A lone Toronto raccoon was able to cut power to nearly 7,000 people in the city’s downtown core on Thursday night, highlighting the fraught coexistence between residents of Canada’s largest urban centre and the divisive “trash pandas”.
Hydro One, Ontario’s power utility, said a raccoon “made contact with equipment” at a downtown station on Thursday night, plunging swaths of the city in darkness. The loss of power also temporarily disrupted service on a key subway line and shut off water. Toronto’s fire service said the power outage also left residents trapped inside elevators.
The outage started at about 7.40pm but was fully resolved three hours later, according to outage maps.
The culprit, whose fate remains unknown, will inevitably join the growing pantheon of famed Toronto raccoons: the doughnut thief, the freeloading subway rider, the baseball fan, the airport traveller and the financier.
In recent years, Toronto has declared war on the wily mammals, only to grudgingly accept defeat soon after.
And the seemingly indefatigable nature of raccoons, thriving amid the chaos of urban drudgery, has endeared them to half of the city’s residents, with calls to make the raccoon Toronto’s official mascot. The other half of residents, according to a poll, want them euthanized. “They’re the animal we love to hate,” said Suzanne MacDonald, a professor of animal behaviour.
Despite its skyscrapers and gridlocked streets, the city remains home to a startlingly large number of species – most of which go about their days with an impunity and obliviousness to the millions of humans in their midst. Coyotes stalk the city’s parks and ravines, deer traipse through neighbourhoods, and last week a beaver was spotted carrying a large branch downtown.
A day after it plunged the city into darkness, it is also unclear if the raccoon, whose death is still unconfirmed, will be granted a candle-lit sidewalk vigil, the city’s unsanctioned process of mourning deceased critters.
