Class Rage? Was He Drunk? Will He Get A Fair Trial? Toronto A-Buzz Over Cyclist’s Death

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Class warfare between a wealthy attorney and his wife, cruising town in their luxury convertible and a feisty-but-lovable bike courier? Road rage gone rampant? Should the cops have stopped the cyclist who’d been drinking? What really happened on the most elegant shopping block in Toronto — its equivalent of Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue or Madison, or Chicago’s Miracle Mile?

I grew up in Toronto and there’s never been a story quite like it, striking especially hard in a larger culture that still prides itself, even in a sprawling, multicultural city of more than two million, on tolerance and public civility. A place where in-your-face confrontation — pretty standard stuff in some American cities — is rare and deemed repugnant, and rarely escalates into a killing. People, there, don’t shoot one another over a parking spot or other perceived minor injustice.

The standard narrative isn’t working, writes Globe and Mail columnist Judith Timson, but this case, she writes, is one that Toronto can’t stop talking about.