What Happened in Toronto Last Week — July 13–19

Toronto briefly had the worst air on the planet

For a few days last week, Toronto had the worst air quality of any city in the world, according to the Swiss monitoring firm IQAir, thanks to smoke drifting down from wildfires in northwestern Ontario. An orange air quality warning has been up since then; Friday morning cleared briefly before Environment Canada warned that "very poor" conditions would return by evening and possibly linger through the weekend. The smoke has already knocked out outdoor plans, including Wednesday's FIFA Fan Festival watch party downtown. Up north, it's far more serious: Doug Ford counted 191 active fires, 81 of them out of control, with evacuations across several communities and one blaze that damaged homes on Namaygoosisagagun (Collins) First Nation. No lives have been lost, which Ford credited to frontline crews.

The World Cup packs up and heads home

Canada's month as a World Cup host wrapped up with fans packing into Toronto and Vancouver for the final between Spain and defending champion Argentina. Official FIFA Fan Festivals in both cities drew thousands, and bars around Liberty Village braced for the overflow. Toronto hosted six of the tournament's matches, part of the first men's World Cup staged across Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, and the final was expected to pull nearly two billion viewers worldwide. The tab is still adding up: Canada's parliamentary budget officer estimated total hosting costs at about $1.07 billion back in May, with Toronto on the hook for a projected $380 million.

The cloud is thirstier than it looks

A single planned data centre in Richmond Hill could use about 2.4 million litres of water a day — roughly what 10,000 people go through — and it's far from the only one. Councillor Carol Davidson counted 10 data centres across Vaughan, Markham and Richmond Hill, four of them under construction and three more planned, and warned that together they could soon use as much water as 100,000 residents. She's asked York Region to work out whether its water, power and wastewater systems can keep up as both the server farms and the population grow. Richmond Hill backed her request on Wednesday, so the regional council will take it up in September. The unease isn't just local: Hamilton council spent the same week weighing a moratorium on big data centres, and a StopTheDataCentre group in Vaughan wants to make it a fall election issue.

Enjoy that Spadina Station entrance while it lasts

If you're partial to the little entrance just north of Bloor at Spadina, take a good look — it's slated to come down. A report going to the TTC Board on July 22 lays out a plan to demolish and rebuild part of the station alongside a new 35-storey tower at 350 Bloor St. W. The upside for riders: the developer pays for a modern, fully accessible replacement, elevator included, at one of the TTC's busiest Line 1 and Line 2 interchanges, plus a one-time connection fee of around $293,000. The catch is timing. Demolition isn't set to start until 2028 and is expected to take about four years, which, as anyone who's survived Toronto construction knows, tends to be the optimistic estimate.