It’s a myth that only the Conservatives can be trusted with managing the economy.

Under their “stewardship” we are the only G7 country in a recession, and while Mr. Harper argues how “risky” it is to trust either opposition party with managing the balance sheet, his government has run successive deficit budgets and our economic outlook is far from glowing. The relatively weak Canadian dollar has yet to spur a silver lining moment for the manufacturing sector. While the Conservatives pretend to want to focus the debate on the welfare of the economy, it’s really the last thing they want. There is more political ground to be gained on the low road: practising the politics of division and fear while sabre-rattling abroad and highlighting their management of the terror file.

In the first French-language debate of the federal campaign, Harper steered a familiar “us versus others” tack when discussing his government’s move to strip health care away from refugee applicants.

“We have not taken away health care from immigrants and refugees,” he said. The only place we have refused it is for bogus refugee claimants who have been refused and turned down; we do not offer them a better health care plan than the ordinary Canadian can receive. I think that’s something that both new and existing and old-stock Canadians can agree with.”

There is an inherent dishonesty and underlying racism in Harper’s comments.

Refugee claimants are applicants pure and simple, so his use of the word “bogus” is wilfully inaccurate and unnecessarily disparaging.

The Annex is full of “old stock” in the sense that Mr. Harper intends, but it’s also in the middle of a richly diverse city, and a university town in itself. We wonder what indigenous peoples think of the “old stock” reference; surely after over 10,000 years, their length of tenure in this country should trump the constituency to which Harper refers.

The federal government cast a wide net here when they withdrew basic medical coverage from all applicants, whether or not they are accepted as a result of their hearing. Under the limited policy, refugees claimants are eligible for care only when they pose a threat to public health. That means no coverage, for example, for heart problems, pregnancy, infant vaccinations, diabetes, or any other ailments that threaten the health of the refugee but aren’t a demonstrable risk to public health.

The meanness of the 2012 modifications to the Interim Federal Health Program is underscored by a 2014 decision that found the cuts unconstitutional after they were challenged in federal court.

“The 2012 modifications to the Interim Federal Health Program potentially jeopardize the health, the safety and indeed the very lives of these innocent and vulnerable children in a manner that shocks the conscience and outrages our standards of decency. They violate section 12 of the Charter,” wrote Federal Court Justice Anne Mctavish in her decision.

It’s the only time Section 12 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms — which protects against cruel and unusual punishment — has ever been used successfully outside of a criminal proceeding.

The federal government, which was denied a stay pending an appeal, has subsequently revoked the modifications to the program, but only under protest. Having spent $1.4 million in legal fees on the matter thus far, the Harper government intends to continue its appeal of the ruling should it be elected.

It’s time to stop falling for the “old stock” references — really a dog whistle call designed to be heard by only the voters Mr. Harper figures he needs to keep and those he can sway — and call his bluff.

Let’s talk about the economy: successive Liberal governments before Mr. Harper ran budget surpluses while managing to reduce the overall debt. Perhaps the Harper Conservatives are neither true conservatives nor the appropriate spokespeople for Canadian values.

I read the September Gleaner article “A haven for children’s literature”, on the 20^th anniversary of the Lillian H. Smith library, and I was instantly brought home to my old neighbourhood in Toronto. I remember fondly afternoons spent reading a book in the garden behind the library. Or wintry afternoons spent roaming through the stacks, looking for something of interest. Of particular interest to me was the mention that this library was a descendant of the first free-standing library in the Commonwealth. Living as I do in the UK right now, where we have seen swaths of libraries closed and boarded up due to cutbacks, it was especially delightful to note that Lillian H. Smith is doing so well. Congratulations to the dedicated staff who have created such a welcoming, warm space in Toronto.

Dr. Gillian Best

Former Gleaner contributor

Thank you for your article in the August 2015 edition “Breaking bread with friends, Harbord Bakery marks 70 years”. It was a joy to be reminded of the rich history of the Harbord Bakery and how intertwined
it is with the neighbourhood.

