Social Work

Over her long career, U of T alumna Ellen Sue Mesbur has seen and led change in social work education

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 26 May 2023 17:22:50 +0000

Over her long career, U of T alumna Ellen Sue Mesbur has seen and led change in social work education

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 05/26/2023 - 13:22

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Ellen Sue Mesbur earned multiple degrees in social work from U of T before going on to a long career in the field and in educating the next generation of social workers (supplied image)

Dale Duncan

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Our Community

Alumni

Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work

Social Work

Growing up in Edmonton, community engagement and organizational leadership were a big part of Ellen Sue Mesbur’s life. Her parents were involved in Jewish organizations and other local community groups, instilling deep values of helping others and giving back.

When Mesbur, a ��Ƶ alumna, set out to start her own career, she says social work “seemed like the normal thing to do” – but she wasn’t sure about the exact path her career would take.

More than 50 years later, Mesbur has both led and witnessed considerable changes in social work education – including initiatives to make programs more accessible to students. Her career has included roles as the director of two Canadian schools of social work, and deep expertise in the history and practice of social work with groups in Canada.

Today, she continues to share her experience and knowledge both as a consultant for Toronto's Jewish Family and Child Service and as an internationally recognized expert in group work through published articles, papers and presentations.

After graduating in 1967 from U of T’s master of social work program (now based at the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work), Mesbur landed a job as a school social worker in Scarborough. While there, a colleague recommended that she apply for a position in the welfare services program at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute (now Toronto Metropolitan University).

“They hired me to teach – by taking a chance on me, that changed my whole career,” she says.

At the time, Ryerson only offered a certificate program for people with a high school diploma who had been working in welfare services.

“Most of the students would never have had an opportunity to get any kind of advanced education if it hadn’t been for that program,” Mesbur says. “It met a very interesting need in the community.”

By 1989, Mesbur became the director of Ryerson's School of Social Work and remained in that position until 1998. In 1993, when Ryerson gained official university status, students were able to pursue a bachelor of social work degree.

During sabbaticals, Mesbur was furthering her own education, attending U of T’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) and majoring in adult education. There, she received a master’s degree and a doctorate in education while studying group interaction and how it influences learning.

In the early 2000s, Mesbur started to think about retiring from teaching, but continued presenting and publishing papers on field education, working with diverse populations and the history of social work in Canada.

She also served on several boards, where she was introduced to Renison College, an institution affiliated with the University of Waterloo that had established an emerging School of Social Work to offer degree courses. Mesbur went on to serve as the school’s director for a decade before retiring in 2013.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, Mesbur’s experience with online learning was an asset. Although she was no longer teaching, she met virtually each week with group work colleagues from Canada, the United States, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia – educators who all had to pivot to teaching online.

“Everybody was struggling with the same things,” she says. “They were universal in the sense of worrying about the students and being concerned about the course content and student mental health.”

The group’s weekly meetings led to two published journal articles on teaching group work online during the pandemic.

Mesbur’s Jewish faith has also been important in her commitment to social work. As Jewish Heritage Month concludes, she reflects on the recent rise in antisemitism, noting she would like to see better awareness of such discrimination incorporated into educational policies and standards around equity, diversity and inclusion within schools of social work, accrediting bodies and social work associations.

“I did my master’s thesis on hate propaganda legislation – because at that time, in the mid-’60s, there was a rise of neo-Nazi activity in Canada,” Mesbur says.

“Over the years, antisemitic activity has calmed down and then gotten worse – but this is the worst I’ve ever seen it, in terms of incidents around the world. In social work, I think we have to be aware of all forms of hatred, include it in our curricula and learn how to address hate in our work as practitioners, teachers and researchers.”

Looking back, Mesbur is grateful for those who have served as her mentors and the immense impact they had on the trajectory of her career. She is proud of the legacy and contributions that faculty and graduates from Canadian schools of social work have made to the field and to educating the next generation of social workers.

“There has been so much leadership in social work and social work education from faculty and graduates across Canada, from the early days to current days,” Mesbur says. “It’s quite impressive to think about.”

Backlash to magazine story exposes ugly side of Toronto's housing obsession: U of T experts

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 02 Jun 2017 20:39:51 +0000

Backlash to magazine story exposes ugly side of Toronto's housing obsession: U of T experts

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 06/02/2017 - 16:39

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A semi-detached house in Toronto's gentrifying Parkdale neighbourhood (photo by Cory Doctorow via Flickr)

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A story in this week’s Toronto Life magazine about a so-called “reno from hell” inadvertently launched a public conversation about the impact of gentrification on vulnerable neighbourhoods and the city’s homeless population.

The story triggered a swift social media backlash – with many taking umbrage at the author’s depiction of her efforts to remove squatters from the Parkdale property, including a drug user she initially feared might be dead.

Emily Paradis is a senior research associate at the Faculty of Social Work who focuses on homelessness. Deborah Cowen is an associate professor of geography and planning.

They spoke with U of T News about the significance of the Parkdale neighborhood, reaction to the article, and who is really being hurt by Toronto’s nosebleed home prices.

Deborah Cowen, an associate professor of geography and planning:

Toronto Life writes a lot of stories about people buying and renovating houses all over the city. Why do you think this one sparked such a visceral social media reaction?

Any time I want to make sense of something, I begin by asking where we are. Every story has a context, and this one really matters. This is a moment of acute housing crisis in Toronto with some of the fastest change and aggressive displacement taking place in this very neighbourhood. Parkdale is notorious as a centre of the city’s gentrification. It is known internationally in the scholarly literature as an area where so many people – Indigenous, poor, of colour, immigrant, working class, with physical and mental disabilities, on pensions, LGBTQ, students and artists – are being pushed out. Average prices for single family homes in Toronto have soared recently to well over a million dollars. Income polarization is deepening, as are its racialized contours. Toronto’s housing crisis has become so acute that we now have an average weekly death rate of two homeless people on city streets.

This is all reason enough for outrage at a story that dehumanizes the very people facing displacement and maybe homelessness, while valorizing the problems elites face in causing it.

I take it you believe there are other problems, too?

For the last month, several hundred Parkdale residents have undertaken a courageous action – a collective rent strike. They are doing so to protest the actions of the landlord, MetCap, which is trying to raise rents above regulations for units that have egregious outstanding work orders. Today actually marks the beginning of their second month of the strike. I say this is courageous because renters are standing their ground despite facing harassment and risk of physical assault from landlords, not to mention the possibility of losing their housing.

In this context, the editorial decision to run this particular article could be interpreted as deliberately heartless. Or perhaps it is a declaration that Toronto Life locates itself on one side of a deepening divide. In fact, it is both. The article aims to elicit sympathy for one multiply propertied family with extended networks of wealth while sanctioning the eviction of so many others, not only from the house but from a common humanity.

