Toronto has once again been named Canada’s rattiest city
Rats like us, they really like us!
As Torontonians, we have a lot to be proud of. As the year’s accolades and best-of lists continue to roll in, there’s one particular accomplishment we want to highlight. For the fourth year in a row, Toronto has earned the crown when it comes to rats—no, we don’t mean allegedly corrupt politicians, we mean actual rats! Rodents! We did it, everyone.
Pest-control company Orkin has once again named Toronto the rattiest city in the country, attributing this honour to the city’s high population density, which results in an overabundant food supply for rodents.
Related: The city may spend $350,000 a year on rat czars
Mississauga, Brampton, North York, Oakville and Etobicoke made the top 25 within Ontario, so congratulations to those cities as well.
Dale Kurt, a regional manager with Orkin, told the CBC that to avoid rats, people should close off access points to buildings, such as vents and small gaps underneath doors. If we follow these instructions, we’ll be less likely to win next year. But, with city council voting to approve a rat management plan last summer, this could be our last year as rat champions anyway.
We’ll enjoy it while we can. And so should the rats!
Related: Rat apocalypse—an investigation into how Toronto became a vermin breeding ground
Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
