PARKDALE— HIGH PARK

Arif Virani has won the riding of Parkdale-High Park for the Liberals. Virani has held the riding since 2015, when he won the seat from the NDP in a close vote. The riding has swung back and forth between the Liberals and New Democrats since the late 1980s.

Virani came to Canada as a refugee from Uganda, and practised as a human rights and constitutional lawyer for 15 years before entering politics and serving the last two terms. His campaign thwarted challenges from the NDP’s Paul Taylor, a teacher and anti-poverty advocate, the Conservatives’ Nestor Sanajko, who works in urban mining, the Greens’ Diem Marchand-Lafortune, an artist and advocate, and the People’s Party’s Wilfried Danzinger, a computer engineer.

Virani speaks English, French and “some” Hindi, is the father of two boys, and, before entering politics, served as an assistant trial attorney prosecuting genocide at the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.