Washrooms for Customers Only”: Space, Dignity, and Sh*Tting in the City

“Washrooms for Customers Only”: Space, Dignity, and Sh*tting in the City

Edith Wilson

A Thesis

presented to

The University of Guelph

In partial fulfilment of requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts

Sociology

Guelph, Ontario, Canada

“WASHROOMS FOR CUSTOMERS ONLY”: SPACE, DIGNITY, AND SH*TTING IN THE CITY

Edith Wilson Advisor(s): University of Guelph, 2019 Dr. Mervyn Horgan

This thesis examines the narratives that explain the existence of washrooms for customers only

(W4CO) rules in the City of Toronto. Fifteen interviews were conducted with workers and managers at both chain and independent fast food and coffee shops along five strips in Toronto’s downtown core. In addition, a full listing of the public washrooms already available in the city was assembled, since no previous complete list existed. Descriptive statistics gathered show that

37.62% of the businesses in the research area have W4CO signs. Findings also show that although

W4CO signs are much less frequent in independent shops, independent shops also have many fewer washroom uses per hour than chain shops. Findings from interviews show that the high prevalence of homelessness and the intersection of homelessness with mental health issues and drug addiction were concerns for workers. However, most interviewees were interested in polic y solutions and tried to separate their often difficult experiences with the washrooms in businesses from discourse that stigmatizes vulnerable populations.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First, many thanks to the anonymous heroes of this project. I will always be grateful to the interviewees that took time out of long and stressful workdays, even sometimes days off, to talk to me. I sincerely enjoyed speaking with each one of you, and I hope that this research can contribute in some small way to making your workday easier.

I wouldn’t have been able to produce this thesis without Prof. Horgan’s unflappable patience and commitment to academic excellence. I was frequently absent or having thoughts that were completely unrelated to this work (why does our society care enough about a graveyard to build the highway around it?; how long will collective bargaining really go on for?; do anarchist theorists and Durkheim have anything in common?), but his willingness to put up with me made it possible for this research to take shape. I’m immensely grateful.

Thanks very much also to Prof. Tony Winson, my second reader. I will fondly remember the long conversations we had about all sorts of topics. Thanks to him for his kind encouragement of my work, both in the department and in my other projects.

Thanks to Prof. Kate Parizeau for her interest in my thesis project and her willingness to sit on my committee as external examiner. Her thorough feedback was invaluable in strengthening the final version of this work.

Thanks very much to the educators throughout my life who have believed in me – they laid the foundation that this rests on, especially Prof. Philip Walsh.

Thanks to Shelagh, who never got frustrated when she had to tell me (for the millionth time) that the courses to register each semester are UNIV…7500? 7200? Sorry Shelagh, I forgot…Thanks for your patience and your kindness.

Mom and Dad, I couldn’t have done it without you. See, I did finish my thesis! Sam, thanks for being there for me to bounce ideas off of and for being the best brother a sister could ever have.

Finally, thanks to my wonderful friends, both in school and out of it, who supported me in this venture and didn’t laugh (well, maybe you laughed a little) when I told you I was writing a hundred-page paper on washrooms.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract ...... ii Acknowledgements ...... iii Table of Contents ...... v List of Tables ...... vii 1 Introduction ...... 1 1.1 Research Context: A Brief History of Funding for Public Washrooms...... 2 1.2 Research Objectives ...... 7 2 Literature Review...... 8 2.1 Public Washrooms/Private Washrooms ...... 9 2.2 Whose Public Space?: Public Space and Stigma ...... 14 2.3 Stigma...... 16 2.4 The Right to the City ...... 21 2.5 Worker’s Rights and the Service Industry ...... 24 2.6 Chapter Summary...... 28 3 Methods...... 29 3.1 Gathering Publicly-Available Information...... 30 3.2 Descriptive Statistics ...... 32 3.3 Unobtrusive Observation...... 35 3.4 Semi-structured Interviews ...... 38 4 Findings...... 46 4.1 Publicly Available Data: How many public washrooms are already in Toronto? ...... 47 4.2 Quantitative Findings ...... 49 4.2.1 How common are W4CO rules? ...... 49 4.2.2 Who is using the washroom, and how much?...... 54 4.3 Qualitative observations ...... 61 4.3.1 Why W4CO?...... 62 4.3.2 Drug use in washrooms...... 63 4.3.4 Safety concerns, violence, and health crises in the workplace ...... 70 4.3.5 The police and workplace safety...... 74 4.3.6 No W4CO: Social justice and the safe neighborhood ...... 76

4.3.7 No W4CO: Social justice and the third place ...... 80 4.4 Chapter Summary...... 84 5 Discussion ...... 85 5.1 Introduction: The Right to the City ...... 85 5.2 Stigma and the W4CO Narrative ...... 89 5.3 Provision of resources for addictions and mental health: Why do workers deal with needles in the washrooms?...... 94 5.4 Social Distance, Working Conditions, and the Third Place ...... 101 5.5 Policy Suggestions ...... 104 6 Conclusion ...... 109 6.1 Limitations ...... 111 6.2 Contributions ...... 115 References ...... 117 Appendices...... 129

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Coffee Shops and Fast Food Restaurants Visited ...... 34 Table 2: Number of W4CO in corporate/chain shops ...... 50 Table 3: Number of W4CO in independent shops ...... 51 Table 4: Total Number and Percentage of W4CO ...... 52 Table 5: Comparison between independent shops and chain shops ...... 53 Table 6: Frequency of washroom use in chain/corporate and independent shops...... 56

Table 7: Descriptions of customers seeking access, time of access, and totals ...... 58

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LIST OF APPENDICES Appendix 1: Maps of Study Area ...... 129 Appendix 2: Text of Recruitment Email to Business Owners ...... 131 Appendix 3: Interview Guide...... 133

Appendix 4: List of Public Washrooms in Toronto ...... 135

1 INTRODUCTION

The lack of public washrooms in Canada is entering the public discourse in a dramatic fashion. A recent incident where a woman who was denied access to a Tim Horton’s washroom defecated in the middle of the floor, then flinging the feces at employees, brought the issue home to people in an uncomfortably visceral manner (CBC News, 2018; Keenan, 2018). Various writers have framed the lack of public washrooms as a serious problem (Bateman, 2014; Picard, 2015;

Dunham, 2016; Smith, 2017) affecting many different groups of people. Crohn’s and Colitis

Canada has been involved in championing GoHere programs that encourage businesses to open their washrooms to people who have Chron’s or colitis specifically (Daily Hive, 2017; Chron’s and Colitis Canada, 2018). Despite this interest in washroom access, there is little research on the washrooms for customers only rules (W4CO) that were involved in the now-infamous Tim

Hortons incident. Although some articles blame the shortage of public washrooms on businesses by shaming stores that have W4CO rules (Braganza, 2018; Keenan, 2018), the voices of people

(especially the low-wage workers who have to clean the bathrooms) who work in the businesses being covered are notably absent. This thesis seeks to remedy this by interviewing workers in coffee shops and fast food establishments who have direct experience in dealing with washrooms in the businesses where they work. By focusing on a segment of the narrative that has been overlooked, I hope to add to a fuller understanding of the problems that restrict washroom access in the city.

This chapter will introduce my research and the research questions, introduce some historical context for this research, and outline the structure of the rest of the thesis.

1.1 Research Context: A Brief History of Funding for Public Washrooms

The context of this research is one where there are very few public washrooms in Toronto

(more on that later, in the Methods and Findings sections), but there is little research showing how that happened. Many news articles openly acknowledge that in the absence of public washrooms, it is “an obliging bar or café that answers” that need (Bateman, 2014), but that this poses problems because “restaurants, even fast-food ones. increasingly limit access to paying customers” (Picard,

2015). This acknowledgement that people will use privately-owned washrooms in the absence of public ones implies that the lack of public washrooms is related to the presence of W4CO rules.

The research in this thesis deals with answering questions related to how employees deal with

W4CO rules (or their absence) in Toronto businesses, complemented by archival sources to establish a context for that research. Below, I will review archival research that clarifies the reasons for Toronto’s lack of public washrooms.

How did Toronto get to the point where it only has 3 stand-alone washrooms, and where along a main strip of road that takes at least 50 minutes to walk, a person can only find 2 publicly available washrooms in libraries or community centres, that are only open during the day until

8pm?

First, we have to go back to a time when Toronto was building public washrooms.

Toronto’s first public washroom was built in 1885. By 1905, another washroom at Queen and

Spadina had joined its predecessor, and by 1911 and 1912, city leaders were promising their constituents more washrooms, at Dundas and Brock, Lansdowne and Dovercourt, Queen and

Parliament, Bloor and Bathurst, and College and Spadina. The last of these was opposed for a

decade by the Broadway Methodist Tabernacle Church until the project was eventually shelved

(Bateman, 2014).

By 1921, gas stations were on the cusp of becoming more common, and projects to expand the city’s washrooms were shelved in favour of a new city bylaw that “required every new gas station (and there were soon to be many) to include a public washroom, essentially passing the burden of relieving the public to private companies” (Bateman, 2014).

Between 1921 and 1969 many washroom projects were proposed and then cancelled, with only a small number of washrooms being built along the Bloor-Danforth line.

In 1951, “a special committee on Washroom Facilities recommended to Council that the provision of toilet accommodation at Rapid Transit stations be left to the discretion of the Toronto

Transit Commission. Subsequently, public toilets were only made available at Eglinton Station on the Yonge Street Line” (City of Toronto Planning Board, 1968: 1). A document from this Special

Committee shows that the TTC had “strong views on this matter” with the Chairman going on record to say that “…accommodation for toilet facilities in underground stations had attracted immoral persons, such as homosexuals and other, and that it would be impossible to keep such places clean”1. The TTC continued to maintain resistance to installing more washrooms through the following decades for similar reasons, though their language became more measured as the years went on. Documents from meetings and recommendations circulated between the City and

1 Toronto Archives, Box 149778, “Public Washrooms” file 3

the TTC show the TTC’s reluctance to expand washroom facilities, both from the late 60’s and late 80’s.2

In December of 1964, the TTC “revised its policy slightly to include plans for public washroom facilities in the Bloor-Yonge, Islington and Warden stations on the Bloor-Danforth

Subway line” (City of Toronto Planning Board, 1968: 2). Some underground toilets at main transit hubs were installed in the following years, with community opposition following almost every step of the way, both in legal forums (a lawsuit was filed against the City where a judge awarded

J.F. Brown and Co. (a local company) $10,200 in damages for “injury” to the property) (Bateman,

2014) and in informal community protests.

Bateman writes, “[i]n 1969, deputy police chief Harold Adamson told the Globe and Mail the city’s public toilets were ‘frequented by every-increasing (sic) numbers of homosexuals.’

Deputy chief Bernard Simmonds said an average of six men a month were charged with gross indecency at TTC washrooms” (Bateman, 2014). Moreover, the mayor of Toronto, William

Dennison, was quoted as saying “[p]ublic washrooms have a bad effect on the neighborhood. They sometimes become hangouts for winies who are trying to sneak in and have a drink and dispose of the bottle.” (quoted in Bateman, 2014).

In the 1980’s, the last of the original free-standing washrooms built in the early 1900’s were closed as a cost-saving measure. Ironically, the issue of people doing their business outside in the absence of an open washroom continued to be well-documented. The issue of people relieving themselves in public around Allan Gardens is one example. In a series of letters going

2 Toronto Archives, Boxes 146325 and PO32910 “Washrooms in TTC” and “Public Washrooms” files 4

back and forth between Alderman Jack Layton (later to become the leader of the NDP) and various members of the Toronto Police Force in 1983, Layton demands an explanation for the arrest of 12 of his constituents for “walking on prepared ground”.3 The Conservatory at Allan Gardens does have washrooms inside, but the building is only open until 5pm. R.W. White, a Staff Inspector at

51 Division, replied to Layton’s protests by saying “…park employees complain that they are forced to spend many extra hours, amid the stench of urine and human excrement, repairing damaged shrubs, re-cultivating the flower beds…”4.

In 2007, “Toronto signed a deal with Astral media for 20 self-cleaning facilities. The contract was flushed in 2013 after only 2 installations so that the funds could be redirected to the ailing Bixi bike share network” (Bateman, 2014). Another journalist, Derek Flack, examined one of these washrooms in 2010 and wrote about it for blogTO, where he asked: “But who knows how things will play out over time? Will these washrooms become a haven for drug-users and the homeless? It's happened in other cities. While the door will open after the first twenty minutes inside, that doesn't mean the occupant is forced to leave the confines of what is, if one is living on the street, a pretty inviting place to sleep. Perhaps there are alarms bells or something” (Flack,

2010). Mayor Dennison and Harold Adamson’s words echo here, where the use of the space by people who are living with addictions or homeless serves to further dehumanize and ridicule them, and separate them from the rest of “us”.

And so, we find ourselves in the situation we are in now, where Toronto has only 3 free- standing washrooms, 249 washrooms sprinkled throughout the city in libraries and community

3 Toronto Archives, Box 411749, “Allan Gardens” file 4 Toronto Archives, Box 411749, “Allan Gardens” file 5

centres in the summer and 318 in the winter (these will be discussed further in the Methods and

Findings sections) and no centralized resource that lists the days and times where these facilities can be accessed.

Many of the behaviors that some community members find or have historically found problematic in public washrooms can be related to literatures that expose the lack or poor quality of care available for people who may be living with addiction problems, are psychiatric survivors, or who are dealing with mental health issues (Allodi and Kedward, 1973; Hartford et al, 2003;

Hatzenbuehler et al., 2013; Horgan, 2018). Since shelters are often full (Ontario Coalition Against

Poverty, 2016; Hales, 2017; Kneebone and Jadidzadeh, 2017; Beaumont, 2018; Health Providers

Against Poverty, 2018), many people spend nights on the street. In the absence of public washrooms and other resources, those issues that ‘community stakeholders’ find so troublesome end up, at least in part, in bathrooms of private businesses. As city documents from Toronto

Archives show, business complaints about having to provide washrooms instead of the city providing them has been a common complaint since at least the 1970’s5.

There are a few stigmatized identities that come up again and again in this history – from the 1950’s to the ‘80’s especially, gay men were targets of both law enforcement and other community members 6 (Wallace, 2010; Bateman, 2014). In all decades, people living with alcoholism (known colloquially throughout earlier City documents as “winies” or “winos”) are unwanted in public washrooms (Bateman, 2014). Finally, people who use drugs, especially injection drugs, are also unwanted, and came up frequently in interviews during this research.

5 Toronto Archives, Box 13871, “Public Washrooms” file 6 Toronto Archives, Box 140026, “Police Entrapment in Washrooms” file 6

Since the justifications provided by the City to support the non-provision of public washrooms seem to be either cost-saving, or response to police and community members concerned with stigmatized people in those spaces, the ability to access washrooms seems to be based on problems mostly related to the number of reported issues workers encounter in washrooms, which seem to be related to the density of homeless and precariously housed people in certain sections of the city.

Through the literature review, I will examine the value of seeing washroom access as something that can improve the Right to the City, as articulated by Henri Lefebvre (1968).

I am also interested in how the working conditions for low-wage employees in Toronto impacts how they implement W4CO rules. Although it is relatively easy to find City records that expose policy-maker’s stigmatizing discourse, and its impact on funding for public services, the reasons for the existence of W4CO are so far unknown. Given the fact that I know from my own work experience that it is the employees of the shop who clean the washrooms, it seems they would be in the best position to tell us how and if the rules are enforced. To this end, I will also be examining literatures that deal with working conditions in the service industry. I hope to add to the discourse surrounding public washroom access by clarifying the reasons for the lack of public washrooms, the reasons for the institution of W4CO rules, and if and how they are enforced.

1.2 Research Objectives

Operating on the idea that there must be a reason for the institution of W4CO rules in a city that has so few public washrooms, I wanted to answer a seemingly simple question: How do people who work in coffee shops and fast food restaurants in Toronto’s downtown core explain the existence of W4CO rules?

This question, as mentioned earlier, was prompted by dissatisfaction with the dominant discourse, and a wish to more fully explain the situation. Along the way, this thesis came to be about more than just W4CO rules – it is also an enquiry into the lack of state-run public washrooms that seems to be based on a lack of willingness to share space with stigmatized and marginalized individuals. To that end, my secondary research questions are: How many public washrooms are there in Toronto?; What percentage of businesses in the downtown core that have W4CO rules?;

“How do workers in different positions conceptualize their role in upholding W4CO in relation to both the public and their colleagues?” and What are the differences in washroom use between independent and corporate/chain shops?

This thesis contains 5 chapters besides the introduction. Chapter 2 is a literature review of extant work on public washrooms, guided by the archival research above. I also cover work on stigma, both territorial and otherwise, as well as Lefebvre’s Right to the City. Chapter 3 reviews the methods used to gather data. Chapter 4 explains the findings of the work, and Chapter 5 discusses those findings both in the context of the extant literature and new issues raised by interviewees. Finally, Chapter 6 concludes the thesis and discusses the limitations of the research.

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

First, I will review literature that is concerned with definitions of public space and private space more broadly, to establish the terminology that will be used throughout this paper.

Then, I will discuss issues of stigma that may impact the provision of washroom access, both public and private. I will also discuss the Right to the City in the context of how proper sanitation helps ensure this right.

Finally, I will discuss literatures related to worker’s rights and working conditions in the service industry, since my interviewees for this project work in this industry. The stresses associated with service industry jobs may impact how people relate to their workplace, and thus, to the washrooms in them.

2.1 Public Washrooms/Private Washrooms

In this study, I use the term “private” to denote washrooms in businesses like coffee shops and fast food establishments. Although these washrooms can act as public washrooms for some people, the fact that in many cases, business owners and employees can choose who to allow in diminishes their value as public resources. There is a lot of literature that considers if not washrooms, then at least the kind of places they are in, that deserves some attention here.

For example, in his influential book The Great Good Place, Oldenburg (1989) outlines a few rules that define what he terms a third place: it must be accessible, wholesome, unpretentious, open to people of many social classes, inexpensive, have regulars who frequent the place regularly and can help integrate newcomers, and perhaps have food and drink (Oldenburg, 1989: 45-62).

The term “third place” has been adopted by many other researchers to discuss privately-owned spaces that are open to certain members of the public. Each researcher brings their own tweaks to

Oldenburg’s definition, but still maintain the idea of a third place as somewhere where people can assemble and socialize, that is a centre for community. For example, Fronek and Chesner (2016);

Wakelin and Street (2015); and Moore, Gathman, and Ducheneaut (2009) transplant the idea of third space into the virtual realm. Since the publication of Oldenburg’s The Great Good Place

(1989), the internet has provided ever more varied platforms to form community and communicate with each other. Regardless of the platform used, the basic ideas describing the third place remain.

Although some modern coffee shops and fast-food restaurants fit Oldenburg’s model, not all do. For example, some limit the amount of time one can sit there (such as Tim Horton’s 20- minute time limit signs), many independent shops are too scrupulously curated in their aesthetic to feel like places where all are welcome (such as some of the independent shops discussed in the later sections of this paper), and many have W4CO signs, which violates Oldenburg’s implication that a Great Good Place is not necessarily somewhere where a person must always purchase something. There seems to be so much variation in the mood and welcoming feeling of modern coffee shops and fast-food restaurants that in this context, the term third place as a blanket to reference the private businesses outlined in this research would be incorrect.

In A World of Strangers (1973), Lyn Lofland describes a situation similar to Oldenburg’s third space (1989), where a person goes from customer, to patron, to resident — each of these levels indicating a higher and higher level of familiarity with a place, which then in turn may allow people to request favours from the business such as being able to sit down or use the washroom without buying anything (Lofland, 1973: 119-122). She talks about the privatization of space as the process by which space becomes privatized for an individual person. For her, privatization of space is not only an economic process by which corporations take over space previously owned by the government (Kohn, 2004; Nemeth and Schmidt, 2012; Toolis and Hammack, 2015), but also a process by which “city dwellers…avoid the world of strangers, to create, as it were, larger or smaller pieces of private or semiprivate space out of the public spaces of their urban environment” (Lofland, 1973). Christena Nippert-Eng characterizes these larger or smaller pieces as islands, but focuses her analysis on “…what happens at the beach…” (2010: 4) – in other words, what happens at the boundary between public and private that we must constantly negotiate. Her study was conducted in Chicago, but instead of focusing on the built environment of a city as 10

Lofland does, she focuses on the areas, objects and practices where we (in the case of her study, middle-class and upper-middle class people) try to maintain and negotiate our privacy: the keeping of secrets, purses, wallets, cell phones, doorbells and windows. Nippert-Eng defines privacy by our ability to negotiate these “islands of privacy” (Nippert-Eng, 2010), but Lofland distinguishes public space and private space from each other by the ability to legally deny access – as she says,

“A home owner or tenant may legally lock his door to the unwanted visitor. But a city may not restrict entrance to a public street” (ibid, 1973: 19). However, she herself critiques her definition as “crude” (ibid, 1973: 20), because of the multiplicity of ways that people try to deny access to others in spaces that should, by her definition, be public. Madanipour, an architect and urban planner, sees privacy in the city as a continuum from the privacy of the mind outward towards the impersonal space of the city (2010). In saying that cities and towns are built around a public/private divide, he adds that “…how a society divides its space into public and private spheres, and how this division controls movement from one place to another and access to places and activities” is a defining feature of these “settlements” (Madanipour, 2010: 1).

While Lofland and Nippert-Eng examine privacy and the ways we maintain and negotiate our own privacy in public space, other scholars focus on corporate privatization of public space.

Sorkin said that “The privatized city of bits is a lie, simulating its connections, obliterating the power of its citizens either to act alone or to act together” (1992: xv). Sorkin conceptualizes the modern city as a theme park that is not tied to any specific space, is obsessed with security, and creates simulations of reality, substituting its “happy regulated vision” for the “democratic public realm” (1992: xv).

Kohn (2004), Toolis and Hammack (2015), De Magalhães and Trigo (2017), and Nemeth and Schmidt (2012) are also critical of the idea of business as a public gathering space, and, like

Sorkin, see privatization as something to caution against. Nemeth in particular addresses the issue of whether public space is really as “public” as it seems, and is fiercely critical of initiatives that limit free speech and democratic participation in public space (Nemeth, 2009). He establishes a framework to understand “when, exactly, is space ‘taken out’ of the commons?” (Nemeth, 2012:

831). In these literatures, Elinor Ostrom’s (1990) idea of the commons functions as an ideal of public space.

Judit Bodnar (2015) remarks that “safety [in public space] can come at the cost of excluding groups defined as dangerous or simply non-consumers, so access and safety can clash, making the myth of the public difficult to maintain” (Bodnar, 2015: 2096). The exclusion of groups “defined as non-consumers” is the most common objection against the privatization of public space. Nemeth and Schmidt (2012) find that “…the use of the private sector to provide publicly accessible space leads to increased control over use, behavior, and access. Furthermore, while both publicly and privately owned public spaces tend equally to encourage public use and access, managers of privately owned spaces tend to employ more features that control behavior within those spaces”.

These researchers are skeptical that privately-owned space can provide the same opportunity for speech and expression as publicly-owned space, and argue that the idea of “public space” is largely a myth, or at the very least as a construct that often serves other interests than those of the public

(Nemeth, 2009; Collis, 2012; Kohn, 2004; Mitchell, 1995; Low, 2006; Madanipour, 2010). In other words, the kind of public space we have now is a “...triad of private management, public ownership and public access...” that has “...become that new recipe and norm for public space

regeneration closely followed by the model of privately owned public space” (Bodnar, 2015:

2096).

