I went undercover as an Amazon delivery driver.

“Outside the entrance of Amazon’s nondescript Scarborough warehouse on McNicoll Avenue is a sign with one of the company’s corporate mantras: ‘It’s still day one. Are you ready to make a difference?’ But I’m not here for a job with Amazon, not technically anyway. I answered an online ad for E.V.K. Limousine Services, a third-party subcontractor, or, in Amazon parlance, a ‘Delivery Service Provider.'”

Brendan Kennedy – Toronto Star – December 2019

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Every spring, he left Mexico to pick crops in Canada. One year he didn’t come home.

“The lemon-coloured house set behind a bright blue gate is Blanca Islas Perez’s great pride. Nestled in a sheltered valley, it is surrounded by farm-studded hills that come alive every morning to the sound of roosters and dogs. But the crops that paid for the one-bedroom bungalow were grown nearly 4,000 kilometres away, in the apple orchards and tobacco fields of eastern Canada.”

Sara Mojtehedzadeh – Toronto Star – October 2019

He was a scoundrel with a jealous wife and a troubled mistress. He made the deal of a lifetime — then vanished

“I first learned about Ambrose Small when I was exploring the Path, the labyrinth of shops and food courts underneath the downtown core. I was on assignment for the Star and I wondered if there were any mysteries connected to the place. I was told the story of Ambrose Small and the Grand Opera House, the long-demolished theatre on Adelaide St. that was once the toast of Toronto’s entertainment scene.”

Katie Daubs – Toronto Star – September 2019

Milked

“We visited organic and conventional farms, tested milk in labs, and interviewed industry experts, dieticians, scientists and professors, and found that consumers’ belief is cultivated by mischaracterizations about conventional milk and a 100-year-old, mystical farming philosophy that denounces regular milk producers as too reliant on chemicals. The organic seal of approval is awarded to farmers for meeting bureaucratic standards that emphasize note-taking and gives points to farmers who try but fail to meet them.”

Michele Henry – Toronto Star – July 2018

The Fix

“Kenroy is tired of being a human punching bag, taking jabs from residents. It’s a job hazard, for sure, but as he weaves his car through traffic, Kenroy starts thinking about the visiting dementia guru from England. His ideas seemed subversive at first but now Kenroy wonders, could they work? By the time he arrives at the dementia unit, Kenroy has a plan for Fred, the 89-year-old whose fists hit hard. Kenroy does something that could get him fired in another home. It works so well that word of his success grabs the attention of the home’s senior medical director, upending his long-held notions of care.”

 

Moira Welsh – Toronto Star – June 2018

Improbable Cause

“The housekeeper had been cleaning for two hours without knowing there was a crime scene upstairs. Her work was interrupted by a man at the door looking for Caleb Harrison, the homeowner, who hadn’t shown up to his office that morning. The housekeeper said she hadn’t seen Caleb, but his bedroom door was closed. They went upstairs together and found him lying in bed with a blanket pulled up to his chin, tucked in as though asleep.”

Amy Dempsey – Toronto Star – April 2018

He spent 17 years building a website for roadside attractions, but died before he could make his dream road trip

“During a family vacation in the early 1990s, the Sudbury geologist became fascinated with the monuments that interrupted the Canadian landscape. The internet was young and Ed, then in his 40s, made a website chronicling roadside attractions, like the big nickel in his hometown. People sent along their photos, and it became a never-ending census that captured monuments like the Wawa goose, and more obscure finds like the ‘World’s Largest Endangered Ferruginous Hawk,’ in Leader, Sask. In January 2015, I emailed Solonyka, believing his site could be a way into a series about small towns: “That sounds like a dream project,” he replied promptly. ‘Unfortunately I have a cold presently, however perhaps sometime later this week or next week I’ll be in touch to arrange a time.'”

Katie Daubs – Toronto Star – July 2017

Undercover in Temp Nation

“It is my first day as a temp at Fiera Foods, an industrial bakery that reeks of yeast and is alive with the constant drone of machinery. We are forming and packing raw, circular pastry dough into wet plastic trays — a shoulder-crunching task called pinching. These may well be the croissants you eat for breakfast. Supervisors shout at us to wake up. They shout at us to move faster, pinch nicer, work harder. No one talks through the noise and exhaustion. The factory relies heavily on temporary help agency workers. Its health and safety record is checkered; three temps have died here or at Fiera’s affiliated companies since 1999.”

Sara Mojtehedzadeh, Brendan Kennedy – Toronto Star – September 2017

 

Drugs at 4 months. Sexual abuse as a child. Now he fights to keep the monster inside

“His mother puts the painkillers in the 4-month-old’s milk bottle to stop his crying and make him sleep. And he does — so quietly that she may have forgotten he was even there. She disappears that December night in 1978 and never comes back. By the time his grandparents find him, the infant is alone, unconscious, the codeine eating through his stomach lining. The emergency surgery in Edmonton marks the beginning of 39-year-old Gabriel Smarch’s 2,000-page government case history.”

Jesse Winter – Toronto Star – October 2017