What, if anything, can we learn from all of this?

I am heartened by the outrage. It suggests that there is widespread discontent with the status quo, and perhaps even widespread concern for the well-being of others. It suggests that there is a relationship between deepening inequality and this culture of dehumanization, and that folks are getting fed up. Attitude cannot will inequity into being, but it is a key ‘infrastructure’ of inequality.
Gentrification is not an accident – it is almost official policy. Gentrification lines the pockets of municipal government, as much as it does private ones. It is often framed as a natural process of ‘rejuvenation,’ like a garden in the springtime. But it is promoted and exploited by those who create the very regulations and policies that shape urban change. That the author’s attitudes elicited such disgust is a sign that maybe this city is ready to have some serious conversation about our collective future.

Emily Paradis, senior research associate at the Faculty of Social Work who focuses on homelessness:

What was your initial reaction to this story?

What struck me was the dehumanization of the low-income people in the story. Now, I expect to hear the triumphant pioneer narrative of gentrification – the story of brave people moving to a new neighbourhood and reclaiming it. That stuff I find irritating and offensive but not unexpected. But to hear a description of someone walking into a person’s bedroom, not initially noticing they’re there, slowly becoming aware of their presence, thinking they might be dead and then not doing anything to try and help – that was shocking to me.

You participated in a study on Parkdale rooming houses by the Parkdale Neighbourhood Land Trust. What did the researchers find?

The researchers literally walked the streets of the neighbourhood to a get sense of what’s going on. The degree of loss of rooming house units was shocking. They found that 28 rooming houses had already been lost, and another 59 are at risk – that’s out of 198 rooming houses in the neighbourhood.

Some of these houses have been used as rooming houses since the Great Depression when many of these big mansions became unsustainable for families to own and heat. So rooming houses have always been part of the picture in Parkdale, and the need for them intensified in the 1970s and 1980s with deinstitutionalization. A lot of survivors of the [mental health] system moved into the neighbourhood because they were really close to services they needed. And, of course, we know the deinstitutionalization policy was enacted without enough community support to house people and provide services. One of the root causes of the level of homelessness we see today is that lack of funding for housing and services.

There are some who don’t see what the fuss is about – a family spent a lot of money and time fixing up a crumbing old house, improving the neighbourhood. What do you say to them?

The whole issue is much broader than this particular family or this particular writer. The issue is systemic. It doesn’t come down to whether one family buys a rooming house and renovates it into a single family home. That’s been happening in Parkdale since the 1980s. The issue is there’s nowhere for folks who rely on rooming houses to go. Public attitudes toward low income housing in general tend to be that it’s an eyesore that degrades the neighbourhood. But why is making a neighbourhood more exclusive and less able to accommodate all its residents seen as an improvement?

What can be done to improve the situation?

We need adequate funding for social housing and affordable housing. We need stronger regulation for the private housing market so that tenants living in a building that’s purchased aren’t displaced with nowhere to go. In the case of a neighbourhood like Parkdale and rooming houses, we need planning about how that very unique form of affordable housing will be maintained into the future so that the population it houses isn’t rendered homeless when all rooming houses disappear. That requires looking ahead. As neighbourhoods change, we have to think about how we can have development without displacement.

Meet U of T’s newest Canada Research Chairs

ullahnor — Fri, 02 Dec 2016 17:33:09 +0000

Meet U of T’s newest Canada Research Chairs

ullahnor Fri, 12/02/2016 - 12:33

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Federal Minister of Science Kirsty Duncan announces the 25 new Canada Research Chairs at U of T (photo by Johnny Guatto)

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Our Community

Research & Innovation

Canada Research Chairs

Faculty of Arts & Science

Faculty of Social Work

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Andrea Tricco
Canada Research Chair in Knowledge Synthesis

In the fast-paced world of health-care research, having the most up-to-date research at your fingertips is imperative for doctors, policymakers and patients to make the best, most informed decisions.

But the sheer amount of complex research available – and the fact not all of it is consistent in findings and conclusions – means it’s impossible to read everything quickly and accurately. That’s where knowledge synthesis can make all the difference.

Andrea Tricco, Canada Research Chair in Knowledge Synthesis, is leading research to advance the science of knowledge syntheses within health, including identifying and validating the best rapid review methods. She is also leading research to improve the reporting of scoping reviews and a type of systematic review that uses advanced statistical methods called network meta-analysis.

In the field of knowledge syntheses, there are systematic reviews, rapid reviews and scoping reviews to summarize all pertinent studies on a question, improve the understanding of inconsistencies and define future research agendas.

The results from knowledge synthesis can then be used to create policy briefs, clinical practice guidelines and patient decision aids.

Systematic reviews, which are the gold standard in reviewing research, take thousands of hours to complete while rapid reviews, a type of knowledge synthesis, typically take just six to 12 weeks. But it’s unclear if rapid reviews are susceptible to biased results because of short-cuts in the process. What is clear is that decision-makers need and expect the information quickly – often in three months or less.

The results of Tricco's research will be used to directly inform knowledge synthesis groups that exist in Canada, as well as internationally, on how to provide relevant, timely and high quality information to health decision-makers.

Read more about Gilbert and Hatzopoulou

Faculty of Arts and Science

Rachel Barney
Canada Research Chair in Ancient Philosophy

Debate has long raged over the role of the sophists in the development of Western philosophy. Derided even in their own time in ancient Greece as tricksters and corruptors of youth, this group of learned men gave paid lessons to upwardly mobile Athenian men to teach them how to win political arguments, regardless of their virtue.

Philosophers have commonly believed they had little influence over the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, a student of Socrates and teacher of Aristotle, who forcefully denounced their teachings in his influential dialogues such as the Protagoras and Gorgias more than 2,000 years ago.

Rachel Barney, Canada Research Chair in Ancient Philosophy, has offered another way of looking at Plato’s philosophy and the ancient debate to which it belongs. One that shows both Plato and his sophist contemporaries such as Protagoras made contributions to – and are continuing to influence – both our ways of thinking about ethics and methods of philosophical argument in general.

She argues Plato both responds to and appropriates the ideas and methods of the sophists in his work. As such, she will offer a new account of their debates, one which will make it accessible and exciting to a wide range of scholars, contemporary philosophers and students.

Did Plato believe virtue could be taught like the sophists? And what did he believe virtue was? Is it a kind of knowledge or mental health or perhaps a learned skill?

She will also study the origins of sophistic thought and argue it was so successfully incorporated by Plato and others into the bloodstream of philosophy that their origins tend to be forgotten, and their primary significance and functions overlooked.

