toronto wood sign

The Toronto stick sign just got an unfortunate edit

Welcome to Toron!

One of our city's most-photographed new attractions is hurting today after losing its heart and, ironically, the letters "T" and "O."

The culprit? A short but stunningly fierce rainstorm that rocked Toronto on Sunday afternoon, leaving a mess of downed hydro lines, toppled trees, shattered glass, and very wet people in its wake.

Tens of thousands in the GTA were left without power following the roughly 10-minute-long flash storm, which peaked around 3:30 p.m.

🎶oh it’s suuuuch a perfect daaaay 🎶 #parkdalelife shot by @runningdive

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Most of that power has now been restored, but the widespread damage from just minutes of up to 90 km/h winds has not been undone – especially in neighbourhoods bordering Lake Ontario, where storms are known to be particularly intense.

One suspected lakeside casualty of Sunday's "microburst" was the popular driftwood Toronto sign near Humber Bay Park.

A post shared by Miriam Wong (@mimimiriam_w) on

The sign, installed this past July by two local artists, is thought to have lost its heart to yesterday's high winds. Also missing is the final "TO" in Toronto.

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There have been reports that the sign was not damaged by the storm, but possibly by vandals. A local reader tells us that when he walked by the sign on Saturday, the letters had already been removed.

We've seen a few photos of well-intentioned citizens trying to "fix" the sign with their own bodies in recent days. While cute, this is not a permanent solution.

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Hopefully this oft-photographed attraction will be repaired soon.

In the meantime, Humber Bay's driftwood sunbather (made by the same artists behind the broken Toronto sign) appears to have weathered the storm just fine.

Lead photo by

Enrico Sposato


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