Raffi Kosower, Roslyn Katz, Susan Wisnewski, their families, and the incredibly friendly bakery staff are the leading lights of Harbord Street. Without this family and the dynasty of the Harbord Bakery we would not have the vibrant Harbord Street we have today.

Best regards,

Neil Wright
Chair, Harbord Street BIA

I lived above the Harbord Bakery (“Breaking bread with friends”, August 2015) in the early ‘60s. A newcomer to Toronto, I initially saw only space (furnished one-bedroom) and location (close to the U of T) that were right for me; however, I was soon to learn what a legendary roof I had found.

The Kosowers were ideal landlords – there when you needed them – who surprised me shortly after my arrival with a wonderfully decorated and personally inscribed birthday cake! The children were very much on the scene, mirroring the many family friends among the regular customers.

I cooked my first Thanksgiving turkey there (mixed reviews), soothed weekend guests startled by early-morning church bells, and – TV sets then still a rare bonus in such rentals – shared my screen with friends for the Kennedy/Nixon debates and Sunday night’s “Bonanza”. In time I acquired roommates and a bigger apartment, but never again an address that was so widely recognized with so much warmth.

The Gleaner article caught the place I remember. Thank you for the trip back!

Lois Reimer, Toronto

The problem is that the function of arterials is still seen only as moving cars and trucks

By Joe Cressy and Albert Koehl

Residents of downtown Toronto will soon start to notice an important change on their streets — a change that is going to make life safer for all our neighbourhoods. In the coming months, the speed limit on every single residential street in downtown Toronto will be lowered to 30 km/h.

The road towards this change hasn’t been quick or easy, but it is long overdue.

In 2012, when Dr. David Mc-Keown, Toronto’s Medical Officer of Health, recommended lower speed limits on Toronto roads it quickly became clear that the well-researched position, focused on health and safety, only increased support for lower speed limits.

Rob Ford, Toronto’s mayor at the time, infamously responded “nuts, nuts, nuts”, while the chair of the Public Works Committee suggested Dr. McKeown “should stick to his knitting”. It was not a proud moment for public debate in our city.

That same year, Ontario’s Chief Coroner, after studying dozens of pedestrian and cycling deaths, recommended a similar speed reduction. Health and safety recommendations for lower limits continued to grow, aimed at making our roads safer (and therefore more attractive) for pedestrians and cyclists.

Both the Coroner and the Medical Officer of Health noted that a pedestrian’s odds of surviving a collision at just over 50 km/h were slim, while the odds at 30 km/h were overwhelmingly on the side of the pedestrian.

In other words, by lowering the speed limit, we reduce the likelihood of a fatal collision.

In June of this year, the Toronto and East York Community Council voted unanimously to implement lower speed limits on all residential roads in its area, which encompasses much of the pre-amalgamation city.

Last month the city began posting some of the new 30 km/h signs, with complete roll-out scheduled to take place over the next year or so.

Lower speed limits on residential streets is an important action, but it is only a first step.

Toronto’s most dangerous roads are actually arterial streets where speed limits are 50 km/h and 60 km/h. Not surprisingly, it is on these streets where the majority of road deaths occur. The problem is that the function of arterials is still seen only as moving cars and trucks, while the residential feature of such streets, including the housing of significant populations (particularly in apartment towers), is often overlooked.

The momentum for lower speed limits is continuing to grow; most people when faced with the choice for their own neighbourhood will want a speed that focuses on protecting the health of safety of their friends, family, and neighbours. It’s a simple issue: lower speeds save lives.

For this reason, it’s realistic to believe that lower speed limits will eventually become the norm across the city, including on many arterials where 40 km/h speed limits were recommended by the Coroner and Chief Medical Officer.

Unfortunately, the delay in implementing lower speed limits will be measured not only in days…but also in lives. In the years 2013 and 2014, a total of 78 pedestrians and cyclists were killed on Toronto roads. This year, the death toll is again high. Lower speeds would have prevented many of these deaths..