Their work further builds on the issues that Lofland (1973) addresses by refining definitions of what constitutes public space. Although there are a wide variety of ways that people may feel about the space and their place in it, much research in both sociology and critical geography indicates that privately owned spaces have more strict rules for behavior, which end up impacting people’s ability to be secure in what they can and cannot do in those spaces.

Because of the many different types of privately-owned space examined in this research, and the complicated relationship between the City and provision of public services, especially washrooms (more on that later), I will default to the terminology that designates legal ownership.

Private washrooms are any washrooms owned by an individual person or corporation as part of a business or home, and public washrooms are ones that are owned by and designated as public by the City or state.

Not included in public washrooms are ones that are semi-public institutions, such as those in universities or community health centres. This is because these places generally do not have washrooms specifically designated as public by the institution that owns them. Though universities are partially publicly funded, they are under no obligation to open their washrooms to members of the public. In contrast, I was able to verify by calling the Toronto Public Library that all the libraries in the city have public washrooms specifically because they are public buildings – the same applies to washrooms in parks and community centres.

2.2 Whose Public Space?: Public Space and Stigma

The feeling of spaces being public is connected to issues of class — a homeless person, for example, may not have the same experience of privately-owned parts of the public realm (or even places classified as public, like parks) being public as a person who has the capacity to fit into that space (Ali, 2014; Toolis and Hammack, 2015; Rennels and Purnell, 2017; Walsh, 2004). For example, Toolis and Hammack (2015) interviewed housed and unhoused members of a community to understand “how boundaries between ‘‘insiders’’ and ‘‘outsiders’’ are drawn in public space and mediated through individual discourse” (2015: 368). They found that “initiatives for

‘‘revitalization’’ and ‘‘urban renewal’’ often commodify public space, catering to the needs and interests of middle class and elite users, while devaluing and displacing low income and poor community members” (2015: 369). In keeping with Walsh’s (2004) findings, they show that part of this devaluing takes the form of criminalization, as ordinances and bylaws are passed to restrict behavior like sitting in one place for a long time, or sleeping in public.

Rennels and Purnell (2017) take a different tack: they use autoethonography to examine one of the author’s experiences of homelessness, and specifically their relationship to public space in that time. Referring to waking up on a park bench the first morning after having lost his home in a fire, and asking a man walking by for assistance, one of the authors says: “He looks through me as if I am a ghost and in that moment I realize that losing my home has propelled me into a world of invisibility, a world where I am seen but not seen and heard but not heard” (2017: 492).

This erasure is the consequence of a deep stigma against homeless people (Belcher and DeForge,

2012; Phelan et al, 1997; Kidd, 2007; Kidd et al, 2006) that often has traumatic mental health consequences for those stigmatized (Kidd, 2007; Kidd et al, 2006). In an attempt to quantitatively

measure the effect of stigma on homeless youth, Kidd (2007) finds that “experience of stigma was also found to have significant relationships with low self-esteem, suicidal ideation, loneliness, and feeling trapped” (Kidd, 2007: 296).

In discussing public space, then, it is important to keep in mind who is permitted or not, or welcomed or not in public space. This becomes especially important as public space is privatized for use by certain groups of people and not others. In the case of businesses like coffee shops and fast food establishments, these spaces are accessible only to people who can be understood by staff

(either managers, owners, or regular staff) to be respectable and not harmful to the business – this is important in considering the question of where coffee shops and fast-food restaurants fit into the urban fabric of publicly-accessible space.

The question of whether a space is public, then, depends a great deal on the lived experience of various groups. This makes the term “public space” difficult to define – any public space or private space can be constructed so as to be unwelcoming to certain groups of people. As mentioned earlier, the spaces defined as public in this study are ones that can be verified as public because of the ownership of the space – libraries, parks and community centres have public washrooms because their mandate specifically includes them. Universities, private businesses, and other semi-private and private places are not counted because some may enforce “customers only” rules and others may not.

However, this is complicated by the lived experiences of individuals and the literatures that address geographies of survival. These are defined by Mitchell and Heynan (2009) as the

“pathways of survival through the urban landscape that link together places to sleep or rest…locations to eat a meal or forage food, hidden corners of security and safety…and even 15

sometimes such relatively permanent fixtures as homeless encampments or shanty towns”. Others have addressed how informal recycling can be a part of these geographies (Wittmer and Parizeau,

2016); how different immigrant communities craft geographies of survival and avoid absolute homelessness (DeVerteuil, 2011); and the place of needle exchange programs in geographies of survival (McLean, 2012). Although geographies of survival can include places specifically set up to serve marginalized populations, they can also include individual “finds”, thus complicating ideas of what is public, and for who. A few people may have gained access to a specific place through their interactions with workers in the building, but that access is not something that is necessarily extended to everyone. This is similar to Lofland’s (1973) idea that people carve out pathways through a city of strangers in order to make life easier and to combat loneliness.

The washrooms discussed in this research are all privately owned, but do not necessarily occupy the same position with regard to the third place (Lofland, 1973; Oldenburg, 1988) or public space more broadly. Some of them (like the one I’m sitting in right now) could be classified as third places, but some of them fit more into the dystopian picture of private space that the critical geographers cited above (Nemeth, 2009; Collis, 2012; Kohn, 2004; Mitchell, 1995; Low, 2006;

Madanipour, 2010) paint.

2.3 Stigma

Goffman’s explanation of the ancient Greek origin of stigma is making someone “...a blemished person, ritually polluted, to be avoided, especially in public places” (Goffman, 1963).

Stigma, then, is something that disqualifies people from being fully accepted in society. The categories that society establishes allow us to classify strangers “without much thought” (ibid.

1963: 11) when we encounter them in public. Goffman encapsulates this treatment by simply saying “[b]y definition, of course, we believe the person with a stigma is not quite human” (p. 5).

In Douglas’s work, dirt is “matter out of place” (1966: 36). For her, dirt is “the by-product of a systematic ordering and classification of matter, insofar as ordering involves rejecting inappropriate elements” (ibid., 1966: 36). Douglas says that “With us pollution is a matter of aesthetics, hygiene or etiquette, which only becomes grave insofar as it may create social embarrassment. The sanctions are sanctions, contempt, ostracism, gossip, perhaps even police action” (1966: 74).

Washrooms have long been the site of fierce debate over who is allowed in that is tied to social stigma. Faktor (2011), Norén and Molotch (2010), Wallace (2011), Nash (2006) and

Cavanagh (2010, 2011) discuss LGBTQI2 issues and washroom discrimination, with particular focus on how the built environment is structured around a gender binary that marginalizes and others trans people in particular, but also other people who do not fit the heteronormative mold. A study by Catherine Taylor and Tracey Peter (2011) that covered all of Canada except Quebec and had over 3000 respondents found that 43.1% of LGBTQ high school students see washrooms in their school as unsafe (Taylor and Peter, 2011). The marginalization of gay men in public washrooms is well-documented in even the archival literature, where Alderman Jack Layton is on record reprimanding the department store The Bay for their collaboration with the Toronto Police.

In that instance, a police officer “cruised” a gay man in the Bay’s washroom until the man took him up on the offer, at which point he was arrested7. In another instance, Layton wrote a letter to

7 Toronto Archives, Box 140026, “Police Entrapment in Washrooms” file 17

the editor to all the large newspapers in Toronto decrying the circumstances that led to a gay man’s suicide, after he was charged with indecency in a public washroom8.

The issues that LGBTQI2 people face in washrooms are starting to be more and more well- documented. However, they are not the only group that faces discrimination in that context.

Homelessness is frequently identified in the literature as one of the factors that makes washroom access most difficult (Jacobson, Oliver and Koch, 2009; City of Toronto, 2001; Daiski et al, 2012;

Chesnay et al, 2013). In An Urban Geography of Dignity, Jacobson, Oliver and Koch (2009) define what it means to have access to dignity in an urban environment (in this case, Toronto). They conclude that for people who have limited access to resources, everyday interactions in public space can either build dignity or tear it down. Access to what the authors call “quasi-public” spaces is particularly problematic: “In quasi-public areas like public transit vehicles, libraries, and coffee shops, appearance and other dignity markers often regulate admission. People who are dirty, disheveled, and smelly are seen as dangerously ‘‘other’’ by the mainstream, as ideological and physical threats to public order, and are thus often shunned and excluded (Kawash, 1998)”. The

Kawash (1998) paper referenced by Jacobson, Oliver and Koch (2009) is concerned with the

“homeless body” as “…less an attribute of homeless people than it is an event that marks the exclusion of the homeless from the public” (1998: 324-25). This exclusion obviously extends to the washrooms contained in buildings, though they are not explicitly mentioned.

Daiski et al (2012), who also conducted their research in Toronto, focused on the suburbs instead of the city core. They propose more public washrooms as a solution to some of the

8 Toronto Archives, Box 140026, “Police Entrapment in Washrooms” file 18

problems that homeless people face (2012: 120), and although they recognize the problems with maintaining one’s dignity that Jacobson, Oliver and Koch (2009) do, they are more focused on the differences and similarities between urban and suburban homelessness, the latter of which is often marked by even fewer resources than urban homeless people have access to.

Many studies also recognize the intersection between homelessness, mental illness, and addictions issues (Greenwood, Stefancic and Tsemberis, 2013; Tsemberis and Eisenberg, 2010;

Stergiopoulos et al, 2014; Wolfson-Stofco et al, 2017; Svoboda, n/d; Svoboda, 2015). A study by

Grinman et al (2010) reports that 40% of the sample of homeless people in Toronto reported having drug problems in the past 30 days, a situation that was often connected with mental health issues.

Drug use of all kinds is heavily stigmatized (Goffman, 1963; Ahern, Stuber and Galea, 2007;

Janulis, Ferrari and Fowler, 2013). However, injection drug users face particular stigmatization

(Jackson et al, 2010). In public places, the “matter out of place” (Douglas, 1966) that is left behind from injection drug use is dangerous to other people, and a topic of public concern (Kral et al,

2011). This may only further serve to stigmatize those who must inject in public places. Because

“substance disorders are viewed as a combination of crime and disease” (Janulis, Ferrari and

Fowler, 2013), stigmas are compounded for people who are both homeless and dealing with addictions.

Injection drug use is not the only addiction issue that is difficult to treat in the homeless population, however. Archival documents mentioned in the introduction particularly target people living with alcoholism. Dr. Tomislav Svoboda is the clinical director at Seaton House in Toronto and one of the founders of the Annex program, which is currently Toronto’s only “wet” men’s

shelter where men who are homeless and living with alcoholism can have alcohol (Svoboda, n/d;

Vittala, 1998). To my knowledge, there is no wet women’s shelter in Toronto.

There are also implications for an application of territorial stigma here. Since, as explained in the introduction, many washrooms were torn down or never built because of a fear of contamination by stigmatized persons, it is worth covering literatures that discuss the relationship between the stigmatization of space and that of persons.

The stigma of the people who use the space rubbing off the space itself has been recently taken up by Takahashi et al (1997), Purdy (2003), Smith (2012), Jacobs and Flanagan (2013),

Wacquant et al (2014), Collins et al (2016), and Horgan (2018), especially as it relates to whole low-income neighborhoods or housing projects. Territorial stigma can be described in the following way: “Where Goffman distributes stigmata among three broad classes based on

‘abominations of the body’, ‘blemishes of individual character’, and ‘tribal’ affiliation ‘transmitted through lineages’, Wacquant spotlights space as a distinctive anchor of social discredit” (Wacquant et al, 2014: 1272). In other words, space can be considered an extra category in addition to

Goffman’s original three classifications.

Takahashi et al (1997) and Collins et al (2016) both deal with people who are either homeless or precariously housed, and HIV/AIDS. Both of those research projects specifically address the difficulties in accessing health care and other public resources. Other research, such as

Hatzenbuelher et al (2013) also addresses the health effects of stigmatization, and identifies stigma itself as “a central driver of morbidity and mortality at a population level” (2013: 1). While Purdy

(2003) and Jacobs and Flanagan (2013) deal with public housing projects, Horgan (2018) differs from this focus in addressing privately-owned rooming houses. He expands on the idea of 20

territorial stigmatization by considering the process of destigmatization, which can occur through gentrification or through symbolic reinscription (Horgan, 2018). Referring to homeowner demands to purge the neighborhood of rooming houses in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, Horgan notes: “And so the process of stigmatization here is extended from persons to places, from individual pathology to social and spatial taint” (2018: 505). As we integrate this new category into our lexicon for discussing stigma, it is worth thinking about whether some public washrooms, like the Chicago neighborhood described by Wacquant et al, can be “…an infectious feature of everyday discourse feeding generalized scorn for and fear of their inhabitants, a staple of journalistic and political discussion…” (2014: 1272).

2.4 The Right to the City

The exclusion of certain people from public space, and the difficulty for those same people in accessing privately-owned spaces, invokes Henri Lefebvre’s The Right to the City (1968), where the centre of the city becomes no more than a hub of consumption and centralized power, destroying the possibility of more public uses. He proposes that the right to participate in the making of urban centres is in fact a human right (Lefebvre, 1968). If we take him as being right in this matter – that, because modern life tends to be concentrated in cities, a lack of power to participate in their making is exclusionary (Goodman and Harvey, 2009)– then we also have to consider that this making of the city is practically contingent on the ability to operate with dignity in the built environment. If a person cannot do this, then their right to the city is curtailed, and social and political participation both suffer.

Lefebvre describes the modern city centre as being focused around a centre of decision- making power (1995: 24-25). There is also ample place for “la Fête” — parades, celebrations, 21

revelry — that according to Lefebvre, forms a large part of the core function of modern cities as we progress further and further into a society based around consumption (1995: 13). In addition, and perhaps because of both these things, there is expansive space for protest and efforts to hold the centre of decision-making power accountable, as Toronto’s history shows – the G20 protests of 2010 and Occupy (Kohn, 2013) are both good examples. In Lefebvre’s words, the right to the city seeks to “make more practical the rights of the citizen as an urban dweller (citadin) and user of multiple services. It would affirm, on the one hand, the right of users to make known their ideas on the space and time of their activities in the urban area; it would also cover the right to the use of the center, a privileged place, instead of being dispersed and stuck into ghettos (for workers, immigrants, the ‘marginal’ and even for the ‘privileged’)” (Lefebvre, 1995; Shields, 2013).

In thinking about Lefebvre’s idea of the right to the city (1968), David Harvey says that

“The creation of a new urban commons, a public sphere of active democratic participation, requires that we roll back that huge wave of privatization that has been the mantra of a destructive neoliberalism” (Harvey, 2003). Bodnar (2015) and Harvey’s concerns here are similar in that they both theorize over-privatization as being damaging to the commons, and evidence of neoliberalism run amok. Privatization fuelled by neoliberalism is central to these author’s analyses of public space, with Sorkin (1992) leading the way with his analogy of public space giving way to a “theme park” that, in trying to replicate city life and public space, destroys that which it imitates (Sorkin,

1992: xv).

This privatization is a problem on many levels, but as it relates to washrooms, the lack of public facilities can seriously impact people’s ability to participate in public life. A “public sphere

of active democratic participation” (Harvey, 2003) is impossible without the amenities needed to participate in that sphere with dignity.

The most inevitable of these situations is elderly people not leaving the house on as frequent a basis as they would like because of a lack of washroom access (Afacan and Gurel, 2015;

Bichard and Knight, 2012; Anthony and Dufresne, 2007). Even for people who do not have any identifiably special needs, a lack of basic physical amenities creates a situation where the right to the city is curtailed. In many ways, participation in public life is dependent on basic bodily needs being satisfied. We can see this strikingly demonstrated in the struggles of girls and women in the global south – especially sub-Saharan Africa – who have much lower rates of school attendance and workplace attendance than boys and men, in part due to unsatisfactory sanitation that does not take into account their particular needs (McMahon et al, 2011; Sommer,2013; Mason et al, 2013).

Their ability to participate in public life is restricted by a lack of proper sanitation.

There is also the issue of the built environment being inaccessible to people in wheelchairs or who have other mobility issues (Titchkosky, 2008; Ochieng et al., 2017). Titchkosky is based at the University of Toronto, and says bluntly “I began to work in this building in July 2006 and discovered that there were no washrooms meeting either university of provincial minimum disability standards” (Titchkosky, 2008: 40). Although there are no statistics that I know of that count the number of accessible washrooms in Toronto, it is not only the University of Toronto that has a paucity of them. Anyone who has lived in Toronto may notice that a vast amount of the washrooms in businesses in the downtown core are down steep basement stairs. The Government of Canada’s 2001 Participatory Activity Limitation Survey found that the “combined unemployment, underemployment, and nonlabour force participation rate for ‘persons with

disabilities’ to be around 80%” (quoted in Titchkosky, 2008: 40). Given the lack of accessible spaces in the city that, according to Titchkosky, are at least partly to blame for those statistics, the lack of street-level public washrooms run by the City becomes all the more difficult for people with mobility issues.

2.5 Worker’s Rights and the Service Industry

Since this study specifically focuses on private washrooms in businesses that are cleaned and managed by service industry employees, it makes sense to review literature that is concerned with the working conditions in that industry.

It is especially important to consider the relationship between workers and their employers when examining rules that employees are expected to enforce. Workers are often expected to have a great deal of loyalty towards the corporation that employs them. A good example of this that is relevant to this research is the Starbucks brand. Bryant Simon (2009) compares the company’s reputation as a “good employer” with extensive interviews with Wobblies (formally known as

Industrial Workers of the World, or IWW) trying to organize workers in the chain. He found that the company’s efforts to produce compliance by offering “carrots” like health care coverage (that workers have to buy into, at a cost that is prohibitive to most) and a free pound of coffee beans a week, comes at the price of workers performing an extraordinary amount of emotional labour

(Russell-Hochschild, 1983; Brook, 2009; Wharton, 1999) in exchange for these perks.

Emotional labour, as Russell-Hochschild (1983) defined it, is “extra” labour that a person performs to make customers feel comfortable that goes beyond the basic execution of their duties.

The emotions of the employee are commodified and sold as an experience to the customer. In addition, “management imposes codified feeling rules on emotional labourers in order to ensure 24

the delivery of the requisite quality of customer service” (Brook, 2009). Starbucks tries – to use

Gramsci’s term – manufacture consent (Gramsci, 1973) by emotional manipulation and making their employees feel like they are part of the brand. As Simon describes: “Like the flight attendants

Hochschild studied, Starbucks’ clerks are called upon to deliver not just coffee, but also to create through their tone, faces, and moods “a particular emotional state in others.” Starbucks calls this

“legendary service.”

According to the Learning Journey Guide, the Starbucks employee manual, “basic service” creates “satisfied customers” by meeting client’s expectations with “speed, accuracy, quality product, and cleanliness.” Legendary service goes several steps further by exceeding expectations and creating “loyal, enthusiastically satisfied customers” (Simon, 2009). Although this process does produce some “true believers” (Frankel, 2007), both Frankel (who is a journalist who worked at Starbucks) and Simon report that the people they interviewed who don’t fit into the “true believer” category, rebel against the myriad of rules quite frequently. For example, one of the interviewees in Simon’s article rebelled by “not smiling enough” (Simon, 2009), and finally got fired for insubordination for an innocent prank where “as her shift wound down, she and another coworker Velcroed the last cupcake in the case to a plate and then Velcroed the plate to the ceiling”

(Simon, 2009).

It is beyond the scope of this project to closely examine all aspects of the employer- employee relationship. However, the systems of power that are present in the employment relationship influence how workers apply or disregard their employer’s rules, so it is important to keep the language of power and resistance in mind while considering rule-following or rule- breaking by a party who may have much to lose by making the wrong decision.

In addition to the demands on their emotional labour, fast food workers are frequently subject to working conditions that have focused on heavy specialization and a disregard for the value of their labour (Schlosser, 2002; Blecher, 2002; Newman, 2007). Schlosser discusses

American burger fast-food chains in particular, and says “The strict regimentation at fast food restaurants creates standardized products. It increases the throughput. And it gives fast food companies an enormous amount of power over their employees” (Schlosser, 2002: 70). In a review of Schlosser’s book, Blecher sums up the idea by saying “Workers were easy to train and replace-

-and nearly none of them had to be paid overtime thanks to some creative scheduling. This is still true today. In 2000, the typical McDonald's employee--a teenager--worked thirty hours a week and earned less than $20,000 a year. Of course, the typical employee didn't work at McDonald's for a year; average turnover was around three months” (Blecher, 2002).

Workers in fast food environments also face “an elevated risk of low‐level occupational violence” (Mayhew and Quinlan, 2002: 272). In this study, Mayhew and Quinlan’s primary goal was to assess whether workers in a popular fast food chain in Australia were at higher risk of injury because of the Fordist model of production9. Though they found that rates of injury were on par with permanent workers, they also found that workers didn’t have a good knowledge of their worker’s compensation entitlements, and that “48.4 per cent of those surveyed had been verbally abused, 7.6 per cent threatened, and one per cent assaulted on‐the‐job in the past 12 months. Verbal

9 Named for Henry Ford of the Ford Motor Company, the Fordist model of production is characterized by heavy specialization – “the mass production of standardized products using equally standardised and inflexible technologies (such as the assembly-line), standardised work routines based on a Tayloristic minute division and deskilling of tasks, and associated marketing designed to homogenise (sic) consumption” (Mayhew and Quinlan, 2002: 3). Taylorism, named for Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915), predates Fordism. Much like the Fordist model, the aim of Taylorism is to “increase efficiency by evaluating every step in a manufacturing process and breaking down production into specialized repetitive tasks ” (Merriam-Webster, 2018) 26

abuse was so common as to be a ‘normal’ experience” (2002: 272). Newman, a professor at the

SUNY School of Management, found his undercover work for different fast-food chains stressful, and reported that one of his coworkers told him that their difficult manager was “…not really the worst we’ve had. The last one made me cry almost everyday” (Newman, 2007: 455).

Victims of all types of workplace violence are “disproportionately and markedly female”

(Mayhew and Chappell, 2007). Sexual harassment is another important type of occupational violence that affects women in particular (McKinnon, 1979). Women from many different professions have spoken out about sexual harassment in the workplace – just a few examples are the slaughterhouse workers that supply our fast food industry (Schlosser, 2002: 176); science writing (Raven, 2013); doctors (Jagsi et al, 2016; Jagsi, 2018); and astronomers (Jagsi, 2018).

There have been several recent high-profile debates surrounding sexual harassment of women in fast-food and the service industry (Teachout, 2016; Slaughter, 2014). Teachout reports that: “A national survey by Hart Research Associates found that 40 percent of women employed in the fast- food industry have experienced unwanted sexual attention at work, and 28 percent reported multiple forms of harassment” (2016: 1).

Fast food work has traditionally been dominated by teenagers – about two thirds of fast food workers in the United States are under the age of 20 (Schlosser, 2002: 68). Jablow (2007) says that sexual harassment of teens in the workplace (especially fast food) is rampant in the United

States – 47% of young women who were employed said that they had been sexually harassed at work (Jablow, 2007: 12). However, other vulnerable populations – specifically recent immigrants and illegal immigrants – are increasingly doing work in fast food (Schlosser, 2002: 70-71). The

consequences for reporting workplace harassment can be the loss of the job that allows a person with few other immediate options to support themselves.

In the United States, “understaffed shifts, unpredictable schedules, skimping on equipment repairs and supplies, and wage inequities, as well as tyrannical supervision, are not unusual.”

