TORONTO – When Kevin Drew was invited to guest star in “Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent,” his initial response was a hard pass.
“I didn’t want to do it because I find acting very painful,” says the Broken Social Scene frontman, recalling how his late mother, Maggie, used to drive him to acting classes at Toronto’s Young People’s Theatre when he was a kid.
But when he learned his character shared his mom’s maiden name and that the episode centred on Toronto’s homelessness crisis, a cause she had championed through the charity Habitat for Humanity, he reconsidered.
“Our city is suffering from miscommunication and mismanagement,” says Drew, adding he hopes the episode spurs conversations about affordability in Toronto.
“It’s just expensive to live. And until that gets dealt with, we’re just going to keep losing public spaces and we’re going to keep having nowhere to go for everyone, not just the unhoused.”
Drew plays Mick McCarthy, an unhoused encampment activist, in the Season 2 premiere of the Canadian “Law & Order” spinoff, which airs Thursday on Citytv.
A publicist for the show says the episode is loosely based on the 2022 stabbing death of homeless Toronto man Kenneth Lee, who was allegedly swarmed by a group of teenage girls.
Drew says he donated his pay to a local charity, which he preferred not to name, and it was matched by the show’s producers.
Rogers renewed the Canadian instalment of the “Law and Order” franchise for two more seasons last year.
Each episode draws inspiration from real Toronto crime headlines, reimagining them as fictional investigations led by detectives Henry Graff and Frankie Bateman, played by Aden Young and Kathleen Munroe.
Actors were tight-lipped about Season 2’s cases, but in an interview Munroe teased episodes about international students, CSIS and the Rogers Centre.
A Hamilton native who lives in Toronto, Munroe says the show’s team aims to represent the city “in a way that feels like we’re doing it from the inside and that we’re part of the community.”
She says they were careful to approach Toronto’s homelessness crisis in the premiere from a “really humane perspective.”
“We really wanted to get into the complexity of housing in this city and to not in any way demonize or vilify people who are struggling, who don’t have housing, because that is such an issue in this city,” Munroe says.
More than 80,000 people in Ontario were homeless last year, according to a recent report from the Association of Municipalities of Ontario — a 25 per cent increase from 2022.
Drew’s episode, dubbed “White Squirrel City,” captures the lives of those in a Toronto homeless encampment, alongside the frustrations of nearby residents who push for its removal.
Young recalls that during filming, several passersby mistook the set for a real encampment: “There were a lot of people who would be going by saying, ‘Don’t exploit them.’ And there were others saying, ‘Get them out of here.’”
He says it showed how divided some in the city are over homelessness.
“It’s devastating to think I’m going home to a remote control, and the (unhoused) are looking for dry timber to cook dinner with tonight,” says Young, who was born in Toronto but moved to Australia with his family at age nine.
“As a community we have to look at the issue with compassion and understanding. And hopefully that will stop some of the more radical opinions on it.”
Drew says he appreciates that the episode also highlights some residents advocating for the homeless.
“That’s what I saw over COVID: a lot of neighbourhoods coming together to keep those encampments in their parks when so many were saying they’ve got to get out,” he says.
Drew has an idea for a future “Law & Order Toronto” episode. He’d make one about “real estate, veterinarians, all the things pushing people out of their wallets.”
“Toronto’s a shareholder’s town, so my episode would deal with how we live for the shareholders and everyone’s angry about it,” the musician says.
“We’re getting pushed around by people that don’t even live here.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 18, 2025.