Our city is growing. Over the next 25 years our city’s population will increase by one million people and the Golden Horseshoe region by six million. We don’t have room to accommodate this growth if we try to move everyone by car so we must make options like walking and cycling (along with public transit) more attractive by making our roads safer.

Simply put, the faster the city implements lower speed limits, the more lives will be saved.

Joe Cressy is the councillor for Ward 20. Albert Koehl served as an expert on the Coroner’s 2012 road safety reviews.

Greenspace, heritage, and integration at top of list as Westbank opens Markham House

Westbank opened its Markham House Citybuilding Lab (610 Markham St.) on Sept. 19. Not only a space for providing information on and answering questions about its proposed Mirvish Village redevelopment, Markham House is envisioned as a community hub that will feature rotating exhibits and art installations. Summer Reid, Gleaner News

Westbank opened its Markham House Citybuilding Lab to great fanfare during the Mirvish Village Sidewalk Sale on Sept. 19. Featuring a model of its proposed redevelopment for the site including Honest Ed’s and Mirvish Village, Markham House (610 Markham St.) will be open Tuesdays to Saturdays from noon to 7 p.m., and be staffed with representatives who will provide information and answer questions about the future of Mirvish Village.

Envisioned as a community hub, Markham House will also feature rotating installations and local exhibits. It’s currently home to a Spacing magazine kiosk, a Curbside Cycle installation, and Mirvish Village People, a photo series by Gerald Pisarzowski, shown previously at the Charlotte Hale & Associates gallery during the Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival in June.

With Westbank’s application under review at City Planning and another round of community consultations underway, we thought it time to canvass the residents’ associations that abut the four corners at Bloor and Bathurst streets for their thoughts on the plans for Mirvish Village. Three of them, the Harbord Village Residents’ Association, the Palmerston Area Residents Association, and the Seaton Village Residents’ Association, provided op-eds, all of which are printed below.

Compiled by Annemarie Brissenden

HVRA: Protect and restore the urban forest

“The proposed construction at the subject site will require applications to remove 25 city owned trees and 6 privately owned trees,” states an arborist report to Westbank development’s Mirvish Village project dated June 26, 2015.

In clinical language, an arborist outlines the front-end impact of a huge property development. That describes the start. What will be the finish?

We would like to imagine the creation of a thriving element in our urban forest between Bathurst, Bloor, Markham, and Lennox streets, in concert with the massive Westbank property development.

You think it is impossible?

We don’t.

The Westbank Mirvish Village project is easily the most complex property development proposal our part of the city has ever seen.

It has been the most promoted project in our history.

It has 2,000- to 2,500-plus new residents, with businesses and startups and a market — and no green space. Indeed, the community will lose the trees that it presently has, including two large silver maples that have been studied for their contribution to migratory bird biodiversity.

Without a completed application, residents, City of Toronto officials, and councillors cannot be sure of the details of the proposal. However, the broad outlines have remained consistent and raise general concerns and challenges for us all.

Already City Planning and the City’s Design Review Panel have stated major concerns about the complete lack of greenspace on the development plans.

• In all meetings, Markham Street has been a hard-surfaced landscape for social events, movies, pub seating, and the like.
• A Westbank arborist report precisely identifies 31 trees on the property that will have to be cut down.

With a site so large, so dense, and requiring massive excavation and protective hoarding onsite for lengthy periods of time, the future of any green on the development is in question unless its restoration and enhancement become part of the plans. It is especially critical because the neighbourhoods immediately around the project are already short of parks and open spaces.

We know from the experience of the south end of Ward 20 that, if left to site by site planning rules, an entire new neighbourhood can spring up with no green infrastructure, no place for kids to toss a ball. We hope it is time for Westbank not only to sit down with its neighbouring communities to actually plan the site to meet some of our needs, as well as its own, but also to build on work we are already doing.