(Leidner, in Royle and Towers, 2002: 9). Another chapter on working conditions in fast-food in

Canada echoed the same conclusions: “The idea is to teach the workforce to do things ‘not well, but right’. As one McDonald’s’ worker described it: ‘When you go to work for McDonald’s, you leave your brains at home.’” (Reiter, in Royle and Towers, 2002: 32). Both Reiter (2002: 32) and

Schlosser (2002: 70) quote the same Burger King training manual, despite the fact that Reiter got the manual from Mississauga, Ontario and Schlosser’s research was conducted in the United

States. Large American corporations like McDonalds, Burger King and Starbucks have rules and standards that transcend borders, affecting Canadian working conditions as well as American ones.

2.6 Chapter Summary

This literature review has covered conceptions of public space and private space, and how the private washrooms in businesses fit into the publicly-accessible spaces in the city. I have also reviewed who has access to such spaces, drawing on literatures that deal with stigma. In that section, I also considered how territorial stigma can impact the provision of washrooms, a topic that will be addressed further in the Discussion section. Then, I briefly reviewed the concept of the

Right to the City, and discussed some ways in which that ideal is made impossible by a lack of provisions for people to be able to operate with dignity in the built environment. Finally, I discussed literature related to working conditions in the fast-food industry, since that is the pool that the research participants are drawn from. Working conditions in the fast-food industry tend to

focus on stringent regulation of worker’s tasks and behavior while at work that can be very stressful and dehumanizing. Armed with these literatures, we are in a good place to begin discussing the findings of this study.

3 METHODS

The methods used here are the ones I thought would be the most useful in answering the research question, which is: what are the narratives that workers, managers and owners use to explain washrooms for customers only (W4CO) rules in their businesses? This research question is linked to an understanding of the fact that there are not many public washrooms in Toronto – in the absence of those, people who need the washroom for whatever reason go to private businesses.

To my knowledge, W4CO rules have never been studied in this way. I was surprised, however, to find very little research on public or private washrooms that are used by large numbers of the public at all. To that end, a substantial amount of background research was necessary in order to explain some of the basic facts that underpin this work.

First, I will discuss the gathering of publicly-available information to determine how many public washrooms there really are in Toronto. Then, I will review the methods used to gather descriptive statistics on the number of W4CO signs in the research area. Third, I will discuss the methods used for the unobtrusive observation, and the gathering of the second set of quantitative data on the number of washroom uses in different businesses. Finally, I will discuss the methods used for the interviews.

3.1 Gathering Publicly-Available Information

The City of Toronto maintains no centralized resource where a person can easily access a list of washrooms in the City. The only path to any kind of information on washrooms through the city website is from the main page, clicking on “Explore and Enjoy”, then “Recreation”, then

“Parks and Recreation Facility Listings”, then either clicking on “Recreation Centres”, “Parks”, or another type of building. Alternatively, from the same path, there is a small listing on the right sidebar that says “Winter Washrooms in Parks” (City of Toronto, 2018). This listing does say which park washrooms are open in the winter, and what the operating hours are. However, this is not a complete list of even the park washrooms available in the city. The same page says “Most indoor arenas and recreation centres also feature washrooms open to the public. Please contact each facility for details” (City of Toronto, 2018). It is important to note that the operating hours of each facility were not listed online, so the only way for anyone to be sure about either their washroom rules or their opening hours is to call them. In addition, the ambiguity of the word

“most” leaves the rules up to the discretion of each community centre, which opens up the question of whether the washrooms are public in all cases. There are 165 Community Centres and ice rinks in the city. I downloaded the A-Z listings of both into Excel, eliminated duplicates (some ice rinks are in community centres), and called each one to ask whether their washrooms were public, and what their opening hours are. I eliminated specialty athletic locations like tennis clubs as well as community centres attached to schools that are inaccessible to adults, leaving 146.

There are 112 Toronto Public Library branches in the City. A single phone call confirmed that all of them have washrooms open to the public during operating hours, which are conveniently posted on their website. However, the library system is listed on a different page than in the various

types of services listed in the “Parks and Recreation Facility Listings” section of the City of

Toronto website, so another search was needed. The path for that page from the City of Toronto site is circuitous, so the best way is to simply Google “Toronto Public Library”.

There are only 3 additional stand-alone public washrooms not associated with a community centre, library, or ice rink.

It is important to remember that although these numbers seem substantial, Toronto is the largest city in Canada — these 261 publicly available washrooms are spread from Highway 407 down to Lake Ontario, and from just west of Highway 427, to the furthest East, which is on the far end of Scarborough, almost to Pickering, and area of about 630 km square. Moreover, some locations, like the ice rinks, are not regularly open in the summer. With a population of 2,929,886,

5,253 of whom are homeless (”Toronto at a Glance”, City of Toronto, 2018), 24-hour, easily accessible washrooms are essential for both public health and the provision of dignity in public space10.

Not included are “public washrooms” that are in fact not public because they are past the point of payment for either the ferry or the subway. It seems obvious that if the washroom is physically accessible only after one has paid for transportation, then the facility hardly deserves the designation “public”, which implies openness without needing to purchase anything.

Despite Starbucks’ recent announcement that they are planning to open washrooms in their

US locations “100% of the time” (The Canadian Press, May 2018), the same policy may not necessarily be applied in Canada. As of May 10th, 2018, their policies are undergoing a 90-day

10 Please see Appendix 4 for this full list of publicly available washrooms, including the relevant community centres, public libraries, and the 3 stand-alone washrooms. 31

review. At the time of writing this section, that review is incomplete, and as such, Starbucks restaurants are not included in this list.

Also not included are washrooms generally understood to be public but privately owned, such as those in malls. In the absence of any direct statements from private corporations that washrooms are open to the public, I only included washrooms that are publicly-owned and run by the City.

Despite the seemingly high number of washrooms in community centres and public libraries, there are several serious problems related to access, which will be explained in the discussion section. However, it was essential to this study to understand the real number of washrooms stated as being available to the public in order to be able to accurately discuss the barriers to access and relate those barriers to the W4CO problem. I thought it was important to get accurate information about the full number of public washrooms available in the city, even if they are open at odd times, and despite the accessibility problems inherent in having public washrooms in buildings that may be located away from main streets.

It is important to note that this list is not meant to imply that a person would not face barriers while accessing these washrooms. As the findings and discussion sections will show,

Toronto still has a very serious problem with the provision of public amenities, especially, but not exclusively, public washrooms.

3.2 Descriptive Statistics

Since no previous research that I know of has been done on W4CO in Toronto, some basic descriptive statistics needed to be gathered to get an idea of how many businesses have W4CO

signs. Over the course of many weekends, I walked along 5 main streets in Toronto — Queen West and Parkdale from Roncesvalles to Spadina; Bloor from Avenue to Lansdowne; Yonge from King to Bloor; Danforth from Broadview to Woodbine; and College Yonge to Lansdowne, and counted the number of W4CO signs. Although this was initially expected to be a solely quantitative exercise, there was some qualitative data gathered as well. Please see Appendix 1 for maps of the study area (including locations of public washrooms in the study area).

I chose these specific neighbourhoods because they are part of Toronto’s high-traffic downtown core. Although there are a great number of other neighbourhoods and areas that would be interesting to include, it is beyond the scope of this research to include the entire city. I wanted this research to be able to give at least a snapshot of the inner city, and I felt that looking at only one neighbourhood would be too narrow. This is a convenience sample, since I chose these strips based on my experience living in Toronto – I knew these strips had fairly high concentrations of businesses, and I also knew that W4CO signs were prevalent.

The first time I walked along Queen, I did not walk into the businesses because I remembered W4CO signs being posted in windows. I was discouraged to see that there were not as many W4CO signs as I remembered there being. I soon realized, however, that most businesses do not place their W4CO signs on the outside door, but rather inside, most often on the washroom door itself. I re-did Queen, and continued the research with this realization in mind, and walked into every coffee shop and fast-food restaurant on both sides of the street to see if there was a

W4CO sign on the inside of the business.

I visited 202 businesses total. Figure A shows the number of businesses, both independent and chain/franchised visited. These five areas formed the pool I drew on for the next two phases of the research.

Table 1: Coffee Shops and Fast Food Restaurants Visited

Bloor, Queen, College, Yonge, Danforth, Totals

Avenue - Spadina – Yonge – King to Broadview

Lansdowne St. Lansdowne Bloor to

Patrick Woodbine

Total Shops 43 46 30 42 41 202

Independent 15 18 11 8 17 69

Chain/Franchise 28 28 19 42 24 141

The table describing the numbers of W4CO signs by street and independent or chain/franchise can be found on pages 45 and 46 of the findings section.

There are 4 community centres and parks with public washrooms in the vicinity of these neighborhoods: Trinity Community Recreation Centre at 155 Crawford Street (in Trinity

Bellwoods Park, off Queen strip); Masaryk-Cowan Community Recreation Centre at 220 Cowan

Ave. (Just south of Queen Strip); and Bob Abate Community Recreation Centre at 485 Montrose

Ave. (just off Bloor strip). There is one a bit off the Danforth strip, at 455 Glebeholme Rd, but it is not visible from Danforth. There are none in the King/Bay area.

In addition, there are 6 public library branches in the sample area: Palmerston, Spadina

Road, and Bloor/Gladstone (all along the Bloor strip); College/Shaw (along the College strip); and

Danforth/Pape and Danforth/Coxwell. In total, there are 10 public washrooms attached to libraries or community centres in the research area. Please see Appendix 1 for a map of the research area with public washrooms.

Each of the Bloor and College strips studied are 3.3 km in length, and take about 45 minutes for a fit, walking person to travel on foot. The Bloor strip has 4 public washrooms in community centres or libraries in this span, and the College strip has only one. The Queen Street strip studied is a little longer, at 4.2 km, taking about 55 minutes for a fit, walking person to travel. This strip only has 2 public washrooms in libraries or community centres.

3.3 Unobtrusive Observation

Next, I chose 10 different businesses with W4CO signs — 2 in each neighborhood visited, one independent and one chain/franchise, and sat for a hour and a half in each place to unobtrusively observe the interactions between staff and customers, or non-customers seeking access to the washroom (15 hours of observation total). I split the 10 evenly between independent and chain stores because I was curious to see how, or if, the interactions were different based on the type of store it was.

I did not interact with anyone in these spaces beyond ordering my coffee when I got there.

In all instances, the pace of the events was slow. In several cases, there was only one instance of note that happened in the hour and a half I was there. In all instances except one, I took notes on paper instead of on my computer. I prefer writing on paper, and the slow pace of the events removed the necessity of having to write quickly. In all instances, I returned home and transcribed my notes into the computer. In addition to the transcription, I also included journal notes where I

reflected on what I had seen. Reflecting on these observations was of great help in developing the interview questions.

Later, I conducted 10 additional hours of observation in 10 different businesses to tally the number of people using the washroom (see Figure D, p. 46). These observations were split evenly between chain/corporate locations and independent ones (one of each on each strip), and I tried to split them relatively evenly between having W4CO rules and not having W4CO rules. I sat for an hour in each location and counted the number of customers who used the washroom, noting whether they had used it before they paid or after. I also noted the number of non-customers that used the washroom. Both these numbers allowed me to count the total number of times staff members used their discretion in allowing someone access to the bathroom. In addition, I noted the number of washroom users who seemed dirty, disheveled or unwell.

Discretion, in both the unobtrusive observations and in interviews, was easy to observe and describe because there are specific mechanics associated with either allowing or not allowing someone to use the washroom. Most washrooms have either a key or a code, so denying access to the washroom means refusing to give someone the key or the code to the door. The fact that employees were using their discretion in allowing people to use the washroom was especially obvious when people would walk into the shop and ask for the key to the washroom first, before buying anything.

In all 25 hours of observation, I used “forms of unobtrusive data collection that do not involve covert observations” (Lee, Moore and Martin, 2003).

Although the research ethics board at the University of Guelph does not evaluate unobtrusive observation, I think a brief ethics discussion is still required here, since I did observe 36

people without their knowledge. First, although I did not tell people that I was engaging in unobtrusive observation, I also did not masquerade as someone I am not, and did not be attempt to gain their trust in any way to gain access to information that would not be available to any observer sitting in the same place. A coffee shop or fast-food restaurant that is open to the public differs from a closed community where people have some expectation of privacy. The expectation of privacy that people have in different settings is key to the ethical considerations involved here.

Further, I did not gather any directly identifying data in this part of the research – something that covert observation often does without other people’s knowledge. The fact that I was not disguised and that the observations took place in public spaces removes the ethical concerns associated with the type of covert observation discussed above (Lofland, 1971).

A couple examples of the kind of observations I made that helped in the development of the interview questions happened in 2 different corporate chain coffee shops. In one, a man who was a paying customer, but looked very disheveled, dirty and down on his luck walked in. His nails were very long and he was wearing a cobbled-together assortment of clothes. He was hunched, and seemed tired. The barista knew him by name and also called him “sir”. He cleared off his table and brought her a used cup before he sat down with his coffee. When he brought her the cup, she thanked him and again called him by his name.

In the other instance, a man walked into a business with a prominent W4CO sign. He said to the barista that he understood that they had their policies, but that he had an urgent need to use the washroom. He begged them to make an exception, and the barista, without any complaint, allowed him to use the washroom. It is important to note that this person did not seem to be particularly dirty or disheveled.

Both of these instances were invaluable in forming the questions related to equal application of W4CO rules. In the first case, the interpersonal relationship between the worker and the person seemed to be a factor. Even though the man fit the description of a type of person that other baristas expressed being wary of in interviews, his relationship with that store (or perhaps just that worker) insured that he was treated with dignity and respect. In the second case, a barista broke an obviously posted rule, which indicated that W4CO rules are not always evenly applied.

As I found out during interviews, some people use W4CO rules more frequently in instances where they feel that they have to deny a certain person access because certain features of their person that inspire a lack of confidence in their ability to use the washroom without causing extra cleanup or leaving hazardous materials behind.

3.4 Semi-structured Interviews

In the fourth and final portion of data collection, I conducted 15 interviews with employees, managers, and directors of operations of businesses to discuss their perspectives on their business’s washroom access policy.

Originally, I had planned to interview 10 employees and 5 owners. However, the variations in hierarchical structure between different businesses turned out to be a barrier in establishing a definite difference between front-line workers (like baristas and cashiers) and managerial staff.

The assumption that such a difference existed was based on my own work experience, since all the shops I have worked in have had that hard line between owner and staff. I have never worked at a business with fluid classifications, where there is a manager working shifts alongside other workers. Although all coffee shops have minimum-wage workers who have been hired to make coffee and serve customers, the managerial structure is different, especially between

chain/franchised businesses and independent shops. In the former case, it is more difficult to get access to owners, as they rarely work in the business they own. Managers are easier to talk to, and were interviewed for this project, but the line between manager and worker is considerably blurred, as managers in fast-food franchises most often work just as many shifts as anyone else. Franchise owners rarely work shifts, however, and were impossible to find over either the internet or by phone. No owners of shops were available for interviews, the “highest ranking” person interviewed being a director of operations. This is a position that does not neatly fit into the owner/worker divide either — although they are not owners, they do hold considerable power in the business, and do not necessarily work shifts. In the case of most independent shops, the owners are much more accessible, but also tend to work shifts in their own shops, thus blurring the lines between worker and owner when it comes to gatekeeping duties. It is also important to note that in the case of corporate/franchised businesses, the hierarchies are so complex that the real “owner” is the CEO of the entire company.

As research progressed and I began to understand the nuances of the business hierarchies more, the distinction between owners/workers began to partially dissolve, though the importance of interviewing workers of different hierarchical positions in the business became no less important. Of much more interest were the descriptions that all people interviewed offered about their relationships to their co-workers in different positions. These new understandings did not eliminate my interest in that secondary research question, but rather refined it into “How do workers in different positions conceptualize their role in upholding W4CO in relation to both the public and their colleagues?”

Despite the difficulty in accessing non-shift managerial staff, I still think that some important questions about the relationships between shift managers, directors of operations, and other workers were at least partially answered.

In the case of shift managers and other workers, I recruited by distributing the information page to their place of work, explaining my objective, and asking for their help. All the recruiting was done in the same businesses that I counted for the descriptive statistics. However, none of the interviewees were from the same businesses that I conducted unobtrusive observations in. I promised to come back at a time that was convenient for them, so many of the interviews took place immediately after or before worker’s shifts. I was surprised by how many workers wanted to participate and wanted to talk right away — when I first began recruiting, I wasted several opportunities for good interviews by telling people who were ready to be interviewed right away that they should email me back so we could schedule a time. I was trying to be helpful and considerate of the fact that they were at work, but I realized later that I should have gotten their information immediately so we could set up an interview for later that day. The burden I was placing on interviewees by asking them to do the legwork to set up an interview was confusing and ineffective, since prospective interviewees always expressed either interest or a lack thereof right away. I discovered in the recruiting and interviewing process that for many workers, washrooms were a hot topic that they were eager to discuss.

In the case of owners of businesses, I first emailed all the independent coffee shops in

Toronto that had email addresses, and several of the franchises, then I tried to recruit at their workplace in the same way as I had done for managers and workers. This, however, proved

fruitless, and the extremely low response rate (1 response) from the email recruiting remained. I sent 30 emails – please see Appendix 2 for the text of the recruitment email.

The interviews conducted were semi-structured interviews. I chose this method of interviewing because since I was after the narratives that people employ to explain the need for

W4CO rules, using an interview technique that was conducive to narrative was essential. Please see Appendix D for the interview guide, as well as some common follow-up questions. Indeed, the findings section wasn’t what I expected it to be — the narratives offered were very rich in detail and went far beyond simple answers, which explains the largely inductive style of the literature review, where I had to respond to surprising issues that interviewees had raised that I had not planned for in my initial theoretical framework. I don’t think that I would have arrived at the same precise answers with a more structured format. Semi-structured interviews leave ample space for interviewees to answer questions in any way they choose, while still giving the researcher enough space to craft questions to answer a specific research question (Adams, 2010; Ekdahl et al,

2010; Rabionet, 2011; Fontana and Frey, 2003; Fontana and Frey, 2005).

“Such interviews are a particularly useful research tool in situations where little is known about the topic of interest…” (Adams, 2010). This is true of this research, as (to my knowledge) no similar study in Toronto has been conducted. In the conceptual stage of the study, I considered the possibility of surveys. However, surveys seemed to be too focused – not having other studies on the subject to rely on for groundwork, I was worried that a survey might make it more difficult for respondents to share opinions that were outside the realm of what I expected in designing the questions. Semi-structured interviews also allow for the development of narrative in a way that surveys do not.

Mizock, Harkins, and Morant (2011) identify five ways a researcher can interject: 1) offering words to “give a name to the experience of oppression and acknowledge the social structures being experienced to enhance understanding” 2) disclosure of the researcher’s own biases and motivations for the research 3) Bringing up the researcher’s own parallel struggles, and conveying the intentions of the research study 4) Mentioning ways in which different identities enter into the interview to “enhance awareness of multicultural issues” and 5) Make impromptu changes to the script based on previous interviews (p.2-3).

All these things turned out to be important in the interviews I conducted. One of the key features of these interviews was that they took a distinctly conversational tone, and I did sometimes interject to reinforce or comfort interviewees to keep them talking and feeling supported. Many of the interviewees voiced feeling guilty or otherwise bad about what they were saying — one of the most common assertions was that in their experience, it was necessary to have W4CO signs in order to be able to dissuade people who appeared mentally ill or homeless from using the washroom. As they sometimes tried to regulate their own talk, it seemed important for me to interject that I understood their struggles as workers dealing with these situations and to reassure them that I knew what they meant, as I have myself worked in several coffee shops. The other way

I often had to interject was that since this research has not been done before, interviewees were curious about my motivations and research questions for conducting the research. Because of this,

I probably shared more of my own motivations and research goals than is typical. Although

Mizock, Harkins, and Morant (2011) were focused on ways researcher interjection can be useful in interviews with a focus on race or ethnicity, I think being aware of these strategies can be very helpful for research in other areas, especially when interviewees begin to feel uncomfortable or bad about what their responses imply. 42

In the case of this research, the interviewee’s answers were focused on their own work experience and their awkward position as often low-wage workers having to manage both the work they had been hired to do and the sometimes-harrowing task of policing washroom access in a city that has almost no public ones. Had I not been able to effectively interject to show understanding, and in some cases to help participants work through their feelings about their experiences, especially as they related to people who they thought were mentally ill or psychiatric survivors using the washroom, the interviews would not have gone as well. Interviewees often paused and said things like “I know it sucks to say…” or “I feel bad saying this…”, conveying a sense that they felt “wrong” about what they were saying.

There are of course risks associated with this strategy. The main risk is that in sharing one’s own experience or perspective, the researcher is in danger of taking the focus away from the participant and reinforcing the same unbalanced power dynamic that the researcher is trying to stop (Mizock, Harkins, Morant, 2011). Because of this risk, I tried to only interject when it was obvious that the interviewee was feeling uncomfortable about the things they were saying, needed encouragement, or that some support from me would help the interviewee work through their response. I also freely answered their questions about my motivations, but these conversations usually happened either before or after the bulk of the questions had been discussed.

One of the main limitations in this research is the difference in access to people working in independent shops, corporate/franchised shops, and fast-food restaurants. Although the plan was to try to interview equal numbers of people from fast food restaurants, chain coffee shops, and independent coffee shops, people working in fast-food restaurants were much more difficult to recruit. Some fast-food chains and corporate/franchised coffee shops have no-interview rules for

their employees, which means that some people could not participate even had they wanted to, for fear of reprisals from their manager or boss. The differences in the working conditions and freedoms enjoyed by workers in various businesses is so vast that recruiting was much more difficult in certain environments than others. Some businesses, especially large chains, were constantly busy, making recruiting difficult. In businesses like this, employees are sometimes discouraged from talking overmuch with customers – I avoided trying to recruit when there were lineups, since I was aware of these time limitations and didn’t want to get employees in trouble by delaying the line.

As I mentioned earlier, no owners were interviewed, but 4 managers and a director of operations were. The rest of the interviews are with other staff.

There is no exact number of interviews that are required to reach data saturation, as all studies are different (Fusch and Ness, 2015). The commonly agreed-upon signs of data saturation are that no new data is being found, that no new themes are being found, and that the study could be replicated (Guest et al, 2006). I conducted 15 interviews, and had a lot of repetition in the data.

I hesitate to use the technically loaded term “saturation” given the sheer size of the city and the possibility for other narratives, but I do think that for this small study, enough repetition has been found to at least be able to give a good picture of the situation, and to answer the research question.

To protect employees from possible backlash from their boss, I did not interview employers and employees from the same business. Although this research is low-risk, some of the questions

I asked employees could have led them to critique their boss or company they worked for. Making sure that employers and employees interviewed are from different businesses helped ensure confidentiality.

I recorded the interviews on a password protected device and then immediately transcribed them verbatim, using a code for each of the interviewees (only distinguishing between their position in the business and whether the business was independent or a franchise) before destroying the original file. The pool is large enough that participant confidentiality is maintained

– the pool is all the coffee shop and fast food employees in the designated research area (probably over 5000 people), and no identifying information was gathered. This project was given clearance by the Ethics Office of the University of Guelph (certificate #17-06-009). Recording the interviews

(as opposed to having to take notes) allowed me to better establish rapport with my interviewees, as well as obtain more precise interview data. It also “...requires one to study each interview”

(Lofland, 1971) as I transcribe later.

In one case, a technical issue with the recording device during an interview of particularly good quality forced me to take extensive notes instead. References to that interview are included, but not cited verbatim. In three other instances, interviewees asked not to be recorded, though they volunteered to participate in the research. In those cases, I took as many notes as I could during the interview, then immediately (usually at the coffee shop next door) re-wrote them, filling in blanks and clarifying. These interviews are also discussed, but not cited verbatim.

