Yonge-Dundas T-shirt sales lead to $20,000 food bank donation
· Toronto Sun
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The old Yonge-Dundas logo is making sure Torontonians get three square meals a day.
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A $20,000 donation will be made next week to Daily Bread Food Bank, paid out from the proceeds of sales of T-shirts bearing the old logo of Yonge-Dundas Square, now known as Sankofa Square.
Daniel Tate, who sells the shirts on the website for his political advocacy group IntegrityTO, said demand spiked after City Hall sent him a cease-and-desist letter, demanding he stop using the logo.
Tate specifically thanked the Toronto Sun for its coverage of that development, saying it led directly to a bigger donation.
The news coverage about the T-shirt “was really the catalyst … so, thank you. You get some good karma out of it also,” he told the Sun .
The City of Toronto has confirmed it sent letters to Tate about the shirts and previously said it reserves its right to use the logo “for historical context.” Representatives for the city did not respond to a request for comment about the donation.
The office of Councillor Chris Moise declined to comment on the donation. The Sun has reported that Moise’s office pushed for City Hall to crack down on Tate’s unsanctioned T-shirts.
Tate declined to specify how many shirts had been sold, only saying it was a “high volume.” He said City Hall hasn’t been in touch recently about the logo’s use, and he intends to keep selling the shirts and donating the profits.
Bring city ‘together’
While Daily Bread is Toronto’s largest food bank, it’s based in Etobicoke, far from Sankofa Square, which is in the heart of downtown Toronto. Tate said he was inspired by one of his favourite bands, Metallica, which has made large donations to Daily Bread .
“It just occurred to me like, hey, if they’re good enough for Metallica, they’re good enough for me,” he said.
Neil Hetherington, the CEO of the Daily Bread Food Bank, said the $20,000 cheque they’ll get at a ceremony Monday could buy 20,000 meals – enough to feed half of the Rogers Centre.
That’s important because while the number of people coming to the food bank has levelled off recently, Hetherington said, those who do use it are relying on it even more.
The Yonge-Dundas logo has taken on a second life as a political icon, a way to publicly reject the push to rename Toronto’s assets that bear the name of 18th-century politician Henry Dundas. Sankofa Square, which is in Moise’s ward, is perhaps the most notable renaming.
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The square at Yonge and Dundas Sts. officially took on the name Sankofa, a Ghanaian word that means “to go back and get it,” in 2025.
Hetherington said while some might see the logo as a divisive thing, he hopes the donation brings people together.
“The thing that Daily Bread looks at is, there are opportunities for us as a city to come together. People are going to disagree with either the city, or people might disagree with various political viewpoints,” he said.
“We can all agree that everybody ought to be able to thrive in a community. Everybody ought to be able to have the food that they need.”
‘We got hoodwinked’
For Tate, the logo is a reminder of what once was. He said while the Sankofa renaming – announced out of the blue at a City Council meeting – wasn’t “honest,” that’s just the start of the square’s problems.
Budget documents from early this year show the space is unprofitable , and projected to lose taxpayer money for years to come.
“The majority of Torontonians absolutely despise the name change … we basically got hoodwinked,” Tate said, “and then you combine a name that nobody supports with an actual built and physical form that people don’t like either, because that area has devolved into urban squalor, into decline, crime, rampant drug use, so it’s basically like a double whammy.”
The shirt is his site’s No. 1 seller and Tate said he has seen people around town wearing it. When he does, he said he’ll give them a high-five.
“At this point, it’s more than just a T-shirt,” he said. “It’s almost like if you wear this T-shirt, it tells the world you’re a freethinker and you’re not happy with the current leadership in your city. It’s certainly a symbol that is galvanizing a lot of people.
“Ultimately, I’m just really happy that I was able to turn a negative into a positive.”