John Cunningham
Canada Research Chair in Addictions

It is an unfortunate reality that most people with addictions will never seek formal, face-to-face treatment with an expert. Common obstacles include a lack of available treatments, particularly in rural settings, concerns over stigma and a desire for self-reliance.

An effective new option to promote recovery is to develop and design interventions for problem gamblers, drinkers, smokers and illicit drug users they can administer on their own.

John Cunningham, the Canada Research Chair in Addictions, is a world-leading expert in the development and evaluation of assisted self-change interventions for addictions, including pioneering research on Internet interventions for hazardous drinking.

In Canada and Australia, he’s conducting several randomized controlled trials, including Internet interventions for heavy drinkers and mailing nicotine patches to smokers to help them quit.

His research will also encompass ways to treat addictions in high-risk situations, in vulnerable or hard-to-reach populations, among illicit drug users and in integrating assisted self-change with face-to-face treatment.

For example, using gaming and intervention apps, Cunningham will target heavy drinkers with limited literacy to teach safe drinking techniques and encourage them to employ interventions based on their own reporting of situations where they’re in danger of drinking, such as the holiday season.

The long-term goal is an improved system of care for people with addictions, fully integrated within the larger health-care system and widely accessed both in Canada and internationally.

Such research will lead to sustained improvements for those suffering from addictions and contribute toward a reduction in the health and societal costs associated with this challenging health problem.

Marie-Josée Fortin
Canada Research Chair in Spatial Ecology

Understanding how many species will respond to global change is a central challenge in ecology because their population health is vital for the overall ecosystem and the survival of humans.

To understand and predict the impacts of global change on animal movement and the survival of isolated populations of the same species, the field of spatial ecology examines everything from the size of the “patch” where communities live to the predators that threaten prey survival and their adaptability to changes in climate, food availability, disease and reproduction rate.

Through her work, Marie-Josée Fortin, Canada Research Chair in Spatial Ecology, will provide ecologists with novel network analytical methods that can be used to propose management strategies to facilitate species dispersal in fragmented landscapes, to maintain the resilience of ecosystem services, or to prevent disease spread.

By doing so, she will provide novel perspectives on how to address fundamental and applied issues in the field of conservation biology by making novel network analytical models available to ecologists and evolutionists allowing the analysis and modeling of the complex spatial dynamics of species interactions across scales, trophic levels and ecosystems.

Collectively, the proposed conceptual and analytical models will have important implications for the protection of biodiversity and its valuable role in the maintenance of ecosystem functions as well as human health.

This research will provide fundamental and applied contributions that will significantly advance the fields of conservation biology, ecology, evolution, landscape genetics and landscape epidemiology.

Paul Frankland
Canada Research Chair in Memory Research

Memory disorders affect millions of Canadians. In some cases, such as Alzheimer’s disease, important memories can be lost, while persistent memories tied to traumatic events can lead to depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

To develop better treatments for these disorders, it’s critical to understand how memories are organized and stored in the brain and how they can be altered after they are formed – sometimes by disease.

Paul Frankland, Canada Research Chair in Memory Research and a global leader in the field, combines behaviour, imaging and molecular approaches to study memory.

In particular, his research focuses on how changes in memory organization – from their creation in the hippocampus to their reorganization in the cortex for long-term storage – affects their quality.

He and his team are also building on their discovery that new neurons generated in the hippocampus throughout our lifetimes help the brain create new memories and forget older ones.

Like in artificial systems, there is a trade-off in brain networks between plasticity – the ability to incorporate new information – and stability, which ensures that incorporating new information does not degrade information already stored in the network.

Frankland will use whole brain mapping approaches in mice and zebrafish to define memory networks, identify areas of network vulnerability and use this knowledge to develop strategies to restore memory function.

His team will also use genetic interventions and compounds that emerge from pro-neurogenic drug screens conducted at SickKids to manipulate neurogenesis.

By weakening memories after they’ve formed – like in the movie, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – we can develop more effective treatments for addiction and other disorders associated with abnormal memory persistence or rumination.

Sheena Josselyn
Canada Research Chair in Systems Neuroscience

Memory impairments are a hallmark of aging, mental illness, developmental disorders, as well as several neurological disorders.

Examining how the brain normally encodes and uses information is an important goal in and of itself, but also may serve as a first step to developing treatments when these complex processes go awry in conditions ranging from autism to Alzheimer’s disease.

The development of new tools has enabled the lab of Sheena Josselyn, Canada Research Chair in Systems Neuroscience, to identify, understand and even manipulate memory traces (engrams) in rodent brains.

First, they erased a memory. Now, they’re working on more sophisticated problems such as altering memories or recalling them at will by choosing what brain cells to turn on or off. To help in their research, Josselyn’s team has developed a state-of-the-art, 1 photon fluorescent mini-microscope that enables them to observe the brains of mice at the cellular level as they form and retrieve a memory.

They’ve also made significant progress in advancing our understanding of why certain nerve cells are used in engrams and others aren’t. Her team has successfully selected and manipulated nerve cells to boost their CREB function, which plays a role in binding DNA and regulating gene expression, after noticing that factor leads to preferential recruitment by engrams. One of their most interesting experiments shows promise for potential addiction treatments.

Martin Krkosek
Canada Research Chair in Population Ecology

The ability of the oceans to feed humanity is under threat from a number of sources including the rise and spread of infectious diseases.

As global fisheries landings have either plateaued or declined, the world has turned to aquaculture as a way to provide seafood and relieve overfishing on existing ocean stocks. The blue revolution has been so successful that most salmon people eat are now grown in open sea pens that dot the coastal seas of countries such as Canada, Norway, and Chile.

But intensive aquaculture production hasn’t been without risk. Parasites and diseases like sea lice and infectious salmon anemia virus have emerged, challenging aquaculture industries and perhaps contributing to the decline of wild marine ecosystems and fisheries.

Martin Krkosek, Canada Research Chair in Population Ecology, is studying salmon in British Columbia to probe what causes infectious diseases to emerge in wild and farmed fish and the ways to control disease spread.

His work includes how domesticated environments can cause pathogens to evolve antibiotic resistance and increased virulence, and how changes in host abundance and distribution can abruptly cause epidemics.

This research will help protect ocean biodiversity, as well as human health and food security.

Ito Peng
Canada Research Chair in Global Social Policy

Contracting out the care of our young children and rapidly aging populations is producing significant societal changes around the world – even changing migration patterns, as females are drawn from poorer countries to work in wealthier nations.

Research by Ito Peng, Canada Research Chair in Global Social Policy, has shown this urgent demand is also being driven by shifts in traditional family obligations, the growing service economy and in an ironic twist, gender equality as more and more women are working outside of home.

