THE FIFTY MOST INFLUENTIAL

hardly anything went down in Toronto this year that didn’t bear the new premier’s imprimatur. Recreational pot became legal, but not before Ford steamrolled the pre-existing plans and implemented a framework for private sales. In September, students and teachers returned to the classroom unsure of whether they were allowed to call it a penis or a pee-pee or anything at all. A little over a month before voters went to the polls, Ford chucked the municipal electoral process into a blender. He roadblocked Trudeau’s carbon tax scheme, cancelled the basic income pilot and went on and on about the all-curing virtues of onedollar beer. So steady was the firehose feed of news flowing from Queen’s Park that you’d be forgiven for not paying attention to the other influential Torontonians who were busy changing the world in 2018. Chrystia Freeland emerged semi-victorious from her NAFTA arm-wrestle with Trump; Drake conquered the music world, and then Shawn Mendes did, too; a quirky Jungian psychology professor became the guiding light of a new global men’s movement; our adopted frightmeister, Guillermo del Toro, snagged four golden statuettes on Hollywood’s biggest stage; Jessica Mulroney became Pippa 2.0; and one brave, level-headed police officer at Yonge and Finch decided to holster his gun, rather than fire it—demonstrating to a world grappling anew with racism, bigotry and violence what Toronto is truly about.