TORONTO -- Mayor John Tory says that he is hopeful that people will exercise “a degree of personal responsibility” this weekend and avoid large crowd scenes like the one that unfolded at Cherry Beach last Saturday night.
Hundreds of young adults were seen drinking and dancing in close proximity to one another at the lakefront beach last weekend, prompting a rebuke from Premier Doug Ford who called it “shocking” and said that “it looked like South Beach.”
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In an interview with CP24 on Friday morning, Tory conceded that some of the parties that unfolded last weekend were concerning but he said that he is “optimistic” that residents will by and large continue to respect physical distancing guidelines on what will be the first full weekend of the summer.
“I hope people will use a degree of personal responsibility and not respond to the sort of social media siren call and say you have to get over to one place to have a big party,” he said. “Let’s just be people that are going to have a good time but do it moderation and that means don’t take big cases of booze to the beach and don’t everybody go to the same place. You don’t have to. We have all kinds of beaches and 1,500 parks.”
Tory said that bylaw officers will again be present at hot spots across the city this weekend as they have been since the early days of the pandemic.
He said that he is also hoping that with patios now open and regular ferry service resuming to the Toronto Islands “there will not be the same pressure to have everybody congregate in one place.”
“Let’s have a good time but let’s spread ourselves out and focus on the fact that we do not want this virus to take us over again just as we are getting out of it,” he said.
Environment Canada is forecasting a high of 28 C on Saturday and a high of 29 C on Sunday but the humidity will make the temperatures feel like they are in the 30s all weekend.