I used NVivo 11 to code the data. Although I had originally planned to code by hand, I realized that NVivo was a better option, and most importantly, would be better in assuring the security of the data. The reason for this is that my living situation had changed since the beginning of writing this thesis, and I no longer had access to a quiet, private office where I could securely store a lot of hand-written notes.

I coded the interviews using thematic analysis, in which “…coding and theme development processes are organic, exploratory and inherently subjective, involving active, creative, and reflexive researcher engagement” (Braun and Clarke, 2016 : 741). This seemed an appropriate method of analysis as it recognizes the subjectivity of the researcher while allowing for a fine- grained analysis of the nuance of a small number of interviews. Thematic analysis is a “primarily a descriptive strategy that facilitates the search for patterns of experience within a qualitative data set” (Ayres, in Given, 2008: 867-68). Since I anticipated many different answers to the research question, I was in search of a descriptive way to convey the many different perspectives that interviewees had on the issue.

This thesis was conducted first by gathering descriptive statistics on the prevalence of

W4CO rules in Toronto, statistics on the differences in washroom use between chain and independent businesses and by neighborhood. Second, I gathered publicly available information on the number of public washrooms available in Toronto. Third, I interviewed 15 workers and managers in coffee shops and fast-food establishments.

4 FINDINGS

This chapter reports the findings of this work. First, I will briefly cover findings from my efforts to catalogue the number of public washrooms available in Toronto, which will answer one of the secondary research questions: How many public washrooms are there in Toronto?

Second, I will show the data from quantitative findings related to the other two secondary research questions: What percentage of businesses in the downtown core that have W4CO rules?; and What are the differences if any?! in washroom use between independent and corporate/chain shops? 46

Third, I will share the qualitative data gathered. This data addressess the main research question: How do people who work in coffee shops and fast food restaurants in Toronto’s downtown core explain the existence of W4CO rules?11

4.1 Publicly Available Data: How many public washrooms are already in Toronto?

In the course of doing this research, there were many times where I needed to use the washroom and no publicly available facility was within reasonable walking distance. In conversations with interviewees, the need for more public washrooms was the most common policy suggestion (more on those later). The combination of these two things inspired me to do a little complimentary background research to address this seemingly basic question: how many public washrooms does Toronto really have? I considered this relevant because, although I have been frustrated by what I see as the lack of provision of public washrooms for many years, and interviewees expressed similar sentiments, I didn’t have any concrete evidence to pick apart either my own or their claims of that lack.

This is relevant to the main research question because, as I laid out previously, participants related the existence of W4CO rules to a lack of public resources for marginalized people. Of the

202 Toronto businesses counted, 37.62% of Toronto businesses counted have W4CO signs, and information about public facilities is very difficult to compile. Given this, the concerns raised about appropriate sanitation being key for the provision of the Right to the City remains relevant here.

11 Please note that each interviewee has been given a pseudonym. In addition, 4 interviewees (Neil, Janis, Laura, and Carol) could not to be recorded, so notes were taken instead both during and immediately after the interview. These interviews are not quoted verbatim. 47

To assess public washroom availability in Toronto, I compiled a list of all publicly available washrooms using the Toronto Public Library list, the list of winter washrooms in parks and ice rinks available on the City of Toronto website, and calls to each individual community centre on the list available on the City of Toronto website. Toronto, as it turns out, has 146 public washrooms in community centres and parks during the summer, plus the 100 washrooms in each

Toronto Public Library branch, plus 3 free-standing public washrooms along the lakeshore, for a total of 249 washrooms in the summer (Toronto Public Library, 2018; City of Toronto, 2017; City of Toronto, 2018).

In the winter, this number is amplified by ice rinks, both indoor and outdoor. As far as I could tell, all these are freely accessible in the same way that the ones in parks and community centres are. Added to the 249 community centres, libraries and free-standing washrooms, the winter total is 318 public washrooms during the winter months.

I believe that the research done here is thorough enough to be useful to a person seeking a washroom, though it almost certainly contains errors. Please see Appendix 4 for a list of publicly available washrooms in Toronto. In addition, please see torontotoilets.org for a searchable online list with opening hours and zoomable Google map.

While gathering this data, it became apparent that Toronto’s public washroom issues are just as much an informational problem as an actual lack. There is a data set of washrooms available in the “Open Data” section of the city’s website, but it is incomplete, and does not include hours of operation, thus making it almost useless. Calls to 311, the City of Toronto’s call centre, revealed that they did not have a list either.

Considering the difficulty I had in gathering this data, it should come as no surprise that the prevailing feeling amongst employees and business owners is that public washrooms are scarce. It’s true that for a city the size of Toronto, the number of washrooms provided is far from adequate – those 249-318 washrooms are spread throughout the entire city, which spans 630 km².

There are approximately 2,929,886 people in the city of Toronto – this means that in the summer, there is one public washroom per 11,767 people, and in the winter, there is one public washroom per 9,213 people. However, this lack is compounded by the paucity of information about the washrooms that are available, which I hope I have partially remedied here.

4.2 Quantitative Findings 4.2.1 How common are W4CO rules?

As I discussed in the methods section, the first phase of the research examined how common W4CO rules are across the 202 research sites in Toronto’s downtown core. I visited 202 fast food and coffee shops in the downtown core and counted the number of W4CO signs. Please see Table 1: Coffee Shops and Fast-Food Restaurants Visited (in Methods section) for a full listing of the number and type of shops visited.

Table 2: Number of W4CO in corporate/chain shops

Number of Number of Percentage of W4CO shops W4CO

Bloor, Avenue – 28 12 42.85% Lansdowne

Queen, Spadina – St. 28 17 60.71% Patrick

College, Yonge – 19 9 47.37% Lansdowne

Yonge, King – Bloor 34 17 50.00%

Danforth, Broadview – 24 7 29.17% Woodbine

Total 133 62 46.62%

The table above shows the number of chain shops visited, and the number of W4CO signs in those shops. The Yonge strip had the largest quantity of chain shops (34), with 50% of them having a W4CO sign. The strip where the chain shops had the highest proportion of W4CO was

Queen St. West, at 60.71%. Bloor, which had the same number of chain shops as Queen, had a lower incidence of W4CO, at 42.85%. College had the fewest number of chain shops, but the proportion of W4CO signs was close the average, at 47.37%. Danforth also had a lower number of chain shops (24), as well as the lowest percentage of W4CO (29.17%).

Table 3: Number of W4CO in independent shops

Number of Number of Percentage of W4CO Shops W4CO

Bloor, Avenue- 15 3 20.00% Lansdowne

Queen, Spadina – St. 18 4 22.22% Patrick

College, Yonge – 11 2 18.18% Lansdowne

Yonge, King – Bloor 8 1 12.50%

Danforth, Broadview to 17 4 23.53% Woodbine

Total 69 14 20.29%

Table 3 (above) shows the number of W4CO signs in independent shops, along the same strips. Yonge has the lowest number of independent shops (8), as well as the lowest percentage of those shops having a W4CO sign (1, for 12.50%). Queen and Danforth are very similar here –

Queen has 18 independent shops, with 22.22% of them having W4CO signs, and Danforth has 17 independent shops, with 23.53% of them having W4CO signs. College has 11 independent shops, with only 18.18% having W4CO signs. Out of the 15 independent shops on Bloor, 3 of them (20%) have W4CO signs.

Table 4: Total Number and Percentage of W4CO Total number Total number of Percentage of W4CO of shops W4CO signs

Bloor, Avenue- 43 15 34.88% Lansdowne

Queen, Spadina – St. 46 21 45.65% Patrick

College, Yonge – 30 11 36.66% Lansdowne

Yonge, King – Bloor 42 18 42.86%

Danforth, Broadview to Woodbine 41 11 26.83%

Total 202 76 37.62%

Table 4 shows the totals for the whole sample, including both independent and chain shops.

College had the lowest number of shops, with 30 total, and 36.66% having W4CO signs. The area with the smallest proportion of W4CO signs was Danforth, at 41 shops total and only 26.83% having W4CO. Both Queen and Yonge had fairly high percentages of W4CO rules. Out of the 46 shops on Queen, 21 (45.65%) had W4CO, and out of Yonge’s 42 shops, 18 (42.86%) had W4CO.

Bloor had 43 shops total, with 34.88% having W4CO signs.

Table 5: Comparison between independent shops and chain shops

Percentage of W4CO – Percentage of W4CO – independent chain/corporate

Bloor, Avenue - 20.00% 42.85% Lansdowne

Queen, Spadina – St. 22.22% 60.71% Patrick

College, Yonge – 18.18% 47.37% Lansdowne

Yonge, King – Bloor 12.50% 50.00%

Danforth, Broadview to Woodbine 23.53% 29.17%

Total 20.29% 46.62%

Table 5 shows the comparison in W4CO percentages between independent and chain shops. In all instances, the proportion of chain shops having W4CO is more than the proportion of independent shops having W4CO. The closest gap is the Danforth, with 23.53% of independent and 29.17% of chain shops having W4CO. The largest gap is on Queen, where only 22.22% of independent shops have W4CO signs, but 60.71% of the chain establishments do. A close second is Yonge, where 12.50% of independent shops have W4CO, but 50% of chain stores do. On Bloor,

20% of independent shops and 42.85% of chain ones have W4CO rules. Finally, on College,

18.18% of independent shops have W4CO, while 47.37% of chain shops do. The total shows that more than double the amount of chain shops (46.62%) than independent shops (20.29%) have

W4CO rules.

As we can see from this data, the rate of W4CO signs appears to be significantly lower in independent shops than in chain/corporate shops. The exception is the Danforth, which has an unusually high number of independent shops (17 out of the total of 41, or 41.46%), and where corporate chains have a lower rate of W4CO signs. Both the quantitative and qualitative data shows that the presence of W4CO rules is highly location-specific. Bloor, Danforth and College have much lower rates of W4CO (at 34.88%, 26.88% and 36.66% respectively) than Queen and Yonge

(at 45.65% and 42.86% respectively). These numbers align with interviewees perceptions of neighborhood safety brought up in interviews – Queen and Yonge were described as unsafe or difficult by both interviewees who work there and those who don’t, while the other strips were not.

Independent shops are shown to have fewer W4CO signs overall, but there are also very few independent shops on Yonge – only 8, compared to 34 chain establishments. This may skew the data because independent shops don’t exist in the same quantities in one of the areas that most inspire W4CO use. If there were independent shops on Yonge (say, closer to Queen’s 18 independent shops to 28 chains ratio), would the independent shops also employ W4CO rules, or would the tendency for independent shops to not use these rules hold? There is no way to know – only a larger study including more areas of the city could further clarify these statistics.

4.2.2 Who is using the washroom, and how much?

While the data above gives a general picture of the prevalence of W4CO signs, it doesn’t tell us whether, or to what extent, these signs influence washroom use. Though the data in Figures

B – E suggests that W4CO rules are much more prevalent in chain shops than independent ones, the data does not hint at an explanation for why that is. To answer this question, another set of quantitative data was gathered to explore how many people use the washroom per hour in

independent versus corporate shops. Ten hours of unobtrusive observations were done to tally washroom use, including whether washroom users were customers or not, and whether they seemed disheveled or unwell. Criteria I used to evaluate this had come up in previous interviews.

A combination of missing pieces of clothing and lack of cleanliness or erratic behavior (yelling, swearing, bothering staff or other customers) were the three basic markers that were brought up in interviews and the literature. I was careful in this assessment and deliberately made the criteria for seeming disheveled or unwell quite high. When I was not sure (for example, if someone was dressed in an assortment of very old clothes only, but was clean and not behaving erratically), I did not include them. In this data, I was interested in assessing whether common practice tracked with the descriptions that interviewees were giving me. The reason this point was included is that by the time I did this data collection, I had already done several interviews, and this issue had come up consistently. Interviewees had mentioned that W4CO were discretionary and were based on negative interactions with people who appeared to be homeless, so I wanted to see how common it was for people seeming homeless to try to access the washroom. Please see Figure F and Figure

G for the relevant tallies of washroom use at 10 different locations, 5 corporate/chain and 5 independent.

Table 6: Frequency of washroom use in chain/corporate and independent shops Does this shop Number of People Number of Number of have W4CO? Using the Customers non- washroom/hour customers

Chain Yes 16 12 4 Queen Independent No 9 9 0

Chain No 22 18 4 College Independent Yes 2 2 0

Chain No 12 7 5 Bloor Independent No 3 3 0

Chain Yes 22 20 6 Yonge Independent No 9 8 1

Chain Yes 13 9 4 Danforth Independent No 2 2 0

In this table (Table 6), we can see that the number of people accessing the washroom in the hours visited (between 10am-2pm and 4pm-5:30pm) is much less in independent shops than in chain ones, even in instances where the independent shop does not have a W4CO sign, but the chain one does. Only one of the independent shops (the one on College) has W4CO, while 3 of the

5 chain shops did (Danforth, Yonge, and Queen). On Queen Street, 16 people accessed the chain washroom, while only 9 accessed the independent one. On College, the disparity is even more pronounced: 22 people accessed the chain washroom, while only 2 accessed the independent one.

On Yonge, where both establishments were equally busy, only 9 people used the independent

washroom while 22 used the chain one. The Danforth and Bloor had the lowest number of uses for either chain or independent, but the 13 uses on the Danforth and 12 on Bloor still far outstripped the independent shop’s 2 and 3 uses respectively.

Table 7: Descriptions of customers seeking access, time of access, and totals

Number Number Number Number of Total of People of of non- Customers number of seeming customers customers accessing times disheveled accessing accessing washrooms discretion or unwell washroom the post- in seeking pre- washroom purchase allowing washroom purchase access was access used (customers accessing pre- purchase + non- customers) Queen Chain 0 4 4 8 8

Independent 0 0 0 9 0

College Chain 0 2 4 16 6

Independent 0 0 0 2 0

Bloor Chain 0 0 5 7 5

Independent 0 0 0 3 0

Yonge Chain 0 8 6 12 14

Independent 0 3 0 5 3

Danforth Chain 0 4 4 5 8

Independent 0 0 0 2 0

Chain 0 18 23 48 41 Total Independent 0 3 0 21 3

In Table 7 (above), we can see a breakdown of more detailed data gathered at the same shops covered in Table 6. For each of these shops, I also gathered data on whether the washroom- 58

seekers were customers or not, and whether they seemed disheveled or unwell or not. In no instance did I see a washroom user that seemed dirty, unwell, or unusually disheveled. I sat in businesses between 10am and 2pm, and 4pm and 5:30pm. Since I only sat in each shop for an hour, a more complete set of data that more fully explores this would be an excellent topic for further research.

In all cases except one (the independent shop on Yonge), no pre-purchase customers or non-customers accessed the washrooms in independent shops while I was there. At the independent shop on Yonge, 3 pre-purchase customers accessed the washroom, but no non- customers accessed the washroom. As a result, the number of non-customers accessing washrooms in independent shops was zero.

In chain establishments, however, the number of non-customers accessing the washrooms was almost always higher than even the number of people accessing the washroom pre-purchase.

The one exception is the chain establishment on Yonge, where 8 pre-purchase customers used the washroom, and 6 non-customers did. Each of the chain establishments on Queen and the Danforth had 4 non-customers and 4 pre-purchase customers access the washroom. On Bloor, 5 non- customers went to the washroom, while 2 pre-purchase customers did. In the College Street chain,

4 non-customers accessed the washroom compared to 2 pre-purchase customers.

In total, no people seeming disheveled or unwell accessed the washroom in either chain or independent establishments. Chain stores had 18 customers access the washroom pre-purchase, while only 3 independent shop customers accessed the washroom pre-purchase. No non-customers accessed the washroom in independent shops. Twenty-three non-customers (or 25.84% of all washroom users) did in chain stores. Chain stores saw 48 (53.93% of total) post-purchase washroom users, while independent shops only had 21 (87.50% of total). In other words, though 59

washroom use in independent shops was much lower, most people accessed the washroom after their purchase. This was not true in chain shops, where post-purchase washroom use was only

20.22% of total washroom use. Employees in chain shops had to use their discretion (counted as non-customers plus customers who accessed the washroom pre-purchase) 41 times, while in independent shops, this was only the case 3 times.

Based on the data presented in figures B – G, we can see that the relationship between frequency of W4CO signs and washroom use is the inverse of what one would expect – though chains have much higher rates of W4CO signs, they also have much higher rates of non-customers and pre-purchase customers accessing the washroom.

It is apparent that the W4CO signs are serving their purpose at least some of the time, as customers (and non-customers) have to ask baristas for access. However, both unobtrusive observations and interviews conducted over the course of this research show W4CO to be discretionary in every instance. For coffee shops having W4CO, staff let people who weren’t customers use the washroom on a regular basis (see Figure D). In no instance did I see staff deny access to the washroom. The number of times staff discretion was used outnumbers the count of non-customers, since staff did not necessarily know that someone asking to access the washroom pre-purchase would end up buying anything. It is important to note, though, that all people who I observed trying to access the washroom appeared to be clean and they did not appear to have any mental health issues that were manifesting at the time. This is important because, though the number of hours (25) spent observing is small, I would have expected to see at least one person who seemed homeless trying to access the washroom. An extension of these observations would

be useful, especially including different times of day and evening, to more fully quantify the frequency and type of washroom use.

4.3 Qualitative observations

I did 25 hours of observation total, 10 of which was to gather the quantitative data shown in figures B - G. The other 15 were used to craft interview questions and observe more detailed interactions between staff and customers. In these 15 hours, I was also observing whether staff would deny access to anyone and who was using the washroom, but instead of gathering quantitative data I was taking notes on the interactions between staff, customers and washroom users.

It is telling that in all cases in these more qualitatively-aimed observations, I saw no one be denied access to the washroom, which is also reflected in the quantitative data above. In sum, then, during 25 hours of observation total, I never saw anyone be denied access. In one instance, a man entered a shop with very prominent W4CO signs on the front door and explained to the barista that he understood the policies but that he was in desperate need of a washroom. The barista, without hesitating, handed him a key and told him to go ahead. Although the business owner had clearly taken the trouble to make a sign to indicate the rules, the barista made a judgment call contrary to that rule. This supports not only the findings of the quantitative data (that no one was denied access to the washroom even in W4CO establishments), but also reflects what interviewees told me at later stages of the study.

In another instance, a man who seemed to be very down on his luck entered a shop. His hair was matted, and he was wearing an assortment of very old clothes. He looked tired, and walked

slightly stooped over. He had long fingernails that were dirty and broken, and he shuffled into the shop quietly. He was known to the barista, however, who called him “sir”, and also by his name.

Their relationship seemed friendly and tension-free, and he picked up a dirty cup that someone else had left behind, returning it to her before he bought his cup of coffee and sat down. In this case, especially in retrospect given the interview data gathered, this interaction shows the importance of “regular” status in a business.

4.3.1 Why W4CO?

This section will cover the data gathered from 15 interviews with employees and managers at coffee shops and fast food establishments from the pool of 202 businesses. In reviewing this data, though, it will be helpful to keep the main quantitative findings in mind. To that end, I will very briefly state them here. Figures B – E show that the frequency of W4CO rules is more than double as high in chain businesses than in independent ones. Figures F and G show that despite this, washroom use of all kinds (both customers and non-customers) is over double as much in chain establishments. This is a surprising puzzle, as many of the chain establishments observed not only have W4CO rules, but also codes for the door – the physical barriers to entry are quite high. Figures B – E also show that W4CO rules tend to be slightly less frequent in more residential areas (like Bloor and the Danforth).

The quantitative data shows the discretionary nature of W4CO rules, with 41 instances in chain shops and 3 in independent ones where the workers needed to use their discretion on whether someone should be granted access to the washroom or not.

With these findings in mind, I will review the data gathered during 15 interviews with baristas, fast food workers, and managers at 15 different shops from the sample pool defined by

the quantitative data. So far, I have shown that W4CO rules are very common in Toronto with

37.62% of observed businesses displaying W4CO signs, and that these rules are based on the discretion of staff and not on tight adherence to the rule. I have also established the pool from which the interviewees were recruited – independent and chain coffee shops and fast food establishments along five long strips of main streets in Toronto’s downtown core (College, Bloor,

Queen, Yonge, and Danforth). This interview data is the section that most directly addresses the research question: What are the narratives that support the use of W4CO rules in Toronto’s downtown core?12

4.3.2 Drug use in washrooms

“It's such a lousy situation because the people who, for the most part are

asking to use your washroom that haven't bought anything are vulnerable people.

Obviously not always, but a lot of the time…and then if something happens in your

washroom because that person is having some kind of episode or whatever, then

it's like...this other very vulnerable person who works at the café who's not equipped

to deal with it and is getting paid minimum wage has to you know, deal with this

issue that should be dealt with by the government or non-government agencies but

like...it's just like...it just seems like everybody loses, cause the person who needs

access to this quality of life thing maybe, you know, something's happening and

they disrupt your washroom but then who has to deal with that is somebody else

12 Please note that recordings were not possible for Carol, Laura, Janis, or Neil – data from these interviews is included, but not cited verbatim. 63

who's like just trying to get through their shift...as if their life wasn't hard enough.

Nobody wins in this scenario” (Pete, a worker in an independent shop).

This quote sums up a large part of the findings from this portion of the data. W4CO are framed as being discretionary, but Pete (and others) express regret that this is the case. The necessity of this discretionary rule is explained by interviewees as being largely caused by a lack of mental health and housing resources for homeless people in Toronto.

Another interview conducted was with Neil, a director of operations for an independent coffee shop in Toronto. Neil spoke about his experience in his current position, and previous experience working in a large corporate franchise. One of the most interesting things he said was that in his business, the W4CO rules were not about the money. He repeatedly asserted that neither he nor the owner of the business cared if someone went into the washroom and used up all the toilet paper or made a mess. Instead, Neil spoke at length about the problems the business had faced due to drug use (specifically injection drugs) in the washrooms. He also called into question the assumption that W4CO rules could curb this issue — he pointed out that a customer could come in, buy a coffee, and then use drugs in the bathroom. This, according to Neil, had happened on more than one occasion.

Carol reflected on the ineffectiveness of W4CO in her busy downtown location by saying that they used to have W4CO rules, but had given them up to make their working lives easier – the location is so busy that unlocking the door for customers was a burden. She explained that it didn’t make much difference, because the goods sold at the shop were cheap enough that a person could use the washroom for whatever purpose and then buy something. Although she admitted that discontinuing the W4CO rules had caused an uptick in the instance of drug use and other 64

alternative uses of the washroom, she didn’t see another choice. Enforcement of W4CO rules is difficult in busy locations, because of the high level of foot traffic. As Carol said, unless there was a way to completely enforce the idea that a customer must buy their food first and then use the washroom, they would continue to have problems. Even in that case, it would be unlikely to really make a dent in the issue. She reported finding needles in the washroom every day, having to call the ambulance for someone who had overdosed or passed out in the washroom once a month, and having to call the police to the store three to four times per week. Her experience tracks with the quantitative data collected – chain businesses had 41 instances of pre-purchase and non-customer washroom use total across all observed businesses compared to independent shops.

Neil also alluded several times to work experience in a large corporate chain where the problem of drug use in the washrooms was even more prevalent. He recounted numerous situations where the bathroom was occupied for unreasonable lengths of time for suspected drug use; instances of drug deals happening in the washroom; instances of people overdosing; and at least one instance where such severe damage to the property was caused that the franchise had to bring in an external cleaning service (usually, in coffee shops, it is the baristas who clean the washrooms).

This was also echoed by Annie, a worker at a chain coffee shop with a prominent W4CO sign:

Annie: “Yeah, I'm not sure if you know but there's a community center so you find

like lots of mental sick people, so they just want to go in the washroom to smoke a

joint, drink, inject something...I dunno.”

