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Toronto can no longer take itself for granted in the wake of Monday's van attack, says English professor and principal of University of St. Michael's College Randy Boyagoda. 

“This is not supposed to happen here. After all, this is Toronto,” writes Boyagoda in a New York Times op-ed.

The city has long accepted that tragedies on this scale occur in other parts of the world, but not here, he says.

“In a world brutalized and shredded by sectarian conflict, Toronto can feel at times like an urban amusement park: it's the most ethnically diverse and pluralist city on the planet, and also, as residents and visitors alike have long both assumed and experienced, the friendliest and safest.”

The many people who offered assistance after the attack show why Toronto is a desirable place to live, he says. 

After a period of public deliberations and investigations, the city will continue to live in relative harmony, “if now with a genuine and credible wariness that will be foreign to us, initially.”