Selected work:
Features and investigative reporting
Inside Toronto’s violent tow-truck wars: ‘A well-known secret’ (The Guardian)
Selling Seduction: The man known as Drunk Justin charged tens of thousands for invite-only bootcamps. He claimed his tactics worked miracles. Then he was arrested, and dark secrets came tumbling out. (Toronto Life)
She lost $8,000 to a fake rental listing. Toronto is on pace to lose $500 million to fraud this year with the burgeoning threat of AI-generated scams (Toronto Star)
“Rumbling” of flames, snow-like ash and a helicopter rescue: the wild escape of two Texan canoeists as Ontario’s wildfires bore down (Toronto Star)
Breaking news + crime
Who killed Patrick Santos? Investigators arrest man in decades-old cold case (Toronto Star)
How the 10-day search for a man accused of murdering his parents came to its end (Toronto Star)
Police identify victims of Salsa festival shooting that left 2 dead, multiple injured (Toronto Star)
Politics
Gen Z and growing right-wing populism in the UK (The Guardian)
How Canadian leaders are responding to Donald Trump’s tariffs: ‘We’ve had enough’ (Toronto Star)
Xavier Mesquita is a journalist and feature writer based in the UK and Canada. His reporting has been published in The Guardian, Toronto Life and the Toronto Star. He can be reached securely via Signal or ProtonMail.