EW: Right, so there's injection problems...in the washroom where you work?

Annie: “It's not frequently, it doesn't happen all the time, but once in a while...I

wasn't working here but like my boss told me. There was one day when a woman

went there she injected so much stuff that she had overdosage in the washroom.”

EW: Oh my god...

Annie:...people were waiting in line to use the washroom but she never came out,

and then they had to like break the door and take her to a hospital or something

Though Annie said that issues of this magnitude only occurred about once or twice a year, the quote above shows the impact that these events have on both the staff and the managers of the shop. It is also important to note that among workers who reported having dealt with drug issues in the washroom before, the frequency of those reported occurrences varied widely. For example, though Annie reported these incidents happening yearly, Carol reported them happening every week.

4.3.3 Protective Feelings: Management’s responsibility to lower-ranking staff members

As discussed in the methods section, I had anticipated – based on my own work experience in both Toronto and other smaller cities – a divergence of opinion on W4CO rules between employees who are not managers and employees who are managers. This turned out not to be the case. Moreover, the hard line that I had experienced between owners and employees was almost non-existent in either corporate/chain or independent shops. In the case of the former, managers work shifts alongside other employees, while the owner of the franchise is rarely present. Only 2 out of 11 corporate/chain franchise interviews stated that the owner worked at the shop. In both these cases, the lack of a divergence of opinion on this issue still held. In the case of independent

shops, the owners are more frequently present, with 2 out of the 4 independent shop participants speaking of the owner of the shop as someone they interacted with frequently.

The difference in perspective that was identified between managers and non-managers was that all the managers interviewed reported feeling protective towards their (often younger) counterparts. Ian, a manager in a busy fast food establishment, said: “Cause I’m honestly not here at 4 in the morning – my staff are. And my staff have to go down there and deal with a dirty needle or something like that. It’s just not right”. In this instance, needles as a hazard are recognized as something that shouldn’t be dealt with by less experienced workers.

He expanded on that idea by expressing an almost parental feeling towards the young people working in the shop, which is worth quoting at length:

“…I mean, you have to use your discretion and unfortunately, I’ve actually

thought about it a lot you know sometimes I feel like you know am I discriminating?

I hope not. But I really don’t want to walk down there later on or have one of my

staff, little 16 year old kid who works here during…on the weekend during the day,

and walk down there to use the washroom and she sees that. … I don’t want that.

So…Because you kinda have that parental…part of your brain when you’re doing

this, you know, dealing with younger people who are working for you. … if my kid

walked down there at that age and came home and told me “oh I was at work and

you know, I opened the bathroom, my boss made me go down and clean the sinks

in the bathroom downstairs and there was this, you know, if I was the parent, I’d be

like…you’re quitting.”

In this quote, advocating for the discretion of employees is melded with a feeling of responsibility for the people under his management.

These sentiments were also reflected in the interview with Neil – the consequence of drug use in the washrooms was that staff had to deal with situations that they were not trained for, that could be dangerous to their emotional and physical well-being, and that made their work experience less enjoyable. Although Neil’s business had attempted to provide training to staff on how to deal with overdoses and customers suffering from mental health issues, he considered that this was not their responsibility.

This created a situation where Neil felt responsible to his staff first, thus prompting him to use W4CO rules. As he pointed out, however, the rule was not always applied. The rule exists more as a safety net in case staff needed to refuse access to a non-customer based on a judgment call. He pointed to the use of discretion, and that employees had to make these judgment calls based on a person’s appearance and demeanor, as well as previous interactions. This created a situation that Neil recognized as problematic, but that he did not see a solution to besides the one that already existed: screen non-customers who wanted to use the washroom based on their appearance, hygiene and appearance of having mental health issues. He anxiously admitted that he considered this an obvious human rights problem if a staff person was to misidentify the symptoms of a disability as the symptoms of drug use or mental illness. However, the fact that people had on occasion overdosed in the bathroom left Neil feeling that screening non-customers based on these inexact criteria was the only way to protect staff and other cutomers.

Despite the existence of these rules, neither Neil nor Ian said that there would be serious consequences if employees broke W4CO rules. Several employees and managers said that 68

mistakes of that kind would be a teaching opportunity, but that employees wouldn’t get in trouble.

Susan, for example, who is a shift supervisor in a chain establishment, says: “But (name of chain redacted) has a system where it’s like, coaching. I would ask you, why did you make that decision, why do you think that was the right decision or the wrong decision? So like, we’re holding our baristas and our employees accountable while also letting them know, like, hey, this is a better way to do it”.

Both managers and employees alluded to the fact that since the rule was discretionary anyway, employees wouldn’t be disciplined for making a “bad call”. Employees felt supported, saying that they did not think they would get in serious trouble for allowing someone they shouldn’t have to use the washroom.

Interestingly, when I posed the same question in reverse to employees who worked at places where there were no W4CO rules (if they told someone they couldn’t use the washroom because they felt unsafe, would their boss be angry?), all of them responded in the negative. A good example of this is this long excerpt from Viola:

“I think if I felt uncomfortable letting someone use the washroom and I did

say, no you can't use it, then my boss would understand and she wouldn't be like,

strict about it. Like, she...I wouldn't get in trouble, like she would understand that I

was, that I just didn't feel comfortable letting them use the bathroom, she wouldn't

get mad at something like that, cause she works in the coffee store in this location

and people are coming in, like...She usually works during the week as well, like

Monday to Friday, so she comes across people who I'm pretty sure she feels

uncomfortable letting them use her bathrooms, right, so she's not like strict with

that, like if I were to not let someone use the washroom and they were to complain

to her, she'd probably have more my back than...like, my staff are unsafe”

This quote also exemplifies the fact that because managers in coffee shops and fast food establishments work alongside lower-ranking employees and perform the same job duties, solidarity and understanding is built up between the different “ranks” of employees.

4.3.4 Safety concerns, violence, and health crises in the workplace

The findings discussed above point to the fact that ignoring the provision of services for

Toronto’s homeless population, who have a disproportionate incidence of mental health and addictions (City of Toronto, 2013), has a ripple effect that reaches far beyond that population.

More specifically, the lack of care for people suffering from these issues touches not only those people who need care, but also low-wage service-industry workers who are ill-equipped to deal with mental health or addictions crises.

According to the accounts given by interviewees for this thesis, W4CO are often an imperfect response to a perceived potential for violent, stressful or unsafe situations. Workers and managers at all levels of power are keenly aware that they are using their discretion, that the rules are “not fair”, and that the possibility for making a wrong decision is always present. In all cases but two, interviewees were either fully opposed to or seemed to regret what they saw as the necessity for W4CO rules - all 8 interviewees who did not have W4CO in their businesses said they would not change that absence of rule, and 7 out of the 9 who did expressed regret that they felt those rules were necessary.

Three interviewees in busy locations in the downtown core cited safety concerns at work and tied these concerns to homelessness and mental illness. When a participant brought up aggressive behavior, including objects in the shop being overturned and aggressive behavior towards staff, I asked her who she believed tended to be the main perpetrators of that behavior.

She responded: “It would be, it would be those people who…seem homeless. And it’s hard to say because they might not be. But they come across…they don’t even…they just go past you like, we always say hi to people who go straight in cause we’re like, we see you, and if they don’t say anything and they just walk to the back and are like…can I have the key. And it’s very like…there’s no conversation, it’s just like… “key”. And you’re kind of like, OK, I’m not in the mood for this” (Gloria, a worker in a busy chain coffeeshop). She further explained her statement of not being “in the mood for this” by explaining that she had had men shout at her and act in an unusually aggressive manner on a frequent enough basis that the granting of the washroom key now operated on a dual basis – if a person is perceived as being unusually aggressive, she gave them the key to avoid confrontation or an unsafe situation:

Gloria: (laughs) so it’s two types it’s like…if you’re gonna be aggressive

I’ll just give you the key but people who are just rude, I won’t give them the key.

Cause there’s like a difference, like…you’re not gonna fight me!

EW: No,

Gloria:…Like, nobody’s gonna…

EW: Like, some business man isn’t going to fight you.

Gloria: No, he might get aggressive but it’ll be more rude than violent.

Viola, another young woman, supports this difference between aggressive rudeness and violence. After describing two violent incidents where people tried to steal her tip money, Viola said: “But yeah I feel those were the only two violent, kind of, interactions like...or like obviously like customers will yell at you and give you attitude, like that happens...like it's a good day if that happens like, once, you know?”.

In these quotes, dealing with rudeness is seen as an everyday part of service industry work and is distinguished from violence. Although workers in the service industry are frequently subjected to rude behavior, violence or threatening behavior was seen as being something different, and much less easily tolerated.

In this way, we can see these rules as sometimes being deeply ineffective in preventing the problems they purport to solve – prospective washroom users who may have mental health issues that make it difficult to interact with workers in a non-aggressive way are sometimes not confronted by workers who are afraid for their safety. Several workers, as well as all managers, brought up safety concerns related to injection drug users, homeless people, and people with mental health issues. As mentioned before, these three problems were routinely considered side- by-side, though often implicitly so. For instance, Gloria, Janis and Carol, who all work at very busy chain locations, reported feeling unsafe at work at least some of the time. In follow-up questions to figure out what or who was making them feel that way, they tied that lack of safety to the large number of homeless people around their places of work:

EW: “Right, right. Do you ever feel like, unsafe working in this neighborhood?”

Gloria: “ahhhhhh….there’s a few, I open here at 7, I’m here at like 6:45 – and I’m

here for like an hour on my own and I do…if there’s someone sleeping outside or 72

something I’m kinda like ugh. I just want a customer to come in, I can’t wait for

that first customer to come in just so I know…like, cause it can be kinda quiet like

from 7 to 8 it’s quite quiet and it’s like, there’s a lot of homeless people around and

people are sleeping rough and stuff so. It has its moments.”

When I asked Carol whether the conditions at her work impacted her emotional well-being, she said that when she had first transferred to that location, she was frustrated and scared and asked to be transferred back to her old shop, but after 2 years at that location, she had gotten used to the issues. She did admit, however, that those situations disrupted their workday and added an extra burden. Carol summarized the whole situation by saying that although she completely understood the reason for the problems and felt bad for the people who needed to wash their clothes in the bathroom sink, that she felt powerless to do anything productive about their situation. As a manager of a business, she is caught between customers getting angry that someone was occupying the bathroom for 40 minutes at a time, the stress of dealing with overdoses and medical emergencies, and the knowledge that as a business, they are not set up to provide adequate assistance.

Unsafe or stressful work situations involving suspected mental health issues were not limited to workers that have W4CO in the businesses where they work. However, the frequency and severity of incidents tended to rise closer to the core. In addition, though workers in more relaxed locations may have occasionally dealt with an incident, this may have been tempered by the much lower washroom use traffic, which would give a person more time to deal with the situation, clean, and collect themselves than in busier locations. As shown in Figures B, C, and D,

independent shops have W4CO comparatively rarely, and see a much lower incidence of washroom use. Workers for chains, however, can expect to see hundreds of washroom uses a day.

4.3.5 The police and workplace safety

Workers expressed diverging opinions on the role of the police in preventing drug incidents in the washrooms. Some workers, like Pete and Kat (both workers at small independent shops) reported being unwilling to call the police:

“I'm not equipped to deal with somebody who's like, having a drug incident in the washroom, like I'm not really…and you don't wanna call the cops at that point cause they're not equipped to deal with it either, you know…” (Pete)

Referring to dealing with people who may have mental health issues that make it difficult to interact with other people in a non-confrontational way, Kat said: “I think that at that point I have to ask that person to leave or else…I don’t wanna have to call the cops on anybody, if it’s not like a really serious situation, I don’t want to have to escalate the scenario” (Kat).

Andrew, a worker at a large independent shop, said that they had had issues with people leaving behind needles in the washroom, but never mentioned calling the police, instead saying that the people had “eventually” been “banned”.

Workers in chain shops, however, reported more of a willingness to involve the police when necessary. Carol said that she called the police about three times a week related to drug- related incidents. Viola said: “…when we’re serving customers it's hard to know, right, so like it's too late by the time we go there, it's like, OK. It's there. All we can do is throw it out or clean it up

or whatever. But yeah we do have a policy that if you feel like someone is doing stuff down there to call the police right? But then they come a couple hours later, right” (Viola)

Susan echoed Kat’s point that it needed to be “serious” to call the police: “We’ve had some customers that have actually flipped over our entire, like, where the lids are, just tipped it over and started screaming at one of our baristas and like it was a shock cause you’re not used to it happening especially like here, I wasn’t used to it…um, but just like after a while if it gets disruptive to where they’re like, violent, like, we are supposed to call the police. But like, in a discreet manner of course” (Susan, a shift manager in a chain shop).

An outlying opinion in the data was the view expressed by Janis, a young worker at a busy chain coffee shop. Saying that she used to be more sympathetic to the cause of homeless people before she had to work with them every day, Janis advocated a very strict law enforcement approach, saying that although she disagreed with countries that had the death penalty for drug users, and emphasizing that she believed in humane treatment, she thought a “no tolerance” approach would be most appropriate. Janis’s objection to homeless people and people living with mental illness in the neighborhood where she works is at least partly based on her feelings of being unsafe at work. The way she talked about the dangerous situations she faced was radically different than other interviewees, who tried to separate their bad experiences from stigmatizing discourse.

It is important to note that out of 15 interviews, this was the only one where this was suggested. The prevailing opinion on law enforcement was one of sympathy for the people who might be inspiring them to make the call, and of the situation needing to be quite serious before workers were willing to contact law enforcement. However, it is important to note that the participants who were most inclined to bring in law enforcement (Carol and Janis) were also in the 75

busiest locations, and that both of them had expressed safety concerns about the neighborhood in which they work.

4.3.6 No W4CO: Social justice and the safe neighborhood

Resistance to W4CO rules, and the conditions under which that resistance occurs, are just as important in unpacking the issue as the opinion of those who have W4CO rules. I also interviewed 5 people from corporate/chain businesses, and 3 people from independent shops who do not have W4CO. The reason for this is twofold – first, I observed during the gathering of descriptive statistics that chain shops had different rules depending on the neighborhood. I thought it would be useful to try to talk to people from the same chain, but in different locations, to glean some insight into why, in a corporate/chain environment, the rules would vary. Second, I noticed during the gathering of descriptive statistics that independent shops had much lower incidence of

W4CO rules. This is just as interesting as the presence of the rule, and I was curious to compare the conditions and perspectives that discouraged the rule with the ones that encouraged it.

Six participants – Freddie (No W4CO), Susan (very loose W4CO13), Carol (No W4CO),

Pete (No W4CO), Jimmy (W4CO), and Gloria (W4CO) – described W4CO rules as neighborhood dependent. Jimmy said: “I think we…I think I’ve seen it (needles in the washroom) like once over all of my jobs or whatever? For the most part I work in safe areas like I worked down on

Queensway for my last two jobs, and this is a pretty hipster area, so not really”.

13 Susan’s situation is difficult to categorize because although there is a code on the washroom door, she reported giving the code to anyone who asked and categorized the store as not having W4CO despite the presence of the code. 76

Many interviewees had previous experience with other businesses in neighborho ods identified as unsafe or rough, and all cited the difference in the neighborhood as being the primary reason for the difference in the rule. The construction of the narratives that support W4CO rules were not done solely based on one’s own work experience at the shop they were presently working at – many interviewees know people who also work in the service industry, or have experience at other shops around the city. For example, when I interviewed people who worked at chains, they would often relate not only their own stories, but other’s stories as well, since people who work at chains sometimes shift between locations or know others who work for the same chain but at different locations. Some interviewees who currently work at businesses that don’t have W4CO rules had previously worked at businesses that did, and thus had an interesting comparative perspective.

It is impossible to measure the true impact of other worker’s stories or past experiences on worker’s experiences of W4CO rules, these stories form a significant part of the narrative. One of the main functions the stories of other shops served was comparative: “Yeah I know some locations have it worse than us where like every single day they’re calling in an incident or calling the police

– personally never had to deal with that, but can only imagine it’s twice as hard” (Susan, a shift supervisor in a chain establishment). Other interviewees more directly compared the neighborhood their shop was in to other neighborhoods (names of business and neighborhood redacted):

Freddie: (laughs)...oh I've heard awful stories from (name of chain redacted) employees.

EW: Yeah, yeah. me too.

Freddie: The one at (street redacted) and (street redacted)...awful.

EW: But you don't really get that kind of stuff here?

Freddie: (shrugs) no. 77

(Freddie, a worker at a chain store in a relatively affluent residential area)

These quotes show that participants use other people’s experiences to contextualize their own, and fold those into their understanding of W4CO rules in their own business. In both these cases, the interviewees did not have W4CO rules in their businesses, but they explained the lack of those rules in the same terms that people who had W4CO rules did. In other words, the absence of drug incidents or a large number of homeless people were explained as the drivers for not needing W4CO rules.

All 5 of the interviewees from corporate chains were from chains that had drastically different rules in different parts of the city. In 3 of the cases, I was able to interview workers from the same chain, but in different parts of the city, who all had very different experiences with W4CO rules, and their own work experience.

Three of the 8 interviewees from chain establishments articulated a specific human rights objection to W4CO rules, while 4 others expressed some variation of a rights-based concern. One person said, in reference to whether it bothered them to have everyone using the washroom, “No, it doesn't really bother me. I'm like...if I had needed the bathroom bad or something I want to be like, I can go here...” (Freddie). Laura, who works in a chain establishment that usually does have

W4CO in other neighborhoods, adopted a strict social justice perspective in her refusal of W4CO.

She said that access to washrooms should be a human right, that she would have open washrooms if it was her own business, and that a business should provide every service possible to the community. Freddie’s counterpart, Janis, proposed heavy law enforcement and supported W4CO rules in the business where she worked. The chain where Laura works has W4CO at every other location throughout the city that I saw while gathering quantitative data. 78

The issue of customers making messes too was fairly common reasoning – since it is possible for customers to make messes just as much as everybody else, some participants thought it was silly to enforce W4CO. Six participants – Neil, Viola, Kat, Jimmy, Carol, and Susan expressed some variation of this idea. A good example of this reasoning is Viola’s perspective:

“The owner, cause I questioned the owner about it too, like why don't we

have just customers use it and she told me um, like that it doesn't matter who uses

it, because like if a customer is using it do stuff that's like inappropriate, like,

making messes, like, like, customers can make just as much of a mess as strangers,

like, or people aren't customers that are using it. But something along those lines

like, she's like, customers can make just as much of a mess as people coming up

from the street to use it, so it doesn't really matter who's using it” (Viola, a worker

at a busy chain establishment).

This perspective was not limited to only locations that did not have W4CO, however, as

Neil, Jimmy and Susan all have W4CO rules in their workplace. In their cases, though, this reasoning was a justification for lax application of the rule: “Messes happen, yeah, but so does…every other mess. Everyone’s human, people make mistakes. Some people come in drunk at 4am and puke on the toilet or whatever, it’s like…whatever” (Jimmy, a worker at a small fast food chain in a busy location).

Cases where interviewees did not have W4CO rules in their business were vital in forming a more complete picture of how W4CO rules work. These interviews appear to validate the quantitative data that suggested that W4CO are location-specific, more than corporate or independent-specific. Participants from busier locations – Neil, Ian, Gloria, Carol, and Janis – expressed the necessity of W4CO rules, but participants from less busy locations had a more

ambivalent relationship, or a directly oppositional view towards W4CO rules. Interviewees across locations used previous experience from other locations, or the experiences of their friends and colleagues to contextualize their own.

4.3.7 No W4CO: Social justice and the third place

The comparative rarity of washroom use in independent establishments (see Figure C) may partially explain why W4CO signs in independent shops are uncommon – on certain strips (Queen in particular), no independent coffee shop was recorded as having W4CO. Only a few independent fast-food places were.

I found that 3 of the 4 employees who work at independent shops who were interviewed were opposed to W4CO. Their opposition took the form of statements that reinforced their ideas of community, and what their responsibility is to that community. For example:

“I think the general attitude comes from the owner. He, uh, is a highly

principled individual, humanitarian…and so, the hiring after that has been very in

line with his philosophies. Yeah, and we’re all, we all have a lot of respect for each

other, so I think that the respectful attitude just naturally rubs off on others. And if

it’s the owner who says that’s OK, then who’s to go against that. Like the manager,

he always says, we’re the community coffee shop, we’re friendly so we let

everybody use our washrooms even if they don’t buy anything” (Kat, a worker at

an independent shop).

She described the business where she worked as being “the neighborhood’s public washroom” and insisted that not only did the shop have a strict no-W4CO policy, but that they would never discriminate under any circumstances. The question of whether this is actually true 80

or not is both difficult to answer and not necessarily relevant to the research question. The narrative she offered to explain her relationship to washrooms in her business was based in her understanding of the ethics that the business was founded on and her own perception of what the business should be offering to the community.

Observations and interviews bear out the idea that the more pleasant working conditions in independent shops have an effect on the culture of the shop when it comes to W4CO rules. Chief among the factors that may make independent shops more pleasant than chains is the much lower foot traffic, especially when it comes to washroom use.

All interviewees from independent coffee shops specifically cited human rights and social justice perspectives while talking about washrooms, even if they had dealt with difficult situations before. The three interviewees from independent shops who did not have W4CO rules reported experiencing a lower frequency of difficult situations than their counterparts in corporate chains.

Though she had never been placed in the position of having someone overdose in the washroom,

Kat considered the possibility in the following way: “I think I would still allow them to do that, because I don’t think that at the point of an addiction that severe it’s like good to…to disrupt that situation because of what possible effects that could have? That person’s injecting drugs in there, and they’re OD’ing, I’d be glad that they’re not OD’ing somewhere where nobody will find them, you know?”.

A worker at another independent shop who had dealt with needles in the washroom before approached the situation with cheerful neutrality:

Andrew: “Well, vomit on the stairs more than the bathrooms is hard to deal with, also there’s just like needle gear and stuff like that. But if you’re careful, you can just dispose of that.” 81

EW: “Ahhh. How often does that happen?”

Andrew: “Ah, it’s kinda, there were a couple regulars who were there for a while who just got banned after 6 months or so of just coming and using the bathroom to shoot.”

EW: “right.”

Andrew: “But, less so recently. Still happens once in a while.” (Andrew, a worker at a popular independent business)

In this quote, it is important to note Andrew’s use of the term “regular” to define the people he is talking about. It is also telling that in this independent shop, the employees felt secure and able to enforce a ban – something that did not come up as a possibility in busier locations.

Andrew’s approach was unique, however, because he said he had several friends who used injection drugs, and thus seemed better equipped to deal with the presence of needle gear than other participants.

Pete, a worker in an independent shop, said that the shop’s policy was based on empirical evidence:

“Well usually we don't make any...judgments until they...until it's

empirically true that they've done something that's not acceptable, but like, we're

never going to stop somebody just cause we don't like the cut of their jib, like, 'no

you can't use the washroom'. Once, if somebody has done something and we're all

like, 'hey, you know that person who comes to use the washroom and did this very

terrible thing while I was working, just so you know', and then people are like, 'oh

I know what you're talking about' and then if they come in you might be like...'oh

it's for customers only' or you might just be like...'you're banned', because you

caused too much mayhem”.

This quote, in addition to echoing some of the same ideas as the one above, highlights the camaraderie between employees at independent shops. This employee works in a small establishment where problems can be communicated quickly between staff members, which reduces the need for a hard rule. Pete also highlighted the issue of neighborhood when they said that although bathroom incidents were “pretty infrequent”, but that the frequency of such incidents was based on the neighborhood. He stated that he used to work in a more high-traffic neighborhood

– “that area has a lot of vulnerable people”. In response to a clarifying question as to whether they thought that difference was based on the neighborhood, he said: “Absolutely. Absolutely, yeah.