With Joe Cressy (Trinity-Spadina, Ward 20), Harbord Village is working on a Green Master Plan for our neighbourhood, including possible parkspace, and street and lane plantings. Of all the adjacent neighbourhood associations, we are the most deficient in greenspace, particularly with the loss of community access to the grassy field at Central Technical School (our erstwhile informal “park”). We are looking at a nooks and crannies opportunity for planting, to facilitate biodiversity, to reduce the heat island, and to improve the downtown record on climate change. We are hoping to reclaim the urban forest, one little site at a time. We are also looking for a park.

So imagine the possibilities of the Mirvish Village development.

What can we save? What trees might be moved?

What can we lose?

What can we regenerate?

What plants and trees do we need for species diversity?

What wood could be salvaged for craftsmen?

Where do we want our kids to play?

Where is the park to support the population?

Harbord Village would like to change the channel and to begin talking not about Westbank’s ideas, but about the community’s opportunities the proposal, or one based on it, would provide to future renters, visitors to its businesses, and its neighbours.

Is it not possible to design a site that both responds to housing, entertainment, and business needs and also to the identified needs of people for open space, trees, plants, and a healthy ecosystem?

Let’s plan things differently in the city. We need to replace a mentality of either/or with both/and.

We need to change a potential loss to the community to a win for our neighbourhoods and for biodiversity.

We are ready to talk. Is Westbank ready to enter into this conversation?

Sue Dexter on behalf of the board of the Harbord Village Residents’ Association. Harbord Village is the area bordered by Bloor and College streets on the north and south, with Spadina Avenue on the east, and Bathurst Street on the west.

PARA: Integration challenge not yet met

Jane Jacobs, possibly the most influential urban thinker of this century, lived in our area. She championed community-based approaches to planning. What would she have thought of the Westbank proposal?

Here she writes in The Death and Life of American Cities (1961):

“Cities need old buildings so badly it is impossible for vigorous streets and districts to grow without them. By old buildings I mean…a good lot of plain, ordinary, low-value old buildings…. Hundreds of ordinary enterprises, necessary to the safety and public life of streets and neighbourhoods, and appreciated for their convenience and personal quality, can make out successfully in old buildings, but are inexorably slain by the high overhead of new construction.”

This quote is now 54 years old but a study conducted last year in San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington D.C. for the National Trust for Historic Preservation confirms it is still valid.

The Westbank development is well funded, massive, and complex. While residents welcome a number of their initiatives — bicycle parking and storage, a small daycare, apartment units large enough to accommodate families, independent retail, and a market — we are unsettled about other aspects.

Westbank was proposing to “save” 16 houses on Markham Street; however on Oct. 6 of this year, the Community Council passed a motion to list 35 properties in Mirvish Village and along Bathurst Street as heritage buildings. The Toronto Preservation Board also recommends positioning Westbank’s towers further away from the street to preserve the authentic and meaningful context that creates the “village feel” of the street. Whether it’s the warmth of material, the human scale, or the craftsmanship of bygone eras, old buildings attract people and are good for small business. Preserving more of the heritage architecture of Mirvish Village is crucial to any possible integration of Westbank’s new buildings into our century-old neighbourhood.

In August of 2014 the four residents’ associations that abut the intersection of Bloor and Bathurst streets conducted a survey of residents’ “wish lists” for the site. Publicly accessible green space scored highest on the list, yet Westbank is providing scant park space, far below what city policy demands.

Markham Street, Westbank seems to suggest, will be their contribution to the public realm, a place where they might program vibrant street festivals, live music, and outdoor movies. Let’s not forget that the street already belongs to us as do the two alleyways Westbank intends to reconfigure.

In the past, the Honest Ed’s parking lot hosted the highly successful Toronto Fringe Festival and the Stop’s Night Market. The Palmerston Area Residents Association worked with these festivals to mitigate noise and disruption to the nearby residents in win-win partnerships. Will such partnerships with residents continue? Westbank’s streetscape design is all cold, hard surfaces without noise-muffling elements.

