Despite a shooting that left four people injured and massive delays that left thousands of commuters stranded in the downtown core, the City of Toronto is pleased with how operations at the Toronto Raptors victory parade and rally went on Monday.
“Given the time to pull this together, working with Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment and our partners and police and fire and paramedics and transit, you know it went extremely well – the shooting aside, I mean there’s no place for a shooting of course or guns in this city ever, but overall I think it went very, very well,” a spokesperson for the city, Brad Ross, said on Tuesday morning.
More than one million people flocked to the parade route and about 100,000 people crammed in to Nathan Phillips Square to catch a glimpse of the NBA championship team. While the procession began at 10 a.m. on the grounds of Exhibition Place, spectators began staking out their spot in the overnight hours.
The parade began on time, but the rally held at the square just outside of City Hall, began three hours after its scheduled start time of 12:30 p.m.
“The parade was slower than anticipated and that had to do with the crowd sort of just surging onto the streets,” Ross said. “Police were there to keep people safe – that was for a celebration versus a security-type of event.”
Ross said this event that “doesn’t happen very often unfortunately” is unlike any other parade that occurs in the city.
“It’s not a parade like you see at Santa Claus or Pride where people want to sit back and enjoy the floats and take in the artistry of those floats, this was different, this was the players that people had watched all season and had gone down to Jurassic Park every night for and loved and they wanted to get close to so the barricades that we did have were just simply hopped over and it became virtually impossible to keep the crowds back.”
As the parade route came to an end and Nathan Phillips Square hit capacity with about 100,000 people standing shoulder-to-shoulder, Raptors players and dignitaries took to the stage to address the record-breaking crowd.
While the ceremony on stage took place, gunshots rang out near Queen and Bay Streets. Fans located at the back of the crowd scrambled to safety, running from the scene and leaving several items, including strollers and shoes, behind them.
Toronto police said four people were left with various injuries after gunfire erupted and three people were taken into custody.
Following the sounds of gunshots, the crowd was encouraged to remain calm amidst an “emergency situation” before the celebration continued as planned.
Earlier in the day, four people were injured in two separate stabbings near the Eaton Centre. No connection between any of these incidents has been made by police.
As people began to leave the downtown core, the city’s transit systems became overcrowded.
TTC spokesperson Stuart Green said that the all-time record for number of trips taken was most likely broken, with about 2.7 million trips registered across its network on Monday.
Green said that the TTC will get more concrete ridership numbers in two or three days.
Osgoode, Dundas and Queen subway stations were all shut down for a lengthy period of time during the parade and after it, commuters experienced significant delays along Line 1 in the aftermath and GO Transit brought in extra trains to accommodate the rush at Union Station.
Phil Vester, CEO of Metrolinx, said ridership felt as though it doubled.
“A typical day we’ll have just over 200,000 people and yesterday, at times, it felt like we were moving double the people,” he said. “When we look at how many people were on our buses, our trains, our stations – we haven’t got the final numbers in yet but it was extremely busy and by all means it was a record day for us.”
“We planned for an extraordinary event and we got an extraordinary and fantastic event and all of our plans were delivered and we were so excited about yesterday.”