Like, how many people walkin' around on the street have ready access to a washroom? That's like a factor I think. Anecdotally, that would seem to be a factor”.

Most independent shops also are situated in areas that are not in as busy parts of the city.

For example, figures B and C show that Yonge Street has hardly any independent shops at all, while the Danforth, especially after Pape, has a very high concentration of independent restaurants and shops. In the course of gathering quantitative data, which involved many hours of walking up and down the strips in the research area, it also became clear that Yonge Street one of the areas of the city where homelessness is most visible, whereas the Danforth, especially as you move out towards Woodbine, has a much lower number of people panhandling or sleeping on the street. The data presented in this section shows that although fast-food establishments and coffee shops, both chain and independent, may be dealing in comparable goods, the working conditions and the

pressures on employees due to volume of customers and the neighborhood the business is located in vary drastically.

4.4 Chapter Summary

In this section, I have laid out the main quantitative and qualitative findings of this study.

They can be summarized as follows:

37.62% of the 202 shops in the sample have W4CO rules. Corporate/chain coffee shops have W4CO rules more frequently than independent shops, but the relationship between the type of neighborhood and W4CO signs seems equally, if not more, important. However, the volume of washroom use between chain and independent shops in all neighborhoods was wildly different, the chains often seeing double the amount of uses per hour than the independent shops. The quantitative findings reveal that the presence of W4CO signs appear to be influenced by neighborhood and volume of washroom use per hour.

Eight interviews were conducted with employees that do have W4CO rules in their workplace, and 7 were done with interviewees who do not, for a total of 15 interviews. The narratives supplied by both groups complemented each other. The employees that do have W4CO rules were concerned about hazardous materials (human waste, needles, etc…) in the washroom.

Participants perceived these as being left by people who are precariously housed, addicted to drugs, or having mental health issues (or all three). Despite this, all but two interviewees expressed regret about the situation, as they were very aware of the potential consequences of denying someone access to the washroom. Employees who did not have W4CO rules explained the absence of those rules in similar terms, sometimes alluding to the neighborhood the shop is in as better than other neighbourhoods. The idea that corporate/chain establishments’ company policies have much 84

impact was largely dispelled, as chains that had W4CO rules in some neighborhoods did not in others. Workers operating in neighborhoods perceived as safer often invoked a strong social justice and human rights perspective in their upholding of a lack of W4CO rules.

Given this new information, where do we stand on our initial discussion of public washrooms, or at least some kind of stable and reliable washroom access as a fundamental component of the Right to the City? In this situation, where at least two groups of vulnerable people’s rights are being infringed upon in different ways, often at odds with each other, what way forward can there be? The following discussion section will attempt to grapple with these problems.

5 DISCUSSION 5.1 Introduction: The Right to the City

In this discussion section, I will take a broad approach to the Right to the City (R2TC) and will consider the different ways in which people’s R2TC is being inhibited, and the ways that we can strengthen that right. If we see the R2TC as a right that needs to be protected and enforced like other rights, then we should consider the broad spectrum of structural barriers to exercising that right, and try to eliminate as many of them as possible. This discussion section is laid out with that goal in mind, and tries to branch off from the literature review in considering not only washrooms, but other issues raised in the interviews that impact the R2TC.

First, I will cover how interview data on W4CO both uphold and challenge stigmas against homeless people and people with addictions and mental health issues. Second, I will discuss

Supervised Injection Sites (SIS) and the relationship of services for marginalized people to the

working conditions of low-wage workers. Third, I will discuss the data from independent shops, using the concept of third place to explain differences in the data. Fourth, I will talk about territorial stigmatization and the neighborhoods that these shops are in. Finally, I will devote some time to passing on interviewee’s policy suggestions, and explain what those suggestions say about their complicated relationships to the neighborhoods in which they work, and the people that come through the shop.

This work generally takes Henri Lefebvre’s central thesis in The Right to the City (1968) to be accurate – that a series of historical and economic events have shut people out from having the right to have a say in making the City. Lefebvre protests that the city in its historical form is no longer anything but an “object of cultural consumption for tourists” (Lefebvre, 1978: 117).

Though he declares that the city is dead (ibid: 117), urban life persists. The city is fractured – people are pushed outward away from the city centre and both people and activities are ghettoized

(ibid: 112) as the city centre falls victim to zoning bylaws and commodification of space. This segregation, which keeps power and consumption in the centre but exiles most of the scope of everyday life, destroys the city. The R2TC would, in creating a desegregated city centre, reaffirm the right of people to shape and change the cities they live in. Harvey (2003) sums up Lefebvre’s point by saying “But new rights can also be defined: like the right to the city which, as I began by saying, is not merely a right of access to what the property speculators and state planners define, but an active right to make the city different, to shape it more in accord with our heart's desire, and to re-make ourselves thereby in a different image” (Harvey, 2003: 941). Purcell (2014) even further distills the idea: “in almost all its forms the right to the city is understood to be a struggle to augment the rights of urban inhabitants against the property rights of owners” (2014: 142)

In the context of this research, the R2TC is an aspirational right that guides thought about what conditions are necessary to make greater democratic access to the re-shaping of the city possible, with a particular focus on the requirements of the human body in the built environment.

For example, a lack of public washrooms can be a barrier to going out at all for people with chronic health problems and the elderly (Afacan and Gurel, 2015; Bichard and Knight, 2012; Anthony and

Dufresne, 2007). As a result, they are less able to participate in public life and in the making of the city than someone who does not have those limitations in public space.

Other theoretical frameworks have been used to address washroom access as well. Feminist frameworks have been used to address the plight of girls and women, especially in the global south, who have reduced access to the public sphere due to lack of sanitation (McMahon et al, 2011;

Sommer,2013; Mason et al, 2013). Literature that studies geographies of survival explains how people map space to attend to their needs both in Canada (Wittmer and Parizeau, 2016) and the

United States (Mitchell and Heynan, 2009; DeVerteuil, 2012; McLean 2012). Access to sanitation, especially in the global south, has also been framed as a human rights issue by organizations like the United Nations (Sustainable Development Goals, 2018) and other non-profit groups.

As more and more people world-wide live in urban centres, the question of washroom access in urban planning (both in the global south and global north) becomes more and more important. As cities become larger, requiring more time away from a private washroom to get from place to place, and requiring more time spent in public in order to navigate city life, the lack of provision of public washrooms in urban centres becomes problematic. This work seeks to address the underlying policy issues in a large city in the global north that prevent public washrooms in

urban centres from being built, by using a theoretical perspective that is deliberately broad in imagining what human rights in a modern urban centre should look like.

Lefebvre conceives of democracy not as the act of, once every few years, casting a vote, but as a continuing project by which the vast majority of people (the proletariat) gradually seize power from below and the “emergent power of the proletariat comes to pervade society and displace bourgeois rule” (Purcell, 2014).

If we include the ability to participate in third place life and other informal discussions into our understanding of this democratic process (as Nemeth (2012), Nemeth and Schmidt (2011),

Kohn (2004), Oldenburg (1999) and Sorkin (1992) do), that participation is to a large degree dependent on the dignity that one is afforded in public space. A lack of resources that uphold this dignity (affordable housing, adequate care for people with addictions, and public washrooms, for example) makes participation in city life and the democratic process difficult.

In the literature review, I covered works that implicitly show that the ability to operate with dignity in the built environment has an impact on being able to claim one’s right to the city. This, though not explicitly stated in Lefebvre’s original work, is a logical conclusion. We are unable to escape from what our bodies can and cannot do, and what they must do. Since we all live with varying degrees of physical ability (and indeed move through these states throughout our lives), it stands to reason that if amenities are not available that make it possible for our bodies to operate with dignity in the city, then we can’t either. In the case of washrooms, this argument applies to everyone. Although people who are already housed may be experiencing difficulty in expressing the R2TC because of a lack of public washrooms, they are at least considered stakeholders in that discussion. 88

Homeless or precariously housed people, however, are almost completely excluded from being considered full members and stakeholders in the city. This is especially true if they also suffer from mental health or addictions issues that make it difficult to interact with others.

Their marginalization in turn affects low-wage workers, who are placed in the position of becoming de facto front-line social workers as they try to manage crises that occur in their washrooms in the absence of adequate State support.

I will attempt to untangle these issues here, both by relating the data back to the ideas brought up in the literature review and by introducing new literatures that can help further explain the findings.

5.2 Stigma and the W4CO Narrative

When I asked participants what markers of someone who looked like “trouble” was, they often came up with descriptors that were related to precarious housing or addictions (sometimes both). It would be untrue to say that there aren’t some basic markers that tell us these things, or that we think tell us these things. Interviewees cited missing articles of clothing and poor hygiene as being evidence of the former, while the latter was characterized by aggression, or, conversely, a “lost” look. However, since not all homeless people have either addictions issues or mental health issues (City of Toronto, 2013), conflating homelessness with mental illness or drug addiction may lead to unjustly denying access to someone who will cause no trouble at all.

The stigma that is placed on homeless people, especially those seeming to suffer from mental health and addictions issues, becomes a coping mechanism for a situation in which it is impossible to accurately assess personal danger or risk to property.

Employees and business owners in interviews have already said that despite W4CO rules and their own judgement, they still have problems with the washrooms. Interviewees (specifically

Carol, Jimmy, Gloria, Annie, and Ian) expressed the need to maintain W4CO rules despite their sympathetic feelings towards washroom-seekers. They expressed the desire to maintain some measure of control over who could access the washroom, but were inclined to be flexible in their interpretation of the rule to allow for their own discretion and relationships with regulars.

In explaining the discourse surrounding homeless people in Seattle, Toft says: “The dominant social practices that we have developed as a culture for dealing with homelessness reproduce the social stigmas, or symbolic meanings, associated with those experiences a lack of adequate housing. … Based on the extant literature on media coverage of homelessness, we might expect discourses around ‘drug use’ or ‘alcoholism’ to be important, or descriptions of homeless persons as ‘filthy’ or ‘mentally ill’ to be prominent” (2014: 786). Toft compares discourse used by activists and that of the mainstream discourse, finding that the latter tends to criminalize homeless people, blame them for their own poverty, and overwhelmingly associates them with drug use and alcoholism. Activists, on the other hand, counter that discourse by “…refocusing public debate on the institutional structures and practices that produce and reproduce homelessness” (ibid, 787).

Toft’s findings mirror the ones in this study, where association of homeless people with messes in the washroom, alcohol and drug use are prevalent. However, the participants in this research also took a tone that Toft associated with activists: they were concerned with the structures that produced the problems they were dealing with, and eager to find solutions.

Toft discusses homelessness as being discursively associated with “being dirty” and public health hazards such as peeing in public. The discourse that Toft examines is especially present in

the archival research presented in the introduction of this thesis, and of some news sources (Flack,

2010) that present homeless or precariously housed people as “not quite human” (Goffman, 1976) in the sense that their presence in washrooms is considered objectionable, based on the assumption that they would not be there for the same reason as everyone else. These discourses blame vulnerable people for their situation, and (contrary to the participants in the interviews for this thesis) do not consider structural barriers.

For example, the common complaint among W4CO businesses that used needles are found in the washrooms would not be a problem if the City provided adequate sharps disposal to businesses, or if corporations did it themselves, in addition to the provision of more SIS. In the current context, however, employees clean up used sharps, sometimes with no complaint or concern for their own safety. In this way, the dehumanization of workers in the service industry runs parallel to the dehumanization of homeless people and those struggling with addictions.

The problem of people washing their clothes or themselves in the sink of a business) and monopolizing the washroom for that purpose would not be a problem if Toronto’s shelter crisis was solved, or, even better, if the City and province invested in some viable policy alternative for stable housing. Carol, a worker at a busy chain location, said that she felt bad for the people who did that, but that that activity routinely took up the washroom for 40 minutes at a time, causing other customers to complain. Pete, a worker at an independent shop, noted that a person had left

“a full shaved beard” in the sink.

Toft also found that that homeless encampments (and people) can’t really be “in-between”

‘druggies’ and ‘addicts’ and ‘sober’. The tent city they discuss (Nickelsville) is a ‘sober’ space, but the binary this sets up means that people can’t exist in between (799-800). This is similar to 91

the issue of shelters that don’t accept people who are intoxicated or who don’t deal well with others

(CBC News, 2017; Green and Alamenciak, 2013; Vittala, 1998). This is problematic, as the lack of structures that allow for people with serious addiction issues or mental health problems to receive help or care effectively shuts these people out of the system of care. For example, there is only one “wet” shelter where homeless men who are living with alcohol addictions can drink (in a controlled, supervised environment) while there – the Annex Harm Reduction Program at Seaton

House (Green and Alamenciak, 2013). Homeless people with addictions issues have difficulty accessing any kind of service that would help them – partly because those services don’t exist in large enough quantities, and partly because they can be banned from the services that do exist

The stigma that people with inadequate housing deal with is compounded by the stigmas associated with addictions, drug use and mental illness that are tied to homelessness. While mental illness and drug addiction are serious problems for Toronto’s homeless population (Svoboda, n/d;

City of Toronto, 2013), the discourse of policy-makers and certain (though certainly not all) media often uses these facts to further stigmatize homeless people instead of using those facts to come up with solutions.

Many of the interviewees reported that issues in their businesses arose from the presence of homeless people or people dealing with mental illness or drug addiction in the neighborhood or in the business. Responses to those problems varied. Some, like Viola and Gloria, preferred to avoid conflict altogether. Others, like Pete, refused access to people only based on evidence. Still others dealt with problems by closing the washroom after a certain time of day (Ian), or simply gave up trying to prevent issues and dealt with each as they arose, often calling the police (Carol).

Although she was unwilling to deny access to the washroom, Susan reported keeping an eye on

people who looked like “weirdos” or “sketchy”. All these strategies were discussed not in the context of non-customers using the washrooms, but in the context of people who might cause trouble in the washroom that would make the worker’s day more difficult.

The fact that workers use a variety of strategies to deal with people who they see as potentially difficult is not necessarily a failing of either the washroom-seeker or the employee, but is born of the relationship between stigmas and public policy, the allocation of public funds, and urban planning. As discussed earlier, public washrooms, SIS and other public services face a lot of resistance in public discourse – though not in most of this interviewee pool. This may happen despite (or perhaps because of) both the discursive and real links between homelessness, drug addiction and mental illness. The effect of this is that the very things that could solve these problems on a more macro level are abandoned, and the everyday micro setting of the coffee shop or fast food establishment is ill-equipped to handle the array of social services that are not provided. When policy makers choose to not invest in washrooms, supervised injection sites, and affordable housing in part because of politicized ideas about what people with stigmatized identities do and do not deserve, the needs those resources would be serving get shuffled off to other, less appropriate venues for providing care. This research has shown that employees and businesses then have to contend with the realities that this lack of services creates.

In relation to the point about macro-level solutions being abandoned, it seems that territorial stigma plays a part. As was discussed in the literature review, territorial stigma adds on to Goffman’s classic three categories of stigma by considering a situation where the stigma affecting a person can rub off on the space they inhabit, and vice-versa (Purdy, 2003; Wacquant et al, 2014; Horgan, 2018). In the case of this research, it seems that territorial stigma, especially as

it relates to building public washrooms, has operated on a predictive basis. As the archival sources discussed in the introduction show, there have been multiple cases where the TTC and/or the City have abandoned plans for washrooms because of fears that they would be misused by homeless people, gay men, or people living with addictions issues.

It seems that washrooms, as Derek Flack’s (2010) blogTO article and the deliberations of policy makers demonstrate, can become polluted by the stigmatized people who might use them before they are even built.

5.3 Provision of resources for addictions and mental health: Why do workers deal with needles in the washrooms?

There are several services that cater specifically to homeless people and people living with addictions or mental health issues that are lacking in Toronto. Homeless shelters are one example

– since 2015, there has been a 19% increase in usage of the permanent emergency shelter system

(Health Providers Against Poverty, 2018). A City of Toronto survey of Winter Respite Services users notes that “35% have serious medical conditions and disabilities; 31% have mental health issues; 30% have substance abuse issues; 25% have post-traumatic stress disorder; and 14% require an assistive device” (City of Toronto, 2018: 7). Winter Respite Services (WRS) are a stop- gap measure instituted by the City of Toronto from November 15th to April 15th where low-barrier, pet-friendly beds are made available in five sites around the city to supplement the already-existing shelter system. Last year (2016-17), WRS were only open in cases of Extreme Cold Alerts from

November 15th to December 15th, and March 15th to April 15th, with continuous service only between December 15th and February 28th. This year, continuous service will be in effect for the entire season (City of Toronto, 2017). In addition to the obvious need for housing, the statistics

on Winter Respite users clearly imply the other services that are lacking: adequate, pro-active mental health care and addictions services. A January 2018 report by Health Providers Against

Poverty reviewed these very same Winter Respite sites and found appalling conditions, with people reporting getting very little sleep due to uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous situations, and 70% reporting verbal, physical or sexual violence, produced by lack of resources and close quarters (Health Providers Against Poverty, 2018).

It is an important background consideration, then, that most mental health care is not automatically covered by Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP). Neither are prescriptions, unless a person qualifies for the Ontario Drug Benefit through the Ontario Disability Support Program

(ODSP) or another means. It is possible to get full coverage for medication for certain serious conditions (schizophrenia being one of them), but therapists, counsellors, and psychologists are not covered. It follows that if these services are not automatically included for all, the applications process may be unduly onerous, especially for a person who is currently living with a serious, untreated mental health issue. “Housing first” initiatives, championed by the work of Sam

Tsemberis in New York City, take this into account. In an article by Scott Carrier for Mother Jones

(2015), he recalls:

“Okay, they’re schizophrenic, alcoholic, traumatized, brain damaged. What

if we don’t make them pass any tests or fill out any forms? They aren’t any good at

that stuff. Inability to pass tests and fill out forms was a large part of how they

ended up homeless in the first place. Why not just give them a place to live and

offer them free counseling and therapy, health care, and let them decide if they want

to participate? Why not treat chronically homeless people as human beings and

members of our community who have a basic right to housing and health care?”

Other supports are also lacking, especially for people who are living with drug and alcohol addictions. Despite their proven effectiveness, downtown Toronto lacks Supervised Injection Sites

(SIS) (Eggertson, 2013; Government of Canada, 2008; Picard, 2018; PHS Community Services

Society, 2018; Small et al, 2006; Zlotorzynska et al, 2013; Broadhead et al, 2002; Ickowicz et al,

2017; Kennedy and Kerr, 2017). All of these sources cite the proven benefits of SIS, the most salient being that “…not a single OD death has been recorded at any of the world's 92 supervised injection sites, including Insite in Canada” (Picard, 2018). In addition, according to a paper by

Coffin et al (2006), safe syringe disposal is related to access to safe syringes, so it is to everyone’s benefit if there is a more controlled environment where people can inject and dispose of their needles.

In 2008, a Final Report of the Expert Advisory Committee on Supervised Injection Site

Research, presented to Hon. Tony Clement (Minister of Health for the Government of Canada) found the following, based on research at Vancouver’s InSite and SIS in other countries. There were no increases in crime around SIS; a reduction of the number of people injecting in public;

InSite allowed for more effective immunization of people during a pneumococcal pneumonia outbreak in 2006; Since 2006, InSite had successfully intervened in 336 overdoses. In addition, it was estimated that for every dollar spent at InSite, there are 0.97 to 2.90 in benefits, taking into account the prevention of HIV/AIDS and other illnesses (Expert Advisory Committee on

Supervised Injection Site Research, 2008). This is in line with the other peer-reviewed research

cited above (Eggertson, 2003; Small et al, 2006; Zlotorzynska et al, 2013; Elliott, 2014; Logan and

Marlatt, 2010; Wodak and Cooney, 2006).

Bill C-2, or the “Respect for Communities Act”, passed on March 24, 2015, effectively prevented safe injection sites from existing by making the process of application so onerous that no community-run site could be expected to meet the standards set out in the Act. The

Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health and for Western Economic Diversification,

Cathy McLeod (Conservative) spoke in favour of the Act in 2015:

“As well, letters of opinion would be required from, for example, provincial ministers of health and public safety, the head of the local police force, and the lead health professionals of the government of the province. These individuals would be consulted in their professional capacities so that the minister's decision could be informed by leading experts from the local area” (McLeod,

2015).

It is obvious from the literatures reviewed here that McLeod and other members of

Parliament had a very flexible idea of what an “expert” is while reviewing this bill — the idea that police chiefs are necessarily addictions experts, or experts on harm reduction, as well as the assumption that all health professionals have equal expertise in every field, is problematic at best.

Though it is the duty of the police to comment on issues related to public safety, that duty cannot be properly executed without consulting research on what exactly the impacts to public safety may be. Nevertheless, the Bill passed, and no new SIS opened in Canada until the winter of 2017. Both before and during this period, some SIS were set up in acts of civil disobedience by affected communities, in the absence of effective government response (McNeil et al, 2014; Wodak et al,

2003). 97

Although Canada is behind some other countries in terms of the provision of safe injection sites (SIS), Toronto has recently opened 3 new city-sanctioned SIS, the first opening its doors on

November 8, 2017 (Wherry, 2017). Before these, the only SIS was a community-operated, unofficial site in Moss Park that has been providing services since August 12, 2017 (Kalvapalle,

2017). In 2017, three new sites opened in Toronto. Canada now has 21 government-sanctioned

SIS in 4 provinces (Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec), with 8 more on their way

(Health Canada, 2018). All 20 government-sanctioned SIS (apart from Vancouver’s InSite) opened in 2017. Up until 2017, Vancouver’s Insite, which opened in 2003, was Canada’s only legally operating SIS.

In other words, there is a disconnect between what the research (including research carried out by government agencies) says, and what policy makers propose, which has dire consequences for the provision of all kinds of public services that are seen by policy makers as being useful to people who clearly have a stake but who don’t seem to count as officially sanctioned ‘community stakeholders’.

In 2017, Bill C-37 passed, which made the applications process for SIS much easier:

“agencies wanting to open a supervised-injection site must meet five streamlined conditions, down from 26 under the previous Respect for Communities Act” (Woo, 2017). These amendments made to the previous Harper-era legislation address the previous lack of SIS. In 2016, the opioid crisis took the lives of 867 Ontarians, and in only May and June of 2017, killed 214 Ontarians (Special

Advisory Committee on the Epidemic of Opioid Overdoses, Public Health Agency of Canada,

2017).

However, at the time of writing, SIS are once more threatened in Ontario. On the provincial election campaign trail recently elected Premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, claimed to be “dead against” SIS (Loriggio, 2018). Time will tell if Toronto’s harm reduction services survive this government.

A full review of the history on the fight for SIS in Canada is beyond the scope of this research. However, it is important to keep this overview in mind while considering the data presented in this thesis. Interviewees described dealing with situations that are directly related to a lack of care for people dealing with addictions. Ignoring SIS has had grave consequences not only for the people who need them, but also for Toronto’s downtown core and the people who work in it.

It is impossible to ignore the connection between washrooms and other public services that cater to marginalized inhabitants of Toronto. One participant, Ian, expressed that he felt that people living with addictions have the same need as everyone else for comfort, security and feeling safe in the company of other people, which he thought figured heavily into the use of washrooms as sites where drug activity happens. A study by Small et al (2006) supports Ian’s suspicion – injecting in public is not preferred by most injection drug users, in part because of threats from police and other community members. An excellent study exploring drug use in business bathrooms in New York City is also relevant here – the authors find that the lack of SIS creates a situation where people looking for an appropriate washroom to inject in “must navigate complex public risk environments riddled with physical, social, economic, and legal harms, when selecting a location to inject” (Wolfson-Stofco et al, 2016 : 70). Injecting drugs in the bathroom of a business

at least insures that the person will be found if they overdose – which then places the duty of care on untrained staff of coffee shops and fast food restaurants.

