NewsTracker Answers for week of Apr 30, 2018

Q: A driver deliberately plowed his white Ryder rental van into a lunch-hour crowd in Toronto, Ontario, last week, killing 10 people and injuring 15 along a roughly mile-long stretch of sidewalk, police said. Where is Ontario?

Circle the area on this map

Q: The attack occurred in the North York section of Toronto, which once was a separate city. Six cities were combined into the City of Toronto in 1998 to create . . .

A. Canada’s largest city

B. North America’s largest city

C. Canada’s national capital

D. All of the above

A. Toronto is Canada’s largest city and the fourth-largest city in North America by population. Ottawa is the capital of Canada. Toronto is a top destination for immigrants to Canada with more than half its population belonging to a visible minority group. Many victims in the van attack were members of minority groups.

Q: The rented van in the Toronto attack appeared to target women – eight of those killed were women. Which of these nations has experienced the deadliest vehicle attack on pedestrians?

A. Britain

B. Canada

C. France

D. United States

C. In 2016, a 19-ton cargo truck was intentionally driven through crowds celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, France, resulting in the deaths of 86 people and the injury of 458 others. The driver of the truck in Nice was linked to jihadist radicalism. The suspect in Toronto has been linked to women-hating online groups.

Q: Last week’s attack was the worst mass killing in Canada since 1989, when Marc Lepine killed 14 women in Canada’s second most populous city . . .

A. Calgary

B. Montreal

C. Ottawa

D. Vancouver

B. In addition to being Canada’s second largest city Montreal, Quebec, is the second-largest primarily French-speaking city in the world, after Paris. Lepine specifically targeted women students in his shooting attack at the engineering school he attended. He claimed he was “fighting feminism” in what was called a frightening example of a hate crime.

Q: The attack has shaken Toronto. Its low crime rate has made Toronto the fourth safest major city in the world and safest major city in North America, according to The Economist magazine. Which of these large U.S. cities has the highest homicide rate?

A. New York

B. Chicago

C. Detroit

D. Baltimore

D. In 2017, Baltimore had 55.8 homicides for every 100,000 residents compared with the largest U.S. city, New York which had 3.4 homicides per 100,000 people. The city of Toronto had 61 murders and a population of about 2.81 million in 2017 – a rate of 1.6 homicides per 100,000 residents.