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'Love' is painted on the sidewalk on Yonge St. where victims of last year's van attack were killed. Tuesday marks the one year anniversary of the attack in 2018 that left ten people dead and many more injured.Fred Lum

Despite the spring rain that drove the main event inside, the ceremony marking the first anniversary of the Yonge Street van attack came off beautifully. A bell rang for each of the 10 dead as mourners came one by one to place flowers in a vase in their memory. The city’s poet laureate told a hushed auditorium: “They are with us here, still making the choice they always made – to rejoice.” A man with a baby in one arm reached down to clasp his wife’s hand as a choir sang a hymn.

Outside in Mel Lastman Square, the broad civic space in the heart of booming North York, volunteers under one tent handed out paint supplies so visitors could say in pictures what they felt about what had happened on that terrible April afternoon. At another tent, they offered trauma counselling. At yet another spot, more volunteers gave smiling people a chance to pet a therapy dog. Passersby wrote messages in coloured chalk on the wet pavement. “This is my home.” “We will never forget you.” “Heal together.” “Reclaim Yonge.”

It was touching, fitting and altogether appropriate – and yet, in some sense, unnecessary. Toronto has rebounded brilliantly from this evil event. So have the people of North York.

We still don’t really know what was behind the attack, except for dark suggestions of misogyny, so far unproven in court. The man accused of murder in the crime won’t go on trial until next year. But if the intention was to frighten the people of the city off their own streets, it failed utterly. They reclaimed Yonge as soon as police cleared the crime scene, streaming back onto its busy sidewalks and plazas, pouring into its restaurants and shops.

If the intent of the attack was to drive women into a terrified shell, it failed, too.

And if anyone thought the attack would drive a wedge between people, they were plainly wrong. North York’s stunning diversity is intact. Those pavement messages were written in several languages along with English, from Filipino to Korean. Three well-dressed young people strolling by spoke Mandarin. A group of dudes joking around in the square spoke Spanish; two mothers pushing strollers, Italian.

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A message written in Korean by a collection of flowers, says that the victims of last year's van attack will not be forgotten.Fred Lum

You would not know now, from the look of things on Tuesday, that anything at all happened to this teeming city within a city. Even in the rain of this anniversary day, life was going on at full tilt. Office workers in heels lingered in the square at lunch hour. A teenager in bleached jeans and headphones walked by, complaining about her mother to a pal on the other end of the line. The big central library was full of people learning through both screens and paper. The arts centre advertised an upcoming concert of Haydn and Mozart.

Cities, we have learned through the terror attacks that have afflicted so many, are almost supernaturally resilient. There is no need to urge a place such as Toronto to heal together. The healing comes naturally. Cities don’t wait around. Their instinct always is to keep moving, growing, evolving, no matter what they have endured.

Toronto’s initial response to the van attack was magnificent. Good Samaritans rushed to help the fallen. First responders arrived in minutes to do their professional best. The steady cop who caught the alleged attacker refused to be provoked into firing his weapon.

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Flowers in memory of victims cover a plaque on April 23, 2019.CHRIS HELGREN/Reuters

The city’s response over the longer term has been just as impressive – despite suffering two attacks in the space of one year: this, and then the mass shooting on the Danforth in the city’s east end; despite a troubling surge in gun violence; despite a year when the front pages overflowed with trouble, Toronto has not retreated into a defensive crouch, putting metal detectors at every door. It still feels and acts like the generally safe, secure and open place that it is.

Pausing to remember the tragedy on Yonge was important. It is was a time to pay tribute to the dead and injured, to show sympathy for their friends and family, to demonstrate the city’s unity and to reaffirm our belief in the values – tolerance, fairness, decency – that make it such a great place to live.

But the most important thing that city dwellers can do after a thing like this is simply to get on with life. In North York, that is just what they are doing.

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