Services for people who are suffering from severe alcoholism are even more scant.

Although medical literature (Podymow et al, 2006; Svoboda, 2009) shows the same kinds of positive results from “wet” shelters that distribute controlled amounts of alcohol as from SIS, there is only one “wet” shelter in Toronto that caters to homeless men living with alcoholism.

Worldwide, the movement for SIS began before that for wet shelters (Rosenburg, 2016). However,

Canada’s first wet shelter – Toronto’s Annex Harm Reduction Centre – preceded Vancouver’s

InSite by 5 years. It opened as a branch of Seaton House in 1996 after the alcohol-related deaths of three homeless men (Monsebraatan, 2014). Ottawa followed suit in 2001. When Podymow et al’s study focusing on Ottawa’s program was published in 2006, “a media circus of nuclear proportions blew up” (Muckle, in Rosenburg, 2016). “Most of the media treated the study straight, but comedians and commenters pounced, including Jay Leno, who talked about the crazy

Canadians giving free booze to homeless alcoholics. One commenter compared it to giving little girls to paedophiles” (Rosenburg, 2016). In this case, policy-makers and politicians were willing to allow projects to go ahead, but public opinion and commentary put forward discourse that further stigmatized the people who needed care. In the case of Ottawa’s program, funding was almost non-existent (Rosenburg, 2016), and initial efforts to provide alcohol to residents in

Toronto went ahead under the initiative of the original coordinator of the program before City approval was granted (Monsebraatan, 2014).

This section (as well as earlier chapters on the history of washrooms in Toronto) shows the following problem: Public washrooms are needed by everyone. SIS and other harm reduction

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services are needed by some, who, in the absence of these services (which often face strong resistance from landowners and businesses in neighborhoods) turn to places where they can have some privacy to use the substances they need to — public or private washrooms. Historically, the

City resisted installing public washrooms because of the “illicit” activities perceived to happen in them. In the absence of both SIS and public washrooms, everyone (not only people who need harm-reduction services, housing, or mental health care) ends up using private washrooms instead.

5.4 Social Distance, Working Conditions, and the Third Place

As the Findings section shows, experiences with W4CO vary considerably by neighborhood and type of shop. One of the findings was that although employees of independent shops (and their bosses) tended to be opposed to W4CO rules, they had a much lower incidence of washroom use. In fact, as we can see from Figure C in the findings section, corporate shops that have W4CO see almost double the washroom traffic of independent shops that do not.

In this section, I propose that it may be social distance from the gatekeepers that allow people to disproportionately seek washroom access in chain stores, despite the high prevalence of

W4CO rules in those establishments.

The independent shops in this study nearly all qualified as third places as per Oldenburg’s definition (1989). The character of independent coffee shops in Toronto would be familiar to

Oldenburg who described third places as having a home-like feeling. This home-like feeling is the compendium of the other characteristics he describes: a low profile (referring to the physical building they occupy); no membership rules; a central position in a community, and open at hours when other people get off work; and a good group of regulars that contribute to the feel of the

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place (Oldenburg, 1989). Some chain coffee shops also have these characteristics, but there is one difference that holds true between almost all of them: the staff (who are also the gatekeepers to the washroom) are in very different positions in independent and chain shops.

In the literature review, I discussed working conditions in fast food environments, but I could not find any studies focusing on working conditions in independent businesses. This section, then, is based on all the data and observations gathered during this study, and the literatures discussing working conditions in fast food chains.

The working conditions in an independent shop are vastly different from those in corporate/chain shops. Even very busy independent shops have much lower traffic, and much lower washroom use. This difference in volume obviously places less strain on employees who have to clean the washrooms. Employees in independent shops tend to work with a smaller group of people, where information about a specific troublesome person can be easily communicated, thus possibly reducing the need for hard rules. Employees in independent shops generally also get to work in places where there are no “head office” rules, and the person who makes the rules is readily available to them if they have questions or concerns. In addition, they do not work in a heavily task-specialized Fordist or Taylorist structure, as Mayhew and Quinlan (2002) and

Schlosser (2002) noted fast-food workers do. In many independent shops, one person can have a lot of different responsibilities, contrary to the divisions present in fast food. In fast food, workers usually wear uniforms, and standards of customer service are regimented. Most workers in independent shops do not wear uniforms, and there is greater latitude for differences in personality and customer service approach. Perhaps most importantly, they are expected to chat with customers and make small talk – their personality and contributions to the place matter, in ways

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that fast-food workers are actively discouraged from through timed limits and long line-ups

(Schlosser, 2002; Mayhew and Quinlan, 2002; Newman, 2017; Frankel, 2007; Simon, 2008).

All of the above contributes to the feeling of a third place in independent businesses, but it would also reduce the social distance between a washroom seeker and the staff person who will adjudicate whether you get in or not. The dehumanizing conditions of work in most chain shops remove the possibility for close gatekeeper supervision of the premises, as well as rendering the judgement of those workers who do the gatekeeping less important than the judgement of someone who is free to act and look like an individual.

Because of this, being an independent third place seems to be a much better deterrent to casual washroom use in most places than a W4CO is, despite employee’s opposition to those rules.

The independent shops I came across in this work do serve all the purposes of a third place, but they (with two exceptions) do not attract nearly as much casual foot traffic, and although they serve the needs of regulars, they are not generally places where people go to use a resource (in this case, the washroom) without being a “member” of the space. One exception to this is an independent coffee shop that, because of its unique location and the fact that other businesses adjacent to it do not have washrooms, became the neighborhood public washroom. The other exception is an independent shop that was so busy as to prohibit third place behavior. Generally, the care and time that owners and staff put into independent third places are deterrents to the casual use of the washroom – it does indeed feel like you are in a “comfortable home” (Oldenburg, 1989).

We don’t usually walk into comfortable homes, without knowing the residents, and head straight to the bathroom.

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The result is that although 3 of the 4 workers from independent shops who were interviewed took a committed social-justice approach to washroom openness, they often did so without the high volume of washroom use, high foot traffic from people having housing or mental health issues, or hazardous working conditions that would put a strain on that openness. Although they had stories to tell about difficult situations at work, their position as third places meant that the frequency of negative experiences was much less than for people working in crowded chains in the centre of the city.

As mentioned earlier, many of the third places in this study end up not being ideally oriented towards mass casual use, despite the fact that they are businesses seeking to turn a profit

– they build community, encourage conversation, patrons sit for long periods of time, and find a place to fit in. However, this also comes with the necessity to reduce social distance between oneself and the gatekeepers to the space. If a person feels that this is a difficult or cumbersome proposition, they may opt for a social situation where the social distance between themselves and the gatekeeper can remain greater.

5.5 Policy Suggestions

In this section, I will pass on participants’ policy suggestions, and also reflect on what those suggestions what say about their relationship to the problem and stigmatized people.

Ian said that the business had brought in outside help to train their workers on what to do in the case of an overdose crises, and Kat brought up that she thought training would be a good idea in the business where she worked. Although it is certainly better to have more training and awareness about mental health issues and addictions than a lack thereof, a plan to address these issues that focuses on

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training service industry workers for such serious situations offloads work usually done by specialists who have trained and signed up specifically for that set of responsibilities onto people who have not.

Given the content of the interview, I asked what he thought could be done by the City to remedy the situation, and whether they thought that the presence of more safe injection sites might help solve their problem.

In response to those questions, Neil said that the City was placing the onus on businesses to not only provide washrooms but to care for the city’s population of people who use drugs.

Moreover, businesses do not receive any kind of financial aid from the city to cover the possible costs of having people use their washrooms. Although Neil had said many times that money wasn’t a concern in establishing the W4CO rule, this suggestion seemed to be based in his frustration at what he saw as the city abnegating its responsibility to provide public washrooms and services for addictions.

Despite the difficulties of their jobs and the issues previously discussed, workers, by and large, did not blame the situation on homeless people or those with addictions issues. Most interviewees (13 out of 15), suggested public washrooms when asked what the City or state could do on a policy level to make their easier. Participants – even those facing very difficult situations in their workplace – often said that they understood the problem. If someone has nowhere else to go, they can’t be expected to not use business washrooms, especially in the absence of public ones.

Better access to public washrooms would benefit many more people than the homeless population

– countless people who have a wide variety of age-related and health-related issues would have much more freedom to enjoy the city if they didn’t have to worry about the provision of washrooms.

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On the other hand, if public washrooms are to be safe and clean, other resources must be provided in order to keep biohazards (needles, for example) to a minimum. The political will to institute a full public washroom system is thus largely related to perceived problems of homeless people and other stigmatized individuals in public washrooms. If we can provide services to homeless people and people living with drug addictions, then perhaps the argument that “homeless people will ruin the public washroom, so we’d better not build public washrooms” will fall away, allowing for better provision of public services overall.

One longer conversation about affordable or free housing for people dealing with homelessness also came up. The idea of free or very inexpensive housing for people struggling with homelessness isn’t new – from 2010 to 2014, the 100,000 Homes project brought together community organizations and landlords to provide housing for homeless people across the United

States (Cooper, 2014). Utah applied a “housing first” philosophy to get the most vulnerable chronically homeless people off the street (Carrier, 2015). These programs, which provide “no- strings-attached” housing to the most vulnerable homeless people have had staggering success rates. The original project, based on social psychologist Sam Tsemberis’s research in New York

City saw 88% of people still in their apartments five years later (Carrier, 2015). In Canada, the

Housing First/Chez Soi pilot was the largest ever trial of Housing First (Mental Health

Commission of Canada, 2018). Overall study results from the five sites in Vancouver, Montreal,

Moncton, Toronto, and Winnipeg showed that Housing First is a viable option for dealing with homelessness in Canada. In Toronto, “More than two-thirds of our participants (67 per cent) met criteria for two or more mental illnesses or substance use disorders, of which psychotic disorder

(37 per cent) was the most common. In total, 58 per cent of participants reported substance-related problems. More than half had sustained a traumatic brain injury (54 per cent)” (Stergiopoulos et 106

al, 2014). The housing first model was hugely beneficial – by the end of the study, participants had been “stably housed for 80 per cent of the time” (Stergiopoulos et al, 2014). These plans include extended health care and more case workers to make sure people have access to the services they need. Contrary to most formats, where homeless people must get sober, get mental health care, and then receive housing as a reward, these plans (as their name suggests) operate on the idea that in order to stabilize mental health and addictions issues, housing is the first step

(Tsemberis, 1999; Tsemberis and Eisenberg, 2000; Stergiopoulos et al, 2014). The most obvious solution to prevent homeless people from dying on the street in Toronto’s harsh winters and blistering summers is to give them a place a live. Contrary to what one would assume, all of the above research shows that these plans actually save taxpayers money, as emergency services are very expensive (Carrier, 2015; Cooper, 2014; Stergiopoulos et al, 2014). Though “street nurses”14 already exist in Toronto, the same interviewee thought that more of them were needed.

The simplest suggestion to immediately implement is the idea that businesses install needle disposal containers in washrooms. During our conversation, the same interviewee that brought up

Housing First and street nurses said that he would ask upper management about it the next day.

This issue is directly related to worker’s rights – if other services are not provided, a large proportion of Toronto’s service-industry working class is going to be picking up used needles in washrooms. Some large chains instruct their employees not to deal with biohazards and to call in an external team, but others do not. Encouraging businesses to place sharps containers in their

14 The most famous example is Cathy Crowe – she is a street nurse, co-founded the Toronto Disaster Relief Commission (TDRC), and is the author of Dying for a Home: Homeless Activists Speak Out (2007). 107

washrooms, and arranging for proper disposal, is essential to a safe work environment for hundreds of workers in Toronto’s downtown core.

Despite this, some workers expressed doubts that the needle disposal containers could work. The fear of the business being stigmatized because of the presence of these containers was voiced by three different interviewees. For example, Ian said: “Yeah, but I wonder if that invites certain behaviors...but it won't cause it's safe...”. Andrew said: “Like have bio bins or something, mandated in business bathrooms. But then, some people might find that uncomfortable in their own business, and how would you deal with that?”. Both Andrew and Ian were grappling with the fact that they thought that these measures would make them safer, contrasted with the idea that the presence of these measures would incite more drug use.

In all of these cases, interviewee’s responses to questions about policy and solutions to their problems with the washrooms generally show an unwillingness to engage in stigmatizing dialogue, and a desire to look at more macro-level policy solutions.

This chapter discussed the various ways in which the findings of this study relate to the extant literature, and also brought in new literature to address specific narratives shared by interviewees. The main concerns discussed were: how the R2TC relates to the provision of public resources; worker’s rights as they relate to the issues raised surrounding aggression by prospective customers and hazards in the workplace; stigma, including territorial stigma, and how it affects people’s ability to access public resources; and the policy suggestions that interviewees made, and how those reflect on their relationship to the problems they were recounting.

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6 CONCLUSION

First, this thesis began by explaining how Toronto ended up with so few public washrooms.

I used archival sources, and then literatures dealing with various types of stigmatization, to explain how the city and the TTC consistently dismantled existing public washroom structures and avoided building new ones.

Then, I reviewed the important literatures that framed my thinking about this topic. I reviewed literatures related to the Right to the City, public space, stigma (including territorial stigmatization) and worker’s rights. Henri Lefebvre’s The Right to the City (1968) is foundational to this work, and his description of the modern city is taken as largely accurate. In addition to his argument, however, I argue that no right to the city is possible without the ability to operate with dignity in the built environment. The built environment of the city (in this case, Toronto) is not conducive to fostering the R2TC because it assumes that all its inhabitants are housed, have no disabilities, and have no illnesses that require people to use the washroom more frequently than usual.

I thought it was important to establish the frequency of W4CO rules before addressing the main research question. To that end, I visited 202 businesses in Toronto’s downtown core and counted the number of W4CO signs. Thirty-seven percent of businesses visited have W4CO rules, but chain businesses had more than double the frequency of W4CO rules as independent ones –

46.62% compared to 20.29%. I discussed the possibility that these rules are partly because of stress placed on businesses due to the lack of public washrooms. In order to establish the frequency and type of washroom use in businesses in the city, I conducted 25 hours of observations, evenly divided between independent and chain businesses. In these observations, I established that chain 109

businesses see over double the number of washroom uses per hour as independent businesses, despite the fact that they have over double the amount of W4CO signs.

In addition, I made a catalogue of all the public washrooms in Toronto, since no such list existed previously. Please see torontotoilets.org for this catalogue.

After having established these basic findings about W4CO, I turned to the main research question, which was: What are the narratives that support the use of W4CO rules in Toronto’s downtown core? This question was answered through 15 interviews with employees and managers at coffee shops and fast food restaurants in Toronto’s downtown core.

These interviews showed that many workers were deeply concerned about injection drug use, serious mental health issues, and other alternative uses of their washrooms (such as clothes- washing). Policy suggestions were offered by participants, who, though they attributed the reasons for W4CO rules to problems associated with Toronto’s homeless population, they seemed unwilling to blame that population for these problems and instead suggested affordable housing,

SIS, more public washrooms, and needle disposal bins to help fix the problem. Several workers, however, admitted to feeling unsafe in their workplaces, and several others admitted to cleaning up used sharps.

In the discussion section, I tied these findings to extant literature, especially relating to stigma and the lack of provision of resources for vulnerable populations. In addition, I suggested that territorial stigmatization may function on a predictive basis in the case of public washrooms and other resources for marginalized populations (such as “wet” shelters and SIS). I also suggested that the huge difference between washroom use in chain and independent businesses could be explained by social distance from workers in chain shops. 110

6.1 Limitations

Despite efforts to use diverse methods to collect data and explain as many of the possible secondary research questions as possible, there are several limitations to this study.

First, this research focuses on the downtown core, where there are many coffee shops, small businesses, and restaurants lining the streets, and people walk or take the subway to get around. The limitation here is that there are major differences in the urban planning of the City centre versus the outskirts of the city that make this research specific to the inner core. The research question is “What narratives do workers and owners of coffee shops and fast food establishments in Toronto use to explain the existence of W4CO rules?”. In reality, however, the research question that ends up getting answered is “What narratives do workers and owners of coffee shops and fast food establishments in Toronto’s downtown core use to explain the existence of W4CO rules?”.

For example, the space around Jane and Finch is drastically different than the downtown area of the city. There is not the same integration of businesses and residential areas as there is in the southern parts of the city that urban planning scholars such as Jane Jacobs (1961) saw as ideal for city life. Instead, there are small highways dotted with huge apartment complexes and strip malls. Because of these differences in the built environment, which influence how people get around and interact with the spaces around them, there may be major differences between the narratives supporting W4CO rules in the outskirts of the city and in downtown that are not examined in this research. Therefore, this research should not be taken as representative of the city as a whole, but as a picture of the downtown core. The inequalities built into this urban planning, and the effects of these inequalities on washroom access, would be a valuable study for future research.

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The second main limitation is the difficulty in establishing a pool. Coffee shops and fast food restaurants were chosen as the pool because it is generally understood that those places tend to be more commonly used for public washroom purposes than small businesses and restaurants that have table service. However, the gathering of quantitative data also revealed qualitative data that ended up adding to this understanding, and further complicating the question. Some independent coffee shops possess the same kind of characteristics that make a table-service restaurant awkward to duck in a use the washroom – the most important of these being the attention paid to customers by staff. Because of this, I observed that it is in fact just as awkward to seek washroom access in many independent coffee shops as it is in restaurants. Paradoxically, though, these are the coffee shops that most rarely have W4CO signs. A few table-service restaurants also have prominent W4CO signs that were not counted, and some table service restaurants are small and appear to be third places for at least a portion of the community. All these factors made W4CO a difficult phenomenon to properly count. The line between where people may expect to be able to use the washroom and where they might not is blurred around the edges where independent coffee shops and small table-service restaurants meet.

As recruiting continued, significant class and ethnic divides became apparent between different categories of coffee shops and fast-food establishments. Larger fast-food chains tended to be staffed in larger numbers by people who may be recent immigrants, and who were less comfortable with English. Sometimes, this created language barriers to recruitment. As such, although the pool is diverse, it was impossible to recruit some of the workers who may be the most vulnerable.

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Another contributing factor to this difficulty are corporate rules that prevent lower-ranked employees from being interviewed, and all employees from talking to journalists. It took a lot of trial and error to understand these rules enough to appropriately convey my objective to the first person I spoke to so they would pass me on to their manager. In one instance, I was “passed up” two levels of management, finally speaking to the store manager at a corporate branch that prohibits lower-ranking employees from speaking. These rules are in place at more than one corporate chain, and severely hampered recruiting efforts in certain neighborhoods where the quantity of chain restaurants that have those rules far outnumber those that do not.

Because of these difficulties, interviewing the only people who could really answer the research question turned out to be a methodological challenge of daunting proportions. Between corporate gag orders; the punishing schedules and volume that many fast-food workers deal with

(one prospective participant expressed vivid interest but told me she worked seven days a week and thus, didn’t have time to be interviewed); the language barriers often present especially when talking to people who work for larger chains; and my position as a white woman and a graduate student, recruiting for this thesis was imperfect.

The importance of my position posing difficulties in recruiting should not be underestimated, as it is certain that my own relationship to the data and the recruiting process was formed by that position. The situations in which I felt most comfortable were those where people, regardless of their ethnicity, had a clear understanding of what I was doing (writing a Master’s thesis), whether they agreed to an interview of not. I couldn’t shake the feeling in the recruiting process that a portion of prospective interviewees didn’t understand the project, or in what context it was being performed. I didn’t have the right words to explain. This was especially problematic

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when it came to navigating the gag orders previously mentioned. It follows that there is bias introduced to this research that seems unavoidable, especially for a study with only one researcher doing the fieldwork. Despite my best efforts, I may have unwittingly avoided situations where I assumed these uncomfortable interactions would take place. The findings are limited by not only the number of people who agreed to participate, but by my own ability to effectively communicate the context of the project to people in the recruiting stage.

Interviews were short (approximately 10-20 minutes). The length of the interviews could be seen as a limitation, which is why I have included it here, but I think the length of the interviews was more of an exercise in adapting to the needs of the participants in this study. The interview questions were deliberately tweaked after the first couple of interviews to take into account that the first question prospective interviewees asked was usually a worried “how long will it take?”.

It was important to me as a researcher to be respectful of their time by not over-extending the interview. It quickly became obvious that 10-20 minutes was about all most people were willing to give to the project, so instead of possibly narrowing the pool even further by insisting on longer interviews, I decided to work with that time limitation. Recruitment had to be done in person at people’s jobs, which understandably might have made some more eager to get home after work than eager to participate in research for which they weren’t being compensated. Though my own position definitely impacted the recruiting process, I think that other researchers could experience similar issues (cancelled interviews, no-shows, sometimes dealing with people being rude, language barriers, difficulty communicating my objective, etc…) while trying to recruit from a very diverse population facing difficult working conditions.

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Last, this thesis may have significant data gaps because of the apparent lack of pre-existing research on this topic. As has been mentioned in other sections, the City of Toronto does not even have a list of publicly-available washrooms. The simple question “how many public washrooms exist in the city” resulted in me gathering that data myself. Although every attempt was made to be thorough in the background research, the descriptive statistics cited here should be considered preliminary, and should be the topic of further research.

6.2 Contributions

Despite these limitations, this work contributes to the literature on this topic in the following ways. First, to my knowledge, no study has been produced to quantify the frequency of

W4CO rules. This research complicates the common-sense claim that McDonalds or Tim Hortons are necessarily the best places to go to use the washroom by showing that in fact, chain businesses have very high rates of W4CO rules. On the other hand, people still use the washroom in chain businesses in much higher numbers than in independent businesses. Regardless, employee discretion is key – the person giving you the code or the key for the bathroom has the power to say no, despite the fact that this power is rarely invoked.

Second, this research uses data from a population that is not frequently consulted about their working conditions or their opinions about the places in which they work. By asking workers how they explain W4CO rules, I think that we are now in a better place to understand the problems underpinning the use of these rules.

In closing, this research is the first of its kind in Toronto, and though it has many limitations that should be followed up on in future research, it also contributes to the literature by opening up the discussion on how both public and private washroom access intersect with worker’s rights in 115

the service industry and provision of resources for marginalized populations. I hope that this research will not only provide a starting point for future projects, but will contribute to thinking about ways in which we can foster the Right to the City by providing for dignity in the built environment.

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APPENDICES Appendix 1: Maps of Study Area (dots indicate public washrooms) Part 1 (College – Yonge to Lansdowne; Bloor – Avenue to Lansdowne; Queen – Lansdowne – St.Patrick; Yonge – King to Bloor)

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Part 2 (Danforth – Broadview to Woodbine)

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Appendix 2: Text of Recruitment Email to Business Owners

Hello!

My name is Edith Wilson, and I’m a Master’s student in the Sociology department at University of Guelph. I’m interested in speaking with you about your perspectives on the rules controlling access to the washrooms in your business. Interviews will take about 30-60 minutes and can be held in any public anywhere that’s most convenient and comfortable for you. These interviews will form the pool of data I will use to write my Master’s Thesis on access to washrooms in public space in Toronto. While there is no direct benefit to you, your participation will contribute to a body of knowledge about washroom access in urban areas, and will allow you to share your ideas about the rules governing washroom access in your business. Participation in this study is entirely voluntary – you’re under no obligation to participate. If you do wish to participate, however, please respond to this email for more information.