This has contributed to growing demands for government services. National governments have responded by providing more public care services and/or subsidies and tax incentives for families to purchase care privately. In almost all cases, care is increasingly being commodified as a service to be purchased in the market.

This change isn’t confined to Western countries. It’s even happening in many southern Mediterranean and Asian countries, which have strong cultural traditions of families providing care, Peng has found. In Spain and Italy, the government care allowance has enabled a large proportion of elderly people to hire foreign migrant caregivers. This is helped by the increased intake of foreign caregivers. But there remain holdouts such as Japan, which has resisted opening its doors to increased immigration.

Peng is globally known for her research in showing how changes in domestic factors interact with global institutions and actors in shaping social policy development within countries.

In the case of care workers, she is studying policies in North America, Asia, Oceania and Europe to examine broad theoretical issues around how care and immigration policies are informed by societal and cultural norms, expectations and trends, and how these policies in turn help influence societal and cultural norms and trends. Her research also looks at the implications of these policies for the migrants performing care work.

This knowledge will make an important contribution to public and policy debates, particularly in current socio-economic contexts where international migration continues to accelerate amidst the intensification of immigration politics and growing calls for national and regional governments to develop effective social policy and governance to address the issue.

Amar Vutha
Canada Research Chair in Precision Atomic and Molecular Physics

Atoms and molecules can be used as extremely precise tools to advance fundamental physics and practical technology.

For example, highly accurate clocks based on laser-cooled atoms can now keep time to better than one part per quintillion (1 followed by 18 zeros). Such accuracy forms the basis of our global system of measurement standards, and allows ventures ranging from deep space navigation to cellular communications networks to precision manufacturing.

Amar Vutha, Canada Research Chair in Precision Atomic and Molecular Physics, is taking this precision one step further – by developing a portable version of such atomic clocks.

These clocks have potential applications in improving metrology, navigation and mapping the earth’s gravitational field. Excitingly, these clocks could also open up a new way to “see” gravitational waves emanating from black holes and other hitherto invisible inhabitants of our universe.

Vutha’s research group will also develop other atomic and molecular tools to reveal unexplored physics. For example, very precise measurements on cold, confined molecules can shed light on physical and chemical processes occurring millions of light years away in gas clouds in space. New techniques that are needed to make such precise measurements, using lasers and terahertz radiation, will be studied in his group.

A big puzzle about the universe is the absence of natural anti-matter anywhere. While lots of anti-matter is believed to have formed after the Big Bang, the fate of all that anti-matter remains a mystery. One approach to unraveling this puzzle is to precisely probe the shape of certain atomic nuclei. Vutha’s group will develop new experiments to measure such properties of nuclei, which could also lead to practical payoffs such as improved gyroscopes for navigation.

Faculty of Dentistry

Celine Levesque
Canada Research Chair in Oral Microbial Genetics

A biofilm is a collection of microbes – such as bacteria – that stick to each other and to a surface to survive. When biofilm bacteria attack the human body, they can be difficult to fight. In fact, antibiotics need to be 100 times more concentrated than usual in order to kill biofilm bacteria.

Biofilm bacteria have also developed clever ways to stay alive. Some bacteria in biofilms can essentially commit suicide – known as “programmed cell death” (PCD) – to enable other microbes to become stronger and better able to survive. They can also remain dormant until antibiotic treatment is completed. As a result, microbes can persist for months or even years in the body and lead to recurrent infections that are very difficult to eradicate.

Celine Levesque, Canada Research Chair in Oral Microbial Genetics, is investigating how biofilm bacteria develop the means to survive and grow by studying an oral pathogen that can lead to tooth decay.

Levesque’s research will result in better understanding of the genetic networks that regulate PCD and the formation of “sleeping” bacteria. It will also help lead to better treatments for such biofilm infections as tooth decay, children’s ear infection, cystic fibrosis pneumonia and necrotizing fasciitis, the so-called flesh-eating disease.

Faculty of Medicine

Ana Andreazza
Canada Research Chair in Molecular Pharmacology of Mood Disorders

One in 10 Canadians suffers from highly disabling mood disorders including bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder and schizophrenia. Currently, diagnosis is based upon self-reported symptoms or behavioural observations that lack substantial biological validation.

Ana Andreazza, Canada Research Chair in Molecular Pharmacology of Mood Disorders, is an emerging international leader in this field, which is searching for affordable, easy-to-use and clinically relevant biological markers that can be used for biological confirmation of a mood disorder diagnosis or to identify people at risk of developing a mood disorder.

The identification of biological targets will open doors to the development of new treatments strategies that treat abnormalities or impairments in oxidation processes in the periphery that contribute to mood disorders.

Her research, in collaboration with other laboratories, has produced some of the most convincing insights to date into the mechanisms that underlie mood disorders by focusing on metabolic processes known as oxidation and reduction reactions or redox modulations.

Oxidation in our cells is a natural process that converts energy from food to ATP, a molecule that carries energy to where the body needs it. But the oxidation process isn’t always well modulated.

For example, Andreazza's research demonstrates increased mitochondrial dysfunction and redox modulations in brain and blood cells of patients with mood disorders. This discovery led to treatments with antioxidants that have shown promising results when used with other therapies in treating mood disorders.

She is currently furthering her study of the role these redox abnormalities or impairments play in mood disorders and is exploring the possible effects of redox modulations on molecular pathways leading to synaptic alterations, particularly those that might provide potential avenues for therapy. She is also investigating the role these redox mistakes and inflammation in signalling white matter changes in mood disorder.

Anne-Claude Gingras
Canada Research Chair in Functional Proteomics

Inside a living cell, proteins associate with one another to perform their activities in a tightly regulated manner to maintain proper cellular function, similar to the different parts of an assembly line and temperature controlled rooms in a factory.

Research by Anne-Claude Gingras, Canada Research Chair in Functional Proteomics, is developing a map showing how the factory is organized, in order to better understand the processes that go awry in disease.

Using advanced protein identification instruments known as mass spectrometers, she will identify the precise physical interactions and location of a large number of proteins to begin constructing a physical blueprint of a human cell.

Her research team will make this blueprint openly available to researchers to accelerate health research worldwide.

This dovetails nicely with the significant contributions they’ve made in the field of protein-protein interactions by creating tools that enable researchers worldwide to analyze their own mass spectrometry data, increasing the impact of Gingras’ research beyond the specific biological questions she’s investigating.

In addition, she will create an in-depth analysis of specific signalling pathways, part of a complex system of communication governing and coordinating the basic activities and actions of cells, and how errors in processing can lead to diseases, such as cancer. Her systematic analysis of normal and mutated proteins is already paving the way for new opportunities for therapeutic options.

