What has changed in Toronto since the Yonge Street Uprising?

On May 4, 1992, what began as a peaceful protest after multiple instances of police-involved deaths of Black men in the Toronto area, turned into chaos later into the night.

The images of peaceful sit-ins and marches from early on that day bear a striking resemblance to and echoed the same message of the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020.

Prompted by the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota and the deaths of Toronto women Regis Korchinski-Paquet and Jamal Francique in the GTA, hundreds of Torontonians took to the streets in a series of protests against anti-Black racism within the police service. Signs and chants from protestors bore some of the same phrases, including “No justice, no peace.”

So how much or how little has changed in the 30 years since the Yonge Street Uprising?

Even prior to 2020, demonstrations were continually held protesting police brutality.

In 2015, protestors stopped traffic on major roadways following the deaths of Jermaine Carby and Andrew Loku, two men killed by police in the Toronto area.

Carby was shot and killed after the vehicle he was a passenger in was pulled over. A Special Investigations Unit (SIU) investigation ruled the officer had acted in self-defence after Carby began threatening the officer with a knife. An inquest into the fatal shooting was later held and found an incident of carding had started the chain of events.

Loku, 45, was shot in his apartment building by a Toronto police. His death was later ruled a homicide by an inquest jury, despite the SIU not laying charges.

Sandy Hudson, the co-founder of Black Lives Matter Canada, said the work they have done has been helped by some of the same activists who organized the protest on Yonge Street, 30 years ago.

[They] sat us down over the years, over many meals, to tell us this is what you need to watch out for, this is what they’re going to tell you, this is what they’re going to try to do to distract you,” Hudson told CityNews.

The Black Action Defence Committee, who organized the protests in the early 90s, was created after the fatal shooting of Lester Donaldson in 1988.

The murder of George Floyd by police officers, similar to the beating of Black motorist Rodney King in 1991, was a catalyst of mass protests, but it also began a conversation about how to eliminate systemic racism in the justice system.

Toronto police told CityNews they plan to release details from the service’s race-based data collection strategy in June.

The data collection began in January of 2020 and should paint a clear picture of which segments of the population are the subject of use of force and strip searches by police.

An upcoming Citytv documentary, Veracity: The Yonge Street Uprising, explores how the protest outside City Hall in 1992 led to a confrontation between those involved and the Toronto Police Service. You can watch the full documentary on Sunday, May 1, at 10 p.m. EST/9 p.m. MT only on Citytv.