High-profile cases of people being attacked at public transport or subway stations in Toronto have been rampant. However, the mayoral candidates for the upcoming municipal election remain silent.
There are no public police reports or TTC statistics on the number of safety incidents that happened in 2022.
Yet, I’ve heard many anecdotal stories from attacks on riders and while some of them were reported to the police or TTC workers, other cases remain unreported.
My case is one of them.
I was attacked on the platform at York Mills station. It was a Sunday morning last January and I was going downtown with my roommate. We went down to the subway talking about something when I noticed something strange and turned around.
I saw a man who was staring at me. When he realized we were looking his way, he started to scream, “You’ll die.”
My roommate and I tried to get away from him. The faster we walked, the faster he followed us and screamed, “You’ll die.” I remember how I tried to catch someone’s eyes on the platform to help us.
Nobody interfered.
In a second, the man was between me and my roommate, touching my shoulder. I decided to play dumb and was going to say, “Sorry, we don’t understand you.” But he aggressively pushed me when I started to talk.
I didn’t fall onto the rails but I was close enough. He pushed me hard enough that I nearly fell to the ground. I’ve never been afraid for my life like that before.
Then, I heard two women standing by and started to scream at the man.
He fled.
I felt embarrassed about my cries, that I couldn’t protect myself –– the helplessness I felt.
The women told us that they saw that man before at the same station and using the emergency button in such cases so support staff could arrive at the platform would be a good solution.
“Having more support (from) staff around could really prevent situations like this from happening,” said Shelagh Pizey-Allen, the executive director of TTC Riders, an advocacy group for Toronto Transit Commission users.
I was afraid to use the subway for two months after that incident, when I finally needed to commute by subway, I made sure to avoid York Mills station.
“Multiple hundreds of people responded to our online survey about their safety concerns and many people said they would like to see more support staff,” Pizey-Allen said.
“If there are not many people around the platform, you feel more isolated and there is no one around to ask for help,” she said.
After the attack, I always stand by the emergency button. Just in case.