On the aforementioned survey residents overwhelmingly stated that the new development should not exceed 30 metres, or nine storeys. The site is currently zoned for a maximum of six storeys. At its highest point, Westbank has proposed 29 storeys. A shadow study by City Planning reveals that long swaths of Bloor and Bathurst streets will have insufficient sunlight from September to March.

Not surprisingly, residents have questions about the increase in traffic the Westbank development will cause. With residential streets at capacity with permit parking and highly congested with drop-offs for Randolph’s classes, where will all the people attracted to the market park? (They won’t all come by bike and subway.) Where will the market and retail service trucks queue up? Will trucks be rumbling down our streets at dawn? Will there be more CO2 in the air? How will the reconfiguration of the alleyways affect residents’ access to their own property? No answers yet.

The density envisaged by this proposal of 1,017 units, half of which are larger than two bedrooms, is reminiscent of St. James Town — easily 2,500 people in a single city block. The development will set the standard for the other three corners and for our area in general. How much increase in population can our infrastructure support?

The challenge in creating a future healthy urban environment in this neighbourhood is to integrate new, innovative development into our existing and historic urban fabric. Westbank’s proposal does not yet meet this challenge.

Donna McFarlane, Paul MacLean, and Leo Panitch on behalf of the Palmerston Area Residents Association. The Palmerston area is bounded by Bloor, College, Clinton, and Bathurst streets.

SVRA: Preserve heritage in all its forms

The entire site of Honest Ed’s and Mirvish Village is being redeveloped as a mixture of extensive retail on the ground floor with approximately six residential towers, one of which is proposed to be 29 storeys tall.

The proposal is presently being reviewed by City Planning, which along with city councillors have asked the four residents’ associations that represent the four corners of Bathurst and Bloor streets to comment on the development proposal.

This article deals with the architectural heritage of the site.

Architectural heritage can be looked at in many ways. The first is that new buildings can respond to the surrounding context with a similar scale and similar materials. With the Westbank proposal, the first four floors could be masonry that would follow the street line and the upper towers could step back.

A second way of carrying out heritage preservation is to retain portions of existing buildings as artifacts. A common way is to retain just the facade of a building. This would be most appropriate for some of the buildings along Bathurst Street.

A third way is to consider an entire group of buildings that are supporting a functional community heritage that requires all of those buildings to remain so that those cultural activities can continue.

For the residents living in our neighbourhood, we experience this every day in how much the pattern of our houses and streets influences our lives and our connections with our community. If we lived in another setting, such as the towers on the railway lands, the residential districts of Mississauga, or the farmland around Barrie, how we live our lives would be substantially different. Being conservation-minded includes more than preserving the buildings on the development site — it includes the public environment in and around the site, the way people are accommodated on streets and sidewalks for blocks around, and the way transportation linkages work and don’t work around these intersections, now and afterwards.

Of special interest with the redevelopment of the site is Mirvish Village, the houses on both sides of Markham Street, on the southern half of the block between Bloor and Lennox streets. This was a street that the Mirvish family took special pride in preserving and where they fostered an arts community that continues today. It not only gives our district an identity for the local neighbours, but it is also a unique street that is known throughout Toronto. People come from other parts of the city specifically to visit Mirvish Village. Here, one can still afford to make and buy something handcrafted.

The Westbank proposal plans to preserve the west side of the street. But, on the east side, they intend to drastically alter the existing buildings by incorporating (only) the facades into the base of a 16-storey tower and dropping the entrances of the old houses to be level with the street. There is no change of use being proposed — it will remain commercial. The existing culture and community “benefit,” they say, can be replicated with events and festivals parachuted into the neighbourhood.

The working committee made up of residents’ associations believes that to preserve Mirvish Village, the existing houses on both sides of Markham Street need to be preserved and the large residential towers (height to be determined) should be pushed to the perimeter of Bloor and Bathurst streets.

