaudhary.bsky.social is nominated in Best Feature Article for "How Ontario Sleepwalked into a Crisis in Higher Education" thelocal.to/ontario-post...

Amazing news to see the team celebrated in these DPA nominations, including work from the always smart @kunalchaudhary.bsky.social and my lovely colleagues @wencyleung.bsky.social @nickhunebrown.bsky.social ✨🎉

Finalists/Finalistes : Community written feature / Reportage écrit communautaire ⭐️Samantha Beattie - CBC Hamilton ⭐️Eve Cable - Eastern Door ⭐️Kathryn Mannie - TorontoToday ⭐️Inori Roy - The Local #CAJawards #prixACJ

Big congrats to @nickhunebrown.bsky.social @wencyleung.bsky.social @royinori.bsky.social for these stellar pieces of journalism and storytelling. I know how hard they worked to bring these stories to readers. Well deserved. 👏

This feature was a delight and privilege to write, and I was so busy having fun that I had no idea it would resonate with so many people (even across oceans!) and be recognized by my peers. I'm very lucky to get to do this work, and grateful to my @thelocal.to team for letting me chase this story. 🪱

So pleased to see this recognition for my wonderful colleagues @nickhunebrown.bsky.social and @wencyleung.bsky.social, and grateful to be nominated!

On April 4, TPS entered the lobby of Comedy Bar moments before the start of a fundraising event for Gaza. That same night, cops entered a theatre at TIFF Lightbox midway through a screening of 'Palestine 36.' I dug into this concerning trend for @thegrindto.bsky.social.