I hope to talk to you soon!

Edith Wilson [email protected]

What you’re consenting to by participating in this study:

Interviews will be audio recorded

Interviews will take between 30-60 minutes

Be anonymously quoted and to have the contents of the interview used to write a Master’s thesis, which may be published or presented at conferences. The research may also be written up and published as a newspaper article or other publications outside the academic community.

More Project Information:

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Interviewees must be over 18 and own a coffee shop in Toronto that has “Washrooms for Customers Only” rules

You can skip any question you would prefer not to answer

Your name and the name of your business will not be published in the paper

The only information about your business that will be shared in the paper is whether it is an independent business or corporate chain.

The original data will be destroyed after the thesis is completed.

Interviews will be kept on a computer protected by encryption and passwords.

You are free to withdraw from the project or withdraw your data from the project at any time, up until completion of the thesis (approximately November 2017).

If you choose to participate in the study and wish to have access to the final paper, you have the option to receive it by email when it is finished. You are, however, under no obligation to do this – access to the final paper is voluntary.

Please feel free to contact Edith Wilson ([email protected]) or her advisor, Prof. Mervyn Horgan ([email protected]) if you have any further questions about the project.

If you have questions regarding your rights and welfare as a research participant in this study (REB#17-06-009), please contact: Director, Research Ethics; University of Guelph; [email protected]; (519) 824-4120 (ext. 56606)

Taking part in this research will pose little risk to you, however, there is a small chance of economic or social consequences in the unlikely event that the data is compromised.

This project has been reviewed by the Research Ethics Board for compliance with federal guidelines for research involving human participants.

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Appendix 3: Interview Guide

(including common follow-up questions)

Q1: How would you describe the washroom access rules in the business where you work?

Follow-up: Are there washrooms for customers only rules?

Q2: How did that rule come about? How did it happen?

Follow-up: Was it staff members that said you wanted it or was it the boss or manager?

Q3: How do you feel about this rule?

Q4: What are the benefits and drawbacks of this rule?

Q5: Who is mostly in charge of enforcing this rule?

Q6: Can you tell me about some of the experiences you’ve had related to dealing with the washrooms in the business where you work?

Q7: Have they been mostly positive or negative?

Follow-up: How often do negative experiences happen?

Q8: Does the rule get applied evenly to everyone?

Follow-up 1: Why?

Follow-up 2: How do you decide when it gets enforced and when not?

Q9: Are there consequences for staff if they choose not to enforce the rule?

Q10: How do you go about enforcing this rule?

Follow-up: When people need to use the washroom and you feel you have to say no, how do you do that?

Q11: How do people usually respond when you let them know they can’t use the washroom?

Follow-up: Have you ever dealt with people being rude or violent?

Q12: If you could change the rules in the business where you work, what would you change?

Q13: How do you think negative situations could be prevented? 133

Follow-up: What would be some solutions you would suggest to keep this from happening?

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Appendix 4: List of Public Washrooms in Toronto

(please see torontotoilets.org for a searchable map and list with opening hours)

PUBLIC LIBRARIES (year-round – either 9am – 8:30 pm Monday to Thursday, 9am-5pm Friday and Saturday, and closed on Sunday OR alternating 10am-6pm Monday, Wednesday and Friday; 12:30pm-8:30pm Tuesday and Thursday; 9am – 5pm Saturday, and closed on Sunday)

Agincourt 155 Bonis Ave., Toronto, ON Albert CAmpbell 496 Birchmount Rd., Toronto, ON Albion 1515 Albion Rd., Toronto, ON Alderwood 2 Orianna Dr., Toronto, ON Amesbury Park 1565 Lawrence Ave. West, Toronto, ON Annette Street 145 Annette Street, Toronto, ON, Armour Heights 2140 Avenue Road, Toronto, ON Barbara Frum 20 Covington Road, Toronto, ON Bayview Bayview Village Shopping Centre 123A-2901 Bayview Avenue, Toronto, ON Beaches 2161 Queen Street East, Toronto, ON Bendale 1515 Danforth Road, Toronto, ON Black Creek North York Sheridan Mall 1700 Wilson Avenue Toronto, ON Bloor/Gladstone 1101 Bloor Street West, Toronto, ON Brentwood 36 Brentwood Road North, Toronto, ON Bridlewood Bridlewood Mall, lower level 157A-2900 Warden Avenue, Toronto, ON Brookbanks 210 Brookbanks Drive, Toronto, ON Burrows Hall 1081 Progress Avenue, Toronto, ON Cedarbrae 545 Markham Road, Toronto, ON Centennial 578 Finch Avenue West, Toronto, ON City Hall Nathan Phillips Square 100 Queen Street West Toronto, ON Cliffcrest 3017 Kingston Road, Toronto, ON College/Shaw 766 College Street, Toronto, ON Danforth/Coxwell 1675 Danforth Avenue, Toronto, ON Davenport 1246 Shaw Street, Toronto, ON Dawes Road 416 Dawes Road, Toronto, ON Deer Park 40 St. Clair Avenue East, Toronto, ON Don Mills 888 Lawrence Avenue East, Toronto, ON Downsview 2793 Keele Street, Toronto, ON Dufferin/St. Clair 1625 Dufferin Street, Toronto, ON Eatonville 430 Burnhamthorpe Road, Toronto, ON

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Eglinton Square Eglinton Square Shopping Centre 1 Eglinton Square, Unit 126, Toronto, ON Elmbrook Park 2 Elmbrook Crescent, Toronto, ON Evelyn Gregory 120 Trowell Avenue, Toronto, ON Fairview 35 Fairview Mall Drive, Toronto, ON Flemingdon Park 29 St. Dennis Drive, Toronto, ON Forest Hill 700 Eglinton Avenue West, Toronto, ON Fort York 190 Fort York Boulevard, Toronto, ON Gerrard/Ashdale 1432 Gerrard Street East, Toronto, ON Goldhawk Park 295 Alton Towers Circle, Toronto, ON Guildwood Guildwood Plaza 123 Guildwood Parkway, Toronto, ON High Park 228 Roncesvalles Avenue, Toronto, ON Highland Creek 3550 Ellesmere Road, Toronto, ON Hillcrest 5801 Leslie Street, Toronto, ON Humber Bay 200 Park Lawn Road, Toronto, ON Humber Summit 2990 Islington Avenue, Toronto, ON Humberwood 850 Humberwood Boulevard, Toronto, ON Jane/Dundas 620 Jane Street, Toronto, ON Jane/Sheppard 1906 Sheppard Avenue West, Toronto, ON Jones 118 Jones Avenue, Toronto, ON Kennedy/Eglinton Liberty Square Plaza 2380 Eglinton Avenue East, Toronto, ON Leaside 165 McRae Drive, Toronto, ON Lillian H. Smith 239 College Street, Toronto, ON Locke 3083 Yonge Street, Toronto, ON Long Branch 3500 Lake Shore Boulevard West, Toronto, ON Main Street 137 Main Street, Toronto, ON Malvern 30 Sewells Road, Toronto, ON Maria A. Shchuka 1745 Eglinton Avenue West, Toronto, ON Maryvale Parkway Mall 85 Ellesmere Road, Unit 16, Toronto, ON McGregor Park 2219 Lawrence Avenue East, Toronto, ON Mimico Centennial 47 Station Road, Toronto, ON Morningside 4279 Lawrence Avenue East, Toronto, ON Mount Dennis 1123 Weston Road, Toronto, ON Mount Pleasant 599 Mt. Pleasant Road, Toronto, ON New Toronto 110 Eleventh Street, Toronto, ON North York Central Library 5120 Yonge Street, Toronto, ON Northern District 40 Orchard View Boulevard, Toronto, ON Northern Elms 123B Rexdale Boulevard, Unit 5, Toronto, ON Oakwood Village Library and Arts Centre 341 Oakwood Avenue, Toronto, ON 136

Palmerston 560 Palmerston Avenue, Toronto, ON Pape/Danforth 701 Pape Avenue, Toronto, ON Parkdale 1303 Queen Street West, Toronto, ON Parliament Street 269 Gerrard Street East, Toronto, ON Perth/Dupont 1589 Dupont Street, Toronto, ON Pleasant View 575 Van Horne Avenue, Toronto, ON Port Union 5450 Lawrence Avenue East, Toronto, ON Queen/Saulter 765 Queen Street East, Toronto, ON Rexdale 2243 Kipling Avenue, Toronto, ON Richview 1806 Islington Avenue, Toronto, ON Riverdale 370 Broadview Avenue, Toronto, ON Runnymede 2178 Bloor Street West, Toronto, ON S. Walter Stewart 170 Memorial Park Avenue, Toronto, ON Sanderson 327 Bathurst Street, Toronto, ON Scarborough Civic Centre 156 Borough Drive, Toronto, ON Spadina Road 10 Spadina Road, Toronto, ON St. Clair/Silverthorn 1748 St. Clair Avenue West, Toronto, ON St. James Town 495 Sherbourne Street, Toronto, ON St. Lawrence 171 Front Street East, Toronto, ON Steeles Bamburgh Gardens Shopping Plaza C107-375 Bamburgh Circle, Toronto, ON Swansea Memorial 95 Lavinia Avenue, Toronto, ON Taylor Memorial 1440 Kingston Road, Toronto, ON Thorncliffe 48 Thorncliffe Park Drive, Toronto, ON Toronto Reference Library 789 Yonge Street, Toronto, ON Victoria Village 184 Sloane Avenue, Toronto, ON Weston 2 King Street, Toronto, ON Woodside Square Woodside Square Mall 1571 Sandhurst Circle, Toronto, ON Woodview Park 16 Bradstock Road, Toronto, ON Wychwood 1431 Bathurst Street, Toronto, ON York Woods 1785 Finch Avenue West, Toronto, ON Yorkville 22 Yorkville Avenue, Toronto, ON

COMMUNITY AND RECREATION CENTRES (usually open 9am-9pm Monday – Saturday (closed on Sunday) from September to June; summer months variable)

Name Address

Adam Beck Community Centre 79 LAWLOR AVE, Toronto, ON, Canada

Agincourt Recreation Centre 31 GLEN WATFORD DR, Toronto, ON, Canada

Albion Pool and Health Club 1485 ALBION RD, Toronto, ON, Canada

Amesbury Community Centre 1507 LAWRENCE AVE, Toronto, ON, Canada 137

Ancaster Community Centre 41 ANCASTER RD, Toronto, ON, Canada

Annette Community Recreation Centre 333 ANNETTE ST, Toronto, ON, Canada

Antibes Community Centre 140 ANTIBES DR, Toronto, ON, Canada

Armour Heights Community Centre 2140 AVENUE RD, Toronto, ON, Canada

Balmy Beach Community Recreation Centre 14 PINE AVE, Toronto, ON, Canada

Banbury Community Centre 120 BANBURY RD, Toronto, ON, Canada

Barbara Frum Community Centre 20 COVINGTON RD, Toronto, ON, Canada

Beaches Recreation Centre 6 WILLIAMSON RD, Toronto, ON, Canada

Bedford Park Community Centre 81 RANLEIGH AVE, Toronto, ON, Canada

Berner Trail Community Centre 120 BERNER TRAIL, Toronto, ON, Canada

Birchmount Community Centre 93 BIRCHMOUNT RD, Toronto, ON, Canada

Birkdale Community Centre 1299 ELLESMERE RD, Toronto, ON, Canada

Bluffers Park West Bluffers Park West

Bob Abate Community Recreation Centre 485 MONTROSE AVE, Toronto, ON, Canada

Broadlands Community Centre 19 CASTLEGROVE BLVD, Toronto, ON, Canada

Brown Community Centre 454 AVENUE RD, Toronto, ON, Canada

Budapest Park 1575 Lake Shore Blvd. West, Toronto, ON,

Canada

Burrows Hall Community Centre 1081 PROGRESS AVE, Toronto, ON, Canada

Carmine Stefano Community Centre 3100 WESTON RD, Toronto, ON, Canada

Cedarbrook Community Centre 91 EASTPARK BLVD, Toronto, ON, Canada

Centennial Recreation Centre - Scarborough 1967 ELLESMERE RD, Toronto, ON, Canada

Centennial Recreation Centre West 2694 EGLINTON AVE, Toronto, ON, Canada

Chalkfarm Community Centre 180 CHALKFARM DR, Toronto, ON, Canada

Commander Recreation Centre 140 COMMANDER BLVD, Toronto, ON, Canada

Coronation Park Coronation Park

Cummer Park Community Centre 6000 LESLIE ST, Toronto, ON, Canada

Curran Hall Community Centre 277 ORTON PARK RD, Toronto, ON, Canada

David Appleton Community Recreation 33 PRITCHARD AVE, Toronto, ON, Canada

Dennis R. Timbrell Resource Centre 29 ST DENNIS DR, Toronto, ON, Canada Domenico Di Luca Community Recreation 25 STANLEY RD, Toronto, ON, Canada

Centre

Don Montgomery Community Centre 2467 EGLINTON AVE, Toronto, ON, Canada

Driftwood Community Recreation Centre 4401 JANE ST, Toronto, ON, Canada

Earl Bales Community Centre 4169 BATHURST ST, Toronto, ON, Canada

Earl Beatty Community Centre 455 GLEBEHOLME BLVD, Toronto, ON, Canada

East York Community Centre 1081 PAPE AVE, Toronto, ON, Canada

Edgehill House 61 EDGEHILL RD, Toronto, ON, Canada

138

Edithvale Community Centre 131 FINCH AVE, Toronto, ON, Canada

Ellesmere Community Centre 20 CANADIAN RD, Toronto, ON, Canada

Elmbank Community Centre 10 RAMPART RD, Toronto, ON, Canada

Fairbank Memorial Community Centre 2213 DUFFERIN ST, Toronto, ON, Canada

Fairfield Seniors' Centre 80 LOTHIAN AVE, Toronto, ON, Canada

Fairmount Park Community Centre 1757 GERRARD ST, Toronto, ON, Canada

Falstaff Community Centre 50 FALSTAFF AVE, Toronto, ON, Canada Flemingdon Community Centre and 150 GRENOBLE DR, Toronto, ON, Canada

Playground Paradise

Frankland Community Centre 816 LOGAN AVE, Toronto, ON, Canada

G. Ross Lord Park 4801 Dufferin Street, Toronto, ON

Glen Long Community Centre 35 GLEN LONG AVE, Toronto, ON, Canada

Gord and Irene Risk Community Centre 2650 FINCH AVE, Toronto, ON, Canada

Goulding Community Centre 45 GOULDING AVE, Toronto, ON, Canada

Grandravine Community Recreation Centre 23 GRANDRAVINE DR, Toronto, ON, Canada

Harrison Pool 15 STEPHANIE ST, Toronto, ON, Canada

Herbert H. Carnegie Centennial Centre 580 FINCH AVE, Toronto, ON, Canada

Heron Park Community Centre 292 MANSE RD, Toronto, ON, Canada High Park – Chess House (Bloor and Quebec Ave, north side of Park)

High Park – Parkside Entrance Parkside Dr. and High Park Blvd. – East side of Park

Hillcrest Community Centre 1339 BATHURST ST, Toronto, ON, Canada

Holy Family Community Centre 141 CLOSE AVE, Toronto, ON, Canada

Horner Avenue Seniors Centre 320 HORNER AVE, Toronto, ON, Canada

Humberwood Community Centre 850 HUMBERWOOD BLVD, Toronto, ON, Canada

Islington Seniors' Centre 4968 DUNDAS ST, Toronto, ON, Canada

Jack Goodlad Community Centre 929 KENNEDY RD, Toronto, ON, Canada

Jenner Jean-Marie Community Centre 48 THORNCLIFFE PARK DR, Toronto, ON, Canada

Jimmie Simpson Recreation Centre 870 QUEEN ST, Toronto, ON, Canada

John Innes Community Recreation Centre 150 SHERBOURNE ST, Toronto, ON, Canada

Joseph J. Piccininni Community Centre 1369 ST CLAIR AVE, Toronto, ON, Canada

Keele Community Centre 181 GLENLAKE AVE, Toronto, ON, Canada

Ken Cox Community Centre 28 COLONEL SAMUEL SMITH PARK DR, Toronto, ON, Canada

139

Kew Gardens 2075 Queen Street East, Toronto, ON, Canada

L'Amoreaux Community Recreation Centre 2000 MCNICOLL AVE, Toronto, ON, Canada

Lawrence Heights Community Centre 5 REPLIN RD, Toronto, ON, Canada

Main Square Community Centre 245 MAIN ST, Toronto, ON, Canada

Malvern Recreation Centre 30 SEWELLS RD, Toronto, ON, Canada

Marilyn Bell Park Marilyn Bell Park

Mary McCormick Recreation Centre 66 SHERIDAN AVE, Toronto, ON, Canada Masaryk-Cowan Community Recreation 220 COWAN AVE, Toronto, ON, Canada

Centre

Matty Eckler Recreation Centre 953 GERRARD ST, Toronto, ON, Canada

Maurice Cody Community Centre 181 CLEVELAND ST, Toronto, ON, Canada

McGregor Park Community Centre 2231 LAWRENCE AVE, Toronto, ON, Canada

Milliken Park Community Recreation Centre 4325 MCCOWAN RD, Toronto, ON, Canada

Mitchell Field Community Centre 89 CHURCH AVE, Toronto, ON, Canada

Morningside Park 390 Morningside Ave., Toronto, ON, Canada

Mount Dennis Community Hall 4 HOLLIS ST, Toronto, ON, Canada

New Toronto Seniors' Centre 105 FOURTH ST, Toronto, ON, Canada

North Kipling Community Centre 2 ROWNTREE RD, Toronto, ON, Canada

North Toronto Memorial Community Centre 200 EGLINTON AVE, Toronto, ON, Canada

Northwood Community Centre 15 CLUBHOUSE CRT, Toronto, ON, Canada

Oakdale Community Centre 350 GRANDRAVINE DR, Toronto, ON, Canada

Oakridge Community Recreation Centre 63 PHARMACY AVE, Toronto, ON, Canada

O'Connor Community Centre 1386 VICTORIA PARK AVE, Toronto, ON, Canada

Oriole Community Centre 2975 DON MILLS RD, Toronto, ON, Canada

Ourland Community Centre 18 OURLAND AVE, Toronto, ON, Canada

Parkdale Community Recreation Centre 75 LANSDOWNE AVE, Toronto, ON, Canada

Parkway Forest Community Centre 55 FOREST MANOR RD, Toronto, ON, Canada

Pelmo Park Community Centre 171 PELLATT AVE, Toronto, ON, Canada

Pleasantview Community Centre 545 VAN HORNE AVE, Toronto, ON, Canada

Port Union Community Recreation Centre 5450 LAWRENCE AVE, Toronto, ON, Canada

Power House Recreation Centre 65 COLONEL SAMUEL SMITH PARK DR, Toronto, ON, Canada

Regent Park Community Centre 402 SHUTER ST, Toronto, ON, Canada

140

Roding Community Centre 600 RODING ST, Toronto, ON, Canada

S.H. Armstrong Community Centre 56 WOODFIELD RD, Toronto, ON, Canada

Scadding Court Community Centre 707 DUNDAS ST, Toronto, ON, Canada

Scarborough Village Recreation Centre 3600 KINGSTON RD, Toronto, ON, Canada

Secord Community Centre 91 BARRINGTON AVE, Toronto, ON, Canada

Seneca Village Community Centre 1700 FINCH AVE, Toronto, ON, Canada

Sherbourne Common

St. Lawrence Community Recreation Centre 230 THE ESPLANADE, Toronto, ON, Canada Stephen Leacock Community Recreation 2500 BIRCHMOUNT RD, Toronto, ON,

Centre Canada

Sunnybrook Park North York, ON M3C 2N1

Swansea Community Recreation Centre 15 WALLER AVE, Toronto, ON, Canada

Tall Pines Community Centre 64 RYLANDER BLVD, Toronto, ON, Canada

Tam Heather Curling And Tennis Club 730 MILITARY TRL, Toronto, ON, Canada

Terry Fox Recreation Centre 2 GLEDHILL AVE, Toronto, ON, Canada

Thistletown Community Centre 925 ALBION RD, Toronto, ON, Canada

Thomson Memorial Park North

Toronto Track And Field Centre 4700 KEELE ST, Toronto, ON, Canada

Trace Manes Park Community Centre 110 RUMSEY RD, Toronto, ON, Canada

Trinity Community Recreation Centre 155 CRAWFORD ST, Toronto, ON, Canada

Viewmount Community Centre 169 VIEWMOUNT AVE, Toronto, ON, Canada

Wallace Emerson Community Centre 1260 DUFFERIN ST, Toronto, ON, Canada

Warden Hilltop Community Centre 25 MENDELSSOHN ST, Toronto, ON, Canada

Wellesley Community Centre 495 SHERBOURNE ST, Toronto, ON, Canada

West Acres Senior Centre 65 HINTON RD, Toronto, ON, Canada

West Rouge Community Centre 270 ROUGE HILLS DR, Toronto, ON, Canada

West Scarborough Neighbourhood Centre 313 PHARMACY AVE, Toronto, ON, Canada Wilket Creek Park

York Recreation Centre 115 BLACK CREEK DR, Toronto, ON, Canada

ICE RINKS

Name Address INDOOR

Don Mills Civitan Arena 1030 DON MILLS RD

141

Leaside Memorial Gardens Arena 1073 MILLWOOD RD

Pine Point Arena 15 GRIERSON RD

Albion Arena 1501 ALBION RD

Centennial Park Arena 156 CENTENNIAL PARK RD

Baycrest Arena 160 NEPTUNE DR

Downsview Arena 1633 WILSON AVE

Angela James Arena 165 GRENOBLE DR

North Toronto Memorial Arena 174 ORCHARD VIEW BLVD

McCormick Arena 179 BROCK AVE

Victoria Village Arena 190 BERMONDSEY RD

John Booth Memorial Arena 230 GOSFORD BLVD

Fenside Arena 30 SLIDELL CRES

Mimico Arena 31 DRUMMOND ST

Bayview Arena 3230 BAYVIEW AVE

Habitant Arena 3383 WESTON RD

Larry Grossman Forest Hill Memorial Arena 340 CHAPLIN CRES

William H. Bolton Arena 40 ROSSMORE RD

Lambton Arena 4100 DUNDAS ST

Phil White Arena 443 ARLINGTON AVE

Central Arena 50 MONTGOMERY RD

Long Branch Arena 75 ARCADIAN CIR

Scarborough Gardens Arena 75 BIRCHMOUNT RD

East York Memorial Arena 888 COSBURN AVE Chris Tonks Arena 95 BLACK CREEK DR OUTDOOR 9am – 10pm, weather permitting Alexandra Park/Harry Gairy Broadlands Community Centre Campbell Av. Playground Cedarvale Park Christie Pits Colonel Samuel Smith Park Dieppe park Dufferin Grove Park Giovanni Caboto Glen Long Community Centre Greenwood Park High Park Hodgson Public School Grounds Humber Valley Rink Irving W. Chapley Community Centre 142

Jimmie Simpson Park Kew Gardens Ledbury Park Mel Lastman Square Monarch Park Nathan Phillips Square North Toronto Memorial CPC/Eglinton Park Otter Creek Centre Prince of Wales Rink Queensway Rink Ramsden Park Regent Park Rennie Park Riverdale Park East Rosedale Park Royalcrest Rink Scarborough Civic Centre Sherbourne Common Sir Adam Beck Rink Sunnydale Acres Rink Trinity Bellwoods Valleyfield Park Van Horne Park Wallace Emerson Park Wedgewood Park West Deane Park West Mall Rink Westway Outdoor Rink Withrow Park

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