All of the residents of these surrounding neighbourhoods understand how the scale of older buildings, the diversity of their forms, and their relationship to the street are vital to continuing the rich urban life that we enjoy. It supports both the cultural and economic diversity in our community.

Mirvish Village is an early example of the adaptive reuse of buildings that was done by the Mirvish family, who helped the architectural heritage movement in Toronto with the preservation of the Royal Alexandra Theatre and adjacent warehouses.

The proposed heritage designations stand in the face of developer proposals and even of some reasonably tolerant attitudes among all of us about how much building the site can take without causing harm. The residents’ associations would like to hear from people in the neighbourhood about their concerns in relation to the heritage aspects of the Honest Ed’s and Mirvish Village site.

Written by the Seaton Village Residents’ Association executive in collaboration with Jennifer Hunter. Seaton Village is bounded by Bloor, Dupont, Christie, and Bathurst streets.

Let’s lead so they will follow

By Terri Chu,

The federal election has been lack lustre on the environmental front to put it mildly. In fact, finding an environmental platform from the three major parties to write about for this final piece before election day is akin to searching through Kim Kardashian’s twitter feed for words of wisdom. I decided a more enjoyable pastime would be sticking my head into the tailpipe of a “clean diesel” Volkswagen.

My bones will have long turned to unrefined crude oil before we see any real environmental leadership from the three major parties. It’s hard to blame them too when the reality of sustainability means that the old (unsustainable) way of life will have to cost more by necessity. That is never a popular political plank to run on. No matter how we slice and dice it, filling an SUV full of gas would (and should) cost more if we want to do more than simply pay lip service to the environment. This is something that I find even my most left-leaning friends have a hard time wrapping their heads around. On one hand there’s a lot of bandwagon partying come Earth Hour; on the other hand, when electricity rate hikes get announced, it’s the only time I see any political activism in the form of “get rid of the inept government that makes electricity so expensive”.

Without higher resource prices, it is nearly impossible to make clean technologies pay off. I’ve done work for companies looking to sink millions into being more energy efficient, but because of our low rates, economic payback simply isn’t there. Unless we accept that being green necessitates the old way of life costing more, we don’t have any chance of moving forward. This isn’t to say our standards of living will drop, but the capital investments to be less polluting must also pay off economically.

A friend once gave me policy papers from the Liberal party to read on the environment. I nodded my head as I went through them, thinking that most of the policies made good environmental (and economic) sense. Something about the print quality and font prompted me to search for a publication date. These policies that made such great sense were from the early eighties! For thirty years, we have been saying “we must do” while taking action on slightly above zero of them.

Politicians are slaves to our whims. As the French politician Ledru-Rollin said, “There go my people, I must find out where they are going so I can lead them.” Short of wagging the dog, I’ve lost faith that real action will be taken. As citizens and consumers, there is only so much we can do. Power has been concentrated in those with the monetary means, and the rest of us are left signing online petitions and clicking “like”. Even when we try to do the right things we find out the companies we trusted passed EPA testing by fraudulent means. The situation is disheartening.

If we want the dog to wag the tail, enough of us have to make purchasing decisions that hurt high polluting industries, even if it costs us a bit more. Rather than complaining about rate hikes, we need to demand that electricity and gas prices go higher if we truly want to see a change to traditional industries. Certainly there will be short-term pain, but there will also be long-term gains on the whole.

We can no longer expect political leadership on the environmental front, so let’s lead so they will follow.

Frankenstein Live emphasizes language over spectacle

By Annemarie Brissenden

How does one reckon with the horror of one’s own creation?

It’s a question posed by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, and one asked of the audience in Frankenstein Live premiering this month at the Walmer Centre Theatre.

“[Frankenstein] was so obsessed with creating life. He achieved it, but abandoned it out of fear. That’s at the core of a lot of the troubles we create in society,” explains Dora-nominated Tom Carson, who has previously directed 2000 Candles, The Ghosts of Mariposa, and a touring production of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.