Mikko Taipale
Canada Research Chair in Functional Proteomics and Protein Homeostasis

Proteins perform a wide variety of important jobs in cells. But in their crowded milieu, stressors can easily derail their finely tuned network, leading to mutant, misshapen proteins that have been implicated in human diseases such as cancer, cystic fibrosis and sickle-cell anemia.

How this network – known as cellular protein homeostasis (proteostasis) network – coordinates all these processes is poorly understood, making it difficult to develop targeted treatments.

Mikko Taipale, Canada Research Chair in Functional Proteomics and Protein Homeostasis, is drawing on his expertise in protein quality control, high-throughput biology and chemical biology to understand how this network is organized – with particular focus on deciphering the Hsp70 chaperone and its co-chaperones – and how it contributes to human diseases.

Chaperones are the most prominent class of proteins that shape the proteostasis network. They briefly bind thousands of substrate proteins in the cell and promote their folding, trafficking and degradation. In fact, they act as guardians controlling the fate of mutant proteins.

Studies have shown the Hsp70 network is at the crux of devastating neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s and plays also a central role in rare Mendelian diseases.

By focusing on Hsp70, Taipale and his team will generate the largest and most comprehensive interaction network for cellular quality control factors and their client proteins including 2,500 mutant variants associated with 1,100 Mendelian diseases.

This network will be complemented with followup studies to further develop chaperone-based thermodynamic and conformational sensors for biotechnological applications, and to develop innovative methods to detect drug/target interactions in human cells.

Close to 40 per cent of formerly suicidal Canadians reach complete mental health

sgupta — Mon, 18 Jan 2016 07:50:42 +0000

Close to 40 per cent of formerly suicidal Canadians reach complete mental health sgupta Mon, 01/18/2016 - 02:50

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“When individuals are in the depths of suicidal despair, it is hard for them to imagine they will ever feel better,” says Esme Fuller-Thomson. But new findings suggest that a large minority of suicidal individuals recover to the point of optimal well-bein

Jelena Damjanovic

Author legacy

Jelena Damjanovic

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Breaking Research

Canada Next: researchers explain what the return of the long-form census means for Canada

sgupta — Tue, 10 Nov 2015 14:46:26 +0000

Canada Next: researchers explain what the return of the long-form census means for Canada sgupta Tue, 11/10/2015 - 09:46

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The long-form census is “extremely critical” in determining demographic trends, says Timothy Chan. “The more granular the data, the better.”

Alan Christie

Author legacy

Alan Christie

Topic

Breaking Research

Cyberbullying pervasive among public school students

sgupta — Tue, 22 Sep 2015 16:33:23 +0000

Cyberbullying pervasive among public school students sgupta Tue, 09/22/2015 - 12:33

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Researchers found students often felt that the costs of disclosing distress outweighed the potential benefits (photo by Clemens v. Vogelsang via Flickr)

Alan Christie

Author legacy

Alan Christie

Subheadline

Girls blamed disproportionately for "sexting" between the sexes

A major new U of T study on cyberbullying suggests that when young people are “sexting” only the girls are getting blamed.

Professor Faye Mishna, dean of the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, has completed a three-year study on cyberbullying based on interviews with students, parents and teachers in schools in the Toronto District School Board.

Face-to-face interviews were completed with children and adolescents from ages eight to 18. These students were in Grades 4, 7 or 10 at the start of the study, and were interviewed twice over the three years.

Findings clearly indicate that cyberbullying is going on everywhere and that “we have to change the way we look at it,” Mishna told U of T News.

One of the interviews that stood out for Mishna was with a girl in Grade 4 who said that girls call each other sluts. “I don’t know what it means but I know it has something to do with being ugly,” this girl added.

“Nasty texts, sexual images, seem to be more of the norm,” Mishna said. “The other thing we found that is very interesting and disturbing is that the girls are getting blamed.”

Girls may send private or explicit pictures to boys, but only girls are blamed for having poor judgment when boys (who may have pressured them) post these images on the internet. Adults also seem to think that cyberbullying is primarily a “girl problem,” despite evidence that both sexes participate actively in such behaviour online.

The study also found that children conceal their texting activities from adults. “The takeaway message we have is: You can no longer just say ‘don’t do it.’ Don’t do it just means they aren’t going to tell you.”

Mishna listed several television shows that convey the message that “sexting” is permissible, including Homeland, Glee, Pretty Little Liars, Revenge, House of Cards, Orange is the New Black and Degrassi. “So on the one hand people are saying don’t do it, but the message from mainstream television is that it is an option with few consequences.”

Mixed messages are leading to a widespread “disconnect,” Mishna said. “We need to have a bigger conversation about cyberbullying – less about not doing it and more about dealing with it.”

This conversation should embrace all the complexities of the phenomenon of cyberbullying, including societal norms, stereotypes, media depictions and relationships.

One of the findings in the study centred around “gender policing,” which has become common. “It’s kids keeping track of how girls in particular dress, how they act, how they don’t wear enough clothes, or wear too many clothes – it can easily become a form of cyberbullying.”

People also often overlook the impact of online gaming, Mishna said. Boys who don’t do well are often called offensive names. Cyberbullying goes on there often.

Traditional bullying also remains prevalent, the study found. And what adults might consider cyberbullying, kids regard as a normal part of online communication. “Boys call it trash talk,” Mishna said. “Girls call it drama.”

The study involved 670 students, 246 parents and 103 teachers. More than 20 schools were involved and 423 students and 95 parents were interviewed in all three years of the study.

Eighteen per cent of youth in Toronto public schools self-identify as in distress

Published in the scientific journal Children and Youth Services Review, “Students in distress: Unanticipated findings in a cyberbullying study” (by Faye Mishna, Kaitlin J. Schwan, Rachael Lefebvre, Payal Bhole and David Johnston) draws on the findings of the first year of the three-year study. Researchers found 18 per cent of youths in Toronto public schools self-identify as being in distress and many don’t tell the adults in their lives.

The paper reported that 122 of 669 students in Grades, 4, 7 and 10 were in distress.

This finding is consistent with the level of distress found in the Ontario Child Health Study, one of the largest studies on children’s mental health ever conducted.

Female students were more likely to be distress than males. Twenty-seven per cent of participating students with a disability were in distress and more than half of those who identified as non-heterosexual were in distress.

A major theme that emerged was the frequency with which students had not disclosed their distress to adults in their lives, either to protect themselves, protect others or because they didn’t believe the adult’s advice or help would be effective.

The researchers were concerned that “students often felt that the costs of disclosing distress outweighed the potential benefits.”

