Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow says she will be working closely with community organizers to better structure crowd management efforts after tens of thousands of people packed into Toronto`s Gay Village for the annual Halloween on Church event over the weekend, prompting some people to raise concerns about overcrowding. Videos circulating on social media show show thousands of people crowding into the area during the festivities Saturday night. At a press conference Monday, Toronto Mayor Olivia chow estimated that attendance reached upwards of 50,000 people. Chow said that “street festivals needs to be done in a way that is safe,” adding that she will be working closely with community members to organize the event better in future years. She said that work will focus on “how it can be structured better, how it could be organized better, so that everyone can continue to have fun (on) Halloween nights, but do it in a way that is more structured and possibly more controlled.” At the same news conference, Toronto police Chief Myron Demkiw said that there is ongoing work and conversations taking place between Toronto police and the city manager’s office. “We are a city that enjoys street festivals at large, and we’ve learned over the years that the the growth of them is something we need to consider and how we manage them going forward,” Demkiw said “There is a larger, broader bit of work that is unfolding to ensure that into our next street festival season next year, we are positioned in a way that learns from the years past to ensure they’re as safe as they can be.” Toronto police told CP24 that they attended that area on Oct. 31 for “concerns of overcrowding and overall crowd control.” No arrests have been reported. Safety concerns present at Festival In a interview with CP24 on Church Street Sunday morning, Travis Myers, co-founder of Friends of Hanlans, said that he has heard from numerous people who have expressed concerns about safety at the event. “We’re getting a lot of that detail and information from people about how they don’t feel safe anymore, and when I was here last night there was incredible amount of people in these crowds and very little room to move around,” he said, pointing to some people who shared online that they experienced panic attacks and fell victim to pickpocketing. “So it did make me worried as a resident for issues of crowd crush. And honestly, it’s not the type of place that I really like to spend time at on Halloween, just because it does seem like there’s a whole lot going on, and maybe there’s room for more preparation to make it better.” Myers went on to say that he’s attended Halloween on Church for years, describing it as one of the world’s oldest queer Halloween celebrations. According to Myers, in recent years the event has become less community oriented and has changed as a result. “In recent years, (Halloween on Church) has really felt like it hasn’t been as much for the community and has been more for people outside of the community,” he said. “We’ve seen that come through with folks showing up and saying homophobic and transphobic things. We’ve seen that with issues of sexual assaults, many gropings.” CP24 has reached out to Halloween on Church’s organizers, the Church Wellesley Village Business Improvement Area, for comment. With files from CP24’s Joanna Lavoie