It’s one of the themes the director hopes to explore through the performance, which he characterizes as an immersive reading that emphasizes the richness of Shelley’s language over the lurid spectacle found in other adaptations of the nineteenth-century gothic novel.

“Other versions really abandon the language and go for the sensational aspects of the story,” says Carson. “We’re more interested in embracing the language of…and getting at the core ideas of the novel.”

So they’ve not only stayed faithful to the novel, but truthful to the way Shelley laid out the plot. Yet condensing such a big novel with a lot of ideas was a daunting task for playwright Warren MacDonald.

“There’s little to no dialogue in the book,” relates MacDonald. “The challenge was imagining the dialogue, how the characters would speak to each other.”

The production centres on the three main characters of the novel: Robert Walton, an Arctic explorer pursuing scientific discovery in the North Pole; Victor Frankenstein, a Prometheus-like figure pursuing the being he created; and Elizabeth, the woman he fell in love with.

(“I’m not saying whether there’s a monster,” says Carson.)

Set amidst the creaking ice and blustery gales of the north, Frankenstein finds Walton about to sacrifice his entire crew in pursuit of discovery, and says, notes Carson, “I have a warning for you”.

It’s a warning that the audience is also urged to heed.

“We ask people to listen to what’s going on in the story,” says Carson. With the action stripped away, the audience has to use their imagination to get into the tale, and that’s where the horror lies.

MacDonald describes it as a “psychological horror: it’s the terror in [Frankenstein’s] mind of what he’s done”.

The intimate space of Walmer Centre Theatre is an ideal setting for creating that horror, say both MacDonald and Carson, with the latter adding that the theatre’s architecture is pretty close to a neo-gothic style, which “adds an interesting aspect”.

They are also relying on an original score composed by Douglas Romanow to amplify the creepy atmosphere.

Romanow, who jumped at the opportunity to create the soundscapes and music for the show, says Shelley was “one of the first writers who exposed me to the tension between humanity and technology”.

He’s fascinated by how “to juxtapose human elements in music against technological elements”, and in the play uses that juxtaposition to create tension. He also uses the sounds of the far north — sounds of frost and cold and the rigid creaking of the boat — to add to what Carson describes as “the kind of scary that creeps up on you and gets into your mind”.

“The music is nice and eerie and creaky and atmospheric,” adds MacDonald.

While the “horrific story” is about what happens when you pursue an obsession without a moral framework, says Carson, the production is also about “trying to get into language concepts that are fundamentally very frightening”.

For MacDonald, “it’s a very human story…. The main emphasis is on the personal relationship between the monster and Victor. The monster wants his creator to…fulfill his responsibility to him and provide him with a suitable mate. All of us share that longing, like the monster.”

He thinks “it’s a relevant story that people need to hear and think about in a very different context”, but if the play “drives people to read the book and think about a great piece of literature”, that’s good too.

Frankenstein Live runs from Oct. 22 to Nov. 8 at the Walmer Centre Theatre (188 Lowther Ave.). Tickets are $25. For further information or to buy tickets, please visit www.frankensteinlive.ca.

College and Russell streets facilities at risk

Brookfield, which is developing condominiums at the southeast corner of Spadina Avenue and College Street, says its property across the street, leased to CAMH, should be valued on highest and best use. Doing so would increase the hospital’s rent by as much as 333 per cent.
Brian Burchell, Gleaner News

By Brian Burchell

The College Street branch of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) is facing a whopping 333 per cent rent increase when its lease is renewed for another 20-year term in 2018.

The landlord, a numbered company owned by Brookfield Asset Management, says raising the rent from $1.2 to $4 million a year is justified given the underlying value of the land.

Under the terms of the hospital’s lease, which was signed in 1998 and includes an adjacent state-of-the-art research facility at 33 Russell St., CAMH has the option to renew for two additional 20-year terms, subject to negotiation. At this point, the parties are so far apart that a negotiated settlement seems unlikely.