The study concluded that “the sheer number of students who had not previously told adults about their distress and who did not appear to have adequate strategies and resources to cope with their distress indicates that social work services must be highly visible and readily and easily accessible to students.”

Research is needed to understand how to provide access to social services in ways which feel safe, empowering and easy for students, the report said.

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Research shows dramatic link between inflammatory bowel diseases and anxiety disorder

sgupta — Fri, 31 Jul 2015 07:58:43 +0000

Research shows dramatic link between inflammatory bowel diseases and anxiety disorder sgupta Fri, 07/31/2015 - 03:58

Cutline

Professor Esme Fuller-Thomson, Sandra Rotman Endowed Chair at U of T's Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work (photo by Johnny Guatto)

Michael Kennedy

Author legacy

Michael Kennedy

Topic

If you have inflammatory bowel disease – such as Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis – you are twice as likely to have generalized anxiety disorder as someone who does not have IBD, new research shows.

The findings come in a study published on July 28 by ��Ƶ researchers.

“Patients with IBD face substantial chronic physical problems associated with the disease,” said lead-author Professor Esme Fuller-Thomson, Sandra Rotman Endowed Chair at U of T's Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work. “The additional burden of anxiety disorders makes life much more challenging so this ‘double jeopardy’ must be addressed.”

Previous studies have shown a link between depression and IBD; however, anxiety disorders are more common than depressive disorders with an estimated 15 per cent of Americans experiencing an anxiety disorder in their lifetime. Generalized anxiety disorder is characterized by excessive fearfulness and worry about a variety of everyday problems, with sympotims worsening during times of stress.

Investigators reported that female IBD sufferers were particularly vulnerable to anxiety disorders. Women with IBD had four times the odds of anxiety when compared to men with IBD, said Fuller-Thomson.

The article was published online in the journal Inflammatory Bowel Diseases. Data were drawn from a representative sample of more than 22,000 Canadians, the 2012 Canadian Community Health Study: Mental Health. A total of 269 respondents reported that they had been diagnosed by a health professional with Crohn’s Disease or Ulcerative Colitis.

“The study draws attention to the need for routine screening and targeted interventions for anxiety disorders,” said co-author and adjunct lecturer Joanne Sulman. “Particularly among the most vulnerable patients with IBD: women, individuals who are in chronic pain and those with a history of childhood sexual abuse.”

Co-author and former graduate student Rusan Lateef noted two other factors that were associated with anxiety disorders among those with IBD.

“Of particular interest was the six-fold odds of anxiety disorders we found among those with IBD who had a history of childhood sexual abuse. Not surprisingly, we also found that those who reported moderate or severe chronic pain had twice the odds of anxiety disorders in comparison to those with only mild or no chronic pain.”

Patrick McGowan, an assistant professor of biological sciences at the ��Ƶ Scarborough, says one of the reasons this study is so significant is because it underlines the important link between physical and mental health.

“We sometimes think of the two as if they are entirely separate entities but the reality is they are intimately linked,” said McGowan.“ Both involve genuine physical changes in the body and affect each other.” McGowan was not directly involved with the study.

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Province should fund HPV immunizations for boys in Grade 8: U of T researcher

sgupta — Fri, 26 Jun 2015 12:14:13 +0000

Province should fund HPV immunizations for boys in Grade 8: U of T researcher sgupta Fri, 06/26/2015 - 08:14

Cutline

CBC interviews U of T researcher David Brennan at Toronto's Hassle Free Clinic

Michael Kennedy

Author legacy

Michael Kennedy

Topic

Subheadline

Ontario could save up to $28 million annually with step towards health equity

The province should consider publicly funding immunization against the human papillomavirus (HPV) for all boys and young men, says U of T social work researcher David Brennan – particularly when considering the long-term health of gay, bisexual, other men who have sex with men and those living with HIV.

“HPV poses a serious health problem for males and particularly for gay men, causing 80 – 90 per cent of anal cancers, 40 – 50 per cent of penile cancers and 35 per cent of oral cancers,” says Brennan, a professor at the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work and an Ontario HIV Treatment Network Applied HIV Research Chair in Gay and Bisexual Men’s Health.

“Right now, the HPV vaccine is provided free to girls in Ontario schools. We believe that all boys in Ontario as well as adult men at high risk for contracting HPV should receive the vaccine as well.”

Brennan’s call for the province to fund boys’ HPV immunization is part of a campaign whose supporters include 60 Ontario physicians, academics and community groups, as well as 13 U of T researchers.

In an interview on CBC Radio’s Metro Morning this week, Brennan said an HPV immunization administered to boys in Grade 8 would save the province $12 – 28 million annually as it reduces the cost burden of treating HPV-related cancers later in life.

“Evidence here and in other countries clearly demonstrates the cost effectiveness and fundamental equity in providing the HPV vaccine to boys and young men,” says Brennan.

“The government is only saving money in the short-term and will pay down the road to treat cancers that can now be avoided.”

Brennan explained the HPV campaign to U of T News.

What prompted your campaign calling on the province to extend HPV coverage to men and boys?

As an Ontario HIV Treatment Network Applied HIV Research Chair, I am part of a coalition of people committed to addressing the health disparities facing gay and bisexual men. HPV is one of the most urgent preventable health disparities. Importantly, it is one disparity that we have within our reach to address immediately!

The current policy to vaccinate only girls is based on out-dated science. HPV is now known to be associated with cancers other than cervical cancer, including oral, penile and anal cancers. The current policy is actually discriminatory to gay and bisexual men because it does not protect men who have sex with other men.

There are already high rates of HPV-related cancers among gay men. We cannot assume that 8th grade boys will know if they are to be at risk for HPV later in life. So it makes sense to vaccinate all boys.

It is also important to note that there are just as many HPV related cancers among men as women. Men are four times more like to have oral cancers that are HPV related than women.

Why would we not vaccinate boys? If it were the other way around, we would be very concerned about leaving girls vulnerable.

Why is the need for vaccinating boys against HPV such an important issue?

The HPV vaccine is not just about cervical cancer anymore. We now know that HPV causes specific cancers in men. Half the population at risk for HPV related cancers are not getting a proven, safe, and effective vaccine to prevent those cancers. We can save lives and promote health, as well as save money in the future, if we act now.

What led you to focus your research on social work and sexual health in the LGBT community?

I came out as a gay man in the early 80s as HIV was gripping the gay community. I was terrified. I dealt with that by getting involved in HIV work. As a social worker, I am very proud of my profession’s commitment to addressing issues such as social justice, diversity and health disparities. Because most of our sexual health education and information is focused on heterosexual sex, non-heterosexual people have limited ways to understand sexual health.

It is hard enough for young people to learn good information about sexual health, but for non-heterosexual young people there are even less resources and it is even more complicated.

