A day in the life of Kristyn Wong-Tam
From a staid heritage meeting to the scene at Seaton House, councillor has a lot to manage
It takes 12 hours on the job for Kristyn Wong-Tam to feel light-headed. With one meeting to go in her crammed-to-the-hilt schedule, the city councillor locks her bike and pops into a Jarvis St. convenience store. An apple juice and chocolate bar will serve as her only food since lunch, seven hours ago, when she slammed some shrimp fried rice at her computer.
“Hopefully, I’ll have a real meal tonight,” she said in a tone that suggests she might actually not.
Moments later, she speed-walks into the ballroom of the neighbouring Ramada Hotel, straight to the front rows of a meeting already in progress on the George St. revitalization plan, where she promptly asks for the microphone and delivers an off-the-cuff speech praising city staff for their work and underlining the importance of the proposal. She has yet to crack open the juice. It’s the breathless conclusion to another day in the life of the councillor for Toronto’s most populous ward, a 13-hour grind that her policy adviser rated as nine out of 10 on the busy-scale (he pegs the average day at seven).
As the municipality considers redrawing the political boundaries of the city to ensure more equal representation, Wong-Tam acknowledged she has an outsized workload as councillor for Ward 27, Toronto Centre—Rosedale. A city-funded review published last month named Wong-Tam’s ward the largest of 44 political zones in Toronto, with 56 per cent more residents than average.
Echoing the report’s recommendations, Wong-Tam said changes should be made to give residents better access to the politicians they elect to city hall — especially in more crowded jurisdictions such as hers.
“Sometimes I need to schedule a bathroom break,” Wong-Tam said in her office shortly after 8 a.m. on a recent Thursday, 18 months into her second term as councillor. “I didn’t expect that whole summers would go by where I didn’t get to sit on a patio.”
Wong-Tam’s turf stretches from north of St. Clair Ave. south to the affluent avenues of Rosedale, the gay village and condo-sprouting environs east of Yonge St., through the Allan Gardens and Moss Park neighbourhoods. She said her duties range from answering calls about downed tree branches on residential streets to dealing with public housing evictions and complaints about bedbug infestations.
Indeed, a single day’s schedule on June 2 ran the gamut from what may be the most staid environment imaginable — a five-hour heritage preservation board meeting at city hall — to a cycling trip at sunset past the hardscrabble scene outside the Seaton House men’s shelter.
“(The workload) is very tied to the conditions and the profile and the demographics of the ward,” Wong-Tam said. “From the top of the 1 per cent to the bottom of the 99 per cent.”
On June 2, Wong-Tam set her alarm for 7 a.m. as usual, but woke up well before that — also as usual. “It’s a bloody curse,” she said later that morning. “It’s very difficult for me to shut down my mind.”
She arrived at the office around 8 a.m. and used the time to read and respond to a pile of emails while fielding questions about her workload from a Star reporter. She talked about the Yonge St. redesign plans and the Open Streets initiative. She touched on the Toronto Biennial of Art project and her support for the city’s bid to host Expo 2025, before briefly reviewing notes to help interview candidates for the city’s vacant ombudsman position.
“That’s on top of the day-to-day work,” she said, and laughed.
“I’m making myself tired.” Realizing the time, she breezed down the hall into the long-lasting heritage board meeting, during which she put forward two motions amending designation proposals, popped out briefly for what she calls a “body break” (trip to the bathroom), and left twice for longer periods to authenticate the passport of a foreign exchange student and sit down for a face-to-face with the new manager from Seaton House.
After it finally ended, Wong-Tam returned to her office to prepare for another whopper of a meeting: a three-hour sit-down with various city departments and community members to discuss a condo development at 1 Bloor St. W.
While she murmured to herself as she reviewed notes at her desk, a staffer knocked on the door to tell her about an agreement with a construction company that needs to close part of a road.
She nodded and told him to make sure the construction team commits to power-washing the area every day.
The staffer left and another immediately appeared in the doorway to drop off material about the ombudsman interviews. Seconds later, a third staffer, Wong-Tam’s policy adviser David Simor, poked his head in and said, “My turn to bother you,” before telling her the Bloor St. people had gathered in a conference room down the hall. Wong-Tam glanced up from her desk. “It comes in waves,” she said.
Three hours later, she was sitting among concerned parents in a sunlit gymnasium at the Church Street Public School. Most were worried about how a 38-storey condo project would cast a shadow across the playground.
Wong-Tam, who hadn’t been invited to the meeting, stood up to address the audience in a reassuring and concerned tone. She was already late for her next meeting, and after her speech she jetted away on her bike — helmet-clad and heavy on the hand signals — to the Ramada for the community consultation meeting on the George St. and Seaton House “re- vitalization” plan.
Wong-Tam doesn’t complain about the frantic pace. It doesn’t seem to faze her at all. She talks about the councillor workload as an issue of democratic access, made worse by cutbacks to city staff and municipal resources in recent years. Within her booming downtown ward, against the backdrop of huge projected growth in the centre of the city, Wong-Tam feels there is simply more work to be done and fewer people to do it.
But such thoughts were far from her mind after the Seaton House meeting. She said the redevelopment is one of the most important projects of her tenure on council.
As people weighed in on the details of the project, she said she felt motivated and excited to keep pushing for her constituents — classic politician-speak.
But there was no denying the energy she could still project at the end of such a long and multi-faceted day. Wong-Tam smiled when asked about this. “Maybe it was the Snickers bar,” she said.