Does a young man ask his mom, dad, minister, priest, teacher or older sibling about how to have healthy sex with other guys? Where should he go to get good information to protect himself and his partners? Social work must be at the forefront of ensuring equitable sexual health education for all.

Research shows significant health disparities affect the LGBT community when compared to the wider population. What can we do to address this?

Urgently, we need to support better more comprehensive sexual health information for our young people. If you had a teenage child who you did not know was gay, how would you want them to learn about having healthy sex? From an online website? From you? From a friend? From school?

We must support comprehensive sexual health education so that we are protecting Ontarians from long-term effects of sexual risk. Making useful, accurate and relevant resources accessible so that young people have a variety of ways to get good information is a great starting point. But it is only a starting point.

Secondly, we need to address how we deliver health care to LGBT people. Many LGBT people are not ‘out’ to the primary providers because of homophobia and so may not be getting culturally competent care. Or they may be ‘out’ to providers who may not know the best information about how to address the specific health care needs of LGBT people. Better training on these issues for health care providers is critical.

Along with publically funded HPV vaccinations for boys, what do you hope will happen as a result of your campaign?

I sincerely hope that we can continue to build coalitions that work to develop a stronger, smarter and more effective health care system for all Ontarians. I am working with partners to consider ways in which we can integrate health care systems for LGBT people so that LGBT people in the province have access to relevant, culturally competent and adequate health services.

We often think that equity is about treating everyone the same. This is not true. Equity is about providing an opportunity for everyone to have the same health outcome.

This means sometimes we have to treat some people differently in order to ensure they get quality care. In this case, young gay men who have not had the benefit of having their sexual partners vaccinated over the last six years should still get access to the HPV vaccine.

While we may give the vaccine to all girls and boys in eighth grade, we should still provide it to gay men of any age until gay men can get caught up with the elimination of this virus. That is equity.

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How U of T researchers helped shape HIGHRISE, the NFB's interactive documentary

sgupta — Fri, 05 Jun 2015 15:46:30 +0000

How U of T researchers helped shape HIGHRISE, the NFB's interactive documentary sgupta Fri, 06/05/2015 - 11:46

Cutline

A Toronto boy prays to images of deities around the world (courtesy HIGHRISE)

Noreen Ahmed-Ullah

Author legacy

Noreen Ahmed-Ullah

Topic

Faculty of Arts & Science

Cities

Research

Global

Subheadline

New research from Deb Cowen, Emily Paradis developed in parallel with NFB doc

In Toronto’s Rexdale neighbourhood, an Iraqi refugee spends her day online, talking to her fiancé in a Syrian refugee camp and displaced family members scattered around the world.

In Seoul, South Korea, a team of teenaged professional video gamers live, work and train together in a highrise compound.

In Mumbai, activists use Facebook and Twitter to build a social movement, protesting the government’s demolition of suburban apartment buildings.

These are just a few of the stories featured in the final instalment of the National Film Board’s award-winning HIGHRISE series, in which two ��Ƶ urban experts played key roles as research collaborators for the online documentary. (Read more about HIGHRISE)

Deborah Cowen (pictured left), an associate professor of geography, and Emily Paradis (pictured below, right), a senior research associate at the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, worked with filmmaker Katerina Cizek to research, collect and analyze data that informs the documentary. The last chapter in the series, “Universe Within: Digital Lives in the Global Highrise,” explores the mobile and Internet habits of highrise residents across the globe.

In it, online stories take viewers into the hearts, minds and computers of apartment dwellers in 18 cities including Guangzhou, China; the suburbs of Mumbai; New York’s public housing projects and Toronto’s low-income Rexdale community.

HIGHRISE has already won awards for its innovative use of technology, which allows users to engage in “documentary conversations” with pixellated host avatars.

But “Universe Within” is also breaking ground as a unique collaboration between documentary makers and academics.

Cowen has been exploring the changes in Toronto’s inner suburbs through her work. Paradis conducts research on issues of housing and homelessness, and is manager of Professor David Hulchanski's Neighbourhood Change Research Partnership.

Cizek first approached them to to advise on the development of HIGHRISE and help identify stories from around the world. The U of T researchers pursued field work for the project in Toronto and Mumbai, and Cowen further researched in Singapore with help from her graduate students – all taking part in a new kind of relationship between academic research and documentary-making.

“Most documentarians tend to ‘buy the rights to the book’ so they’ll do the film about a book or research that’s been written already,” Cizek said. “Our case is unique, as we’ve been doing parallel research and documentary-making, informing, inspiring and influencing each other’s work all along the way.”

For Cowen and Paradis, the research results – some funded by a partnership development grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada – opened their eyes to how important digital technology has become in some of Toronto’s most impoverished communities.

“One of the things that really surprised us at the inception was this door-to-door survey we did to find out what was going on behind closed doors,” Paradis said. “It challenged a lot of the preconceptions we had about people’s access and use of digital technology.”

The researchers found that 80 per cent of households surveyed in the Toronto highrise complex – even though it was located in one of the city's most precarious and low-income communities – had Internet access either at home or through their mobile phones. In fact, for the largely immigrant residents, Internet access was one of the first things they acquired in Toronto.

“When you’re working in primarily diasporic communities where most people are tied to people, places around the world, the digital has assumed an importance that was quite stunning to us,” Cowen said. “We learned people were sacrificing food so they could pay for their online time.”

She recalled how the Iraqi refugee communicating with her fiancé and family had no furniture except a small desk for her computer.

“She spent all of her time in Toronto online in relationships with people in other places,” Cowen said.

An Indian family in the Rexdale apartment complex used the Internet on their laptop during the day and on their cell phones at night to pray with other Hindu communities across North America and India.

Cowen says interviewing people who spend so much of their lives online connecting to those who live nowhere near them raises questions about the physical space in which these relationships are occurring. For example, in another apartment, a Jamaican immigrant chatted on Skype all day with her mother back home:

“They’re spending the entire day together just hanging out, cooking their meals, watching television, being together, there’s a shared space even though one is in Toronto and the other is in Jamaica,” Cowen said.

“The digital world has opened up a vastly different geography of social relations, the geography of who we talk to, who we’re in a relationship with. What do we call that space that is not entirely separate from the physical spaces that they’re both in?”

U of T researchers also helped connect activists fighting demolition in different parts of Mumbai, like those in the elite neighbourhood of Worli and middle-class area of Mira Road, as part of their work connected to HIGHRISE.

“We arranged some meetings so activists who were doing effective work using social media to draw sympathy for their cause in Worli were meeting resident activists in Mira Road and sharing strategies on how to build a campaign to save their buildings,” Paradis said.

Next up for the researchers: developing a book that dives deeper into their research from Toronto, Mumbai and Singapore.

For viewers who watch "Universe Within," it is an interactive exercise, as it mimics personal and intimate “documentary conversations” between the viewer and host avatars filmed in 3D (screen capture pictured above). Host avatars ask viewers provocative questions, which then lead each viewer to a specific story from around the globe.

The complete experience consists of 70 minutes of stories, broken into 15 minute segments. At the end of each segment, viewers can start over, continuing the conversation with the existing host or beginning a new conversation altogether.

Produced by Gerry Flahive and David Oppenheim, the documentary was shot on location in Accra, Ghana; Athens, Greece; Baku, Azerbaijan, Guangzhou, China; Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; Kampala, Uganda; Mexico City, Mexico; Mumbai, India; Nairobi, Kenya; New York City, USA; Ottawa; Rome, Italy; San Cristobal, Venezuela; Seoul, South Korea; Singapore; Tokyo, Japan; Toronto; and Ramallah, West Bank.

Universe Within and all of the HIGRISE projects are accessible via the NFB’s website at nfb.ca/highrise.

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Gap between rich and poor widening, says U of T’s David Hulchanski

sgupta — Mon, 30 Mar 2015 10:55:53 +0000

Gap between rich and poor widening, says U of T’s David Hulchanski sgupta Mon, 03/30/2015 - 06:55

Cutline

Professor David Hulchanski of the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work

Terry Lavender

Author legacy

Terry Lavender

Topic

The headline in The Independent read: “Toronto is the best city in the world” – based on a report from the Economist Intelligence Unit, which rated 36 cities on safety, cost of living and liveability.

But the same week that saw Toronto ranked ahead of London, Hong Kong and New York, the Toronto Star reported more sobering news: ��Ƶ Social Work Professor David Hulchanski had found that Toronto was becoming increasingly polarized. Pockets of wealthy residents were surrounded by increasingly lower income neighbourhoods. Meanwhile, predominantly middle class neighbourhoods were rapidly disappearing.

Hulchanski’s research also showed average incomes rising dramatically in the city core and north up the centre on either side of the Yonge subway line. The average incomes plunged in the inner suburbs, particularly in northwest Etobicoke and northeast Scarborough.

His current work updates a previous study he published in 2007, The Three Cities Within Toronto. According to that study, the city actually consists of three separate groups – a low-income group, a middle-income group and a high-income group. The low and high groups are both growing at the expense of the middle-income group, Hulchanski and his colleagues warned at the time. The latest research not only shows the trend is continuing but that, ominously, the three groups are increasingly isolated from each other.

U of T News writer Terry Lavender talked to Hulchanski about his findings and their implications.

What sparked your interest in cities and inequality?
I’m originally from Albany, New York. In American cities in the late '60s, early '70s you had neglected neighbourhoods and a huge gap between the quality of housing for different people. So I was involved with some organizations – university students and professors – back then, and then continued with my activism when I came to Toronto to do my master's.

That year saw the municipal election when David Crombie was elected mayor along with a reform council that was doing interesting things – such as the St. Lawrence neighbourhood. Now it’s surrounded by condos but there’s a very nice mixed-income neighbourhood there that was planned and designed properly with medium to high density, maximizing the number of units for families. So we had those exciting things going on in the '70s in Toronto as I was studying urban planning.

Why is inequality increasing in Toronto?
It took us 25 years to get to today’s situation of income inequality and income polarization with a smaller middle and the two larger poles– a low-income group and a high-income group. There are four reasons for the current situation. One is the labour market: there's the replacement of so-called good jobs by jobs without benefits, jobs that are part-time, and especially minimum wage and very low-wage jobs. Second is the cost of housing. It’s the most expensive budget item for the average family. Housing costs have outpaced inflation and certainly have outpaced average wages for average people so that’s a really big hit on the household budget. The third is the cutbacks in social programs. The final one is discrimination – workplace discrimination, job discrimination, housing discrimination and educational discrimination. Those four things, year by year, have helped produce the various trends that my research team and I have been documenting for about 10 years.

How did your study come about?
We got this first big Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council grant to study Toronto in 2005 which led to the Three Cities in Toronto report in 2007. In 2010 we updated that report because the 2006 census was available. With the help of the Toronto Star, we were recently able to update the trends to 2012 using tax filer data.

What has been the reaction to the updated figures?
It’s been positive. It’s better to know than not to know what the trends are. We’ve had very good partners in the media. The Toronto Star has recently made our main map interactive so you can click on your census tract and it shows you the 40-year change in income in your area. Because our findings have been disseminated more widely, there’s now more of a focus on the seriousness of income equality – in the entire city, the entire country and globally.

Your report relies on census data. Have your results been affected by the elimination of the long form census?
The ending of the long form census will seriously affect future research. But the main theme of the Three Cities – the growing income polarization analysis that we do – uses income data, which the Canada Revenue Agency releases annually through Statistics Canada. There is, however, a big loss in that the census provided us with cross-tabulations of everything, not only what the income is, but the income by diversity, by age, by type of job, by renting or owning – allowing all kinds of analysis. That’s what we lose. We can’t do that with the voluntary National Household Survey – it undercounts so many groups that it’s just flat-out inaccurate. We cannot use it. Hopefully the 2016 census will be a good one, the regular mandatory long form 20 per cent sample.

Is this a Toronto-only problem?
The income and polarization trends are the same everywhere in Canada, but they are more pronounced in the faster-growing metropolitan areas. So that would be Toronto first, followed by Calgary and then Vancouver. The trends there are starker, more dramatic. But, they are the same in Halifax, Winnipeg and Montreal – a growing inequality and polarization, just to a slightly different extent.

What can be done to mitigate or reverse the trend towards income polarization?
We need to act through our governments – in the four areas I mentioned earlier – the labour market, housing costs and social supports for those who are disadvantaged, and deal more explicitly and effectively with discrimination.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

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Social Work

Over her long career, U of T alumna Ellen Sue Mesbur has seen and led change in social work education

Backlash to magazine story exposes ugly side of Toronto's housing obsession: U of T experts

Meet U of T’s newest Canada Research Chairs

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Read more about Taipale

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Close to 40 per cent of formerly suicidal Canadians reach complete mental health

Canada Next: researchers explain what the return of the long-form census means for Canada

Read more about Chan's research and defibrillators

Read more about Hulchanski's research

Cyberbullying pervasive among public school students

Research shows dramatic link between inflammatory bowel diseases and anxiety disorder

Province should fund HPV immunizations for boys in Grade 8: U of T researcher

How U of T researchers helped shape HIGHRISE, the NFB's interactive documentary

Gap between rich and poor widening, says U of T’s David Hulchanski