The crux of the dispute appears to be what yardstick to use when determining the underlying value of the land. Brookfield, which is formerly known as Brascan and has $27.9 billion in assets in Canada (including First Canadian Place), is using the real estate principle of highest and best use to determine value. The appraiser for CAMH pegs the present value of the lands at $24 million, while the appraiser for Brookfield says they are worth $103 million.

“My hope was that Brookfield would negotiate in good faith, instead of what is now an expensive, formal legal process,” said Joe Cressy (Ward 20, Trinity-Spadina). “When the lease was established in 1998, it stipulated that there would be three 20-year terms and that throughout the only use of the space allowed would be a hospital. For Brookfield to take the position that it could be anything else for the purposes of determining valuation is not acting in good faith.”

Not only does the original lease prevent Brookfield from using the site for anything other than a hospital until 2058, any attempt to replace the hospital with a mixed-use condominium development would not be supported by the City of Toronto, argued Cressy, who views the move as “an attempt to strong-arm a mental health hospital to make room for condos”.

Brookfield’s ownership of the land dates to 2004, when the provincial government, sold the property to the company for $16 million.

“This was a foolish decision by the former Harris and then Eves governments which shows you that what happens when you sell off public assets to make a quick buck is you risk future generations,” said Cressy. “Our downtown neighbourhoods are growing in leaps and bounds and the reality is we need more health services to support a growing population.”

CAMH’s College Street location not only serves the area’s growing population, but also treats patients from across Ontario in the province’s only 24-hour mental health emergency station. Approximately 9,000 people were treated in the site’s emergency department alone last year, up from 3,500 just five years ago. And according to Dev Chopra, CAMH’s executive vice president of clinical programs, this number is increasing by 7 to 10 per cent a year.

“The prevalence of mental illness in society is wide, and as celebrities and athletes start to acknowledge their own illnesses, this has an impact on the population,” said Chopra, who attributed the growth in patients in part to “an awareness within society about mental illness, the reduction of stigma related to mental health issues, and the increasing accessibility of CAMH services”.

There’s also an increasing intersection between the Toronto Police Service and the mental health care system in Ontario. As former Supreme Court Justice Frank Iacobucci wrote in a report in the wake of the shooting and killing of Sammy Yatim by a Toronto Police officer, “the system must recognize that the Toronto Police Service is dispatched to approximately 20,000 calls for service annually to persons-in-crisis, and about 8,000 of these events involve apprehensions under the Mental Health Act”.

Most recently, CAMH and Brookfield appeared before superior court in July to settle a dispute over the process for determining a compromise between the parties.

“The lease stipulates that a third party appraiser will appraise the value of the lands in 20 days, should the parties not agree,” explained Chopra. “The court decided in 2006 that the appraisal process should be akin to an arbitration [where the parties can make submissions and cross-examine each other’s submissions]. It was necessary to go back to court recently, because Brookfield felt that the appraiser should decide what the prevailing rent should be within 20 days, notwithstanding the 2006 decision.”

In a judgment released Aug. 11, Justice G. Dow ruled that the lease stipulated that an appraiser would determine the site’s value (and therefore the rent), but with the caveat that the appraiser must conduct the process as an arbitration. The court has also appointed Ken Stroud, who previously appraised the site in 2006 and is taking submissions until Sept. 15. He will then announce a binding decision within 30 days.

Andrew Willis, Brookfield’s senior vice president for communications and media, who was reached just before press time, declined to comment except to say “we are still working things through with CAMH, and we value our relationship with all of our tenants and we are working hard to resolve the issue”.

Lillian H. Smith library branch celebrates 20 years

By Annemarie Brissenden

Can you remember the first book you ever read?

Picture cracking open its spine and tracing the letters with your finger, as you try to make sense of the words. Remember your delight at the illustrations, giggling as the brilliant colours leapt off the page. If you discovered that book in your library, at your school, or even in the children’s section of your local bookstore, it was likely thanks to Lillian H. Smith.

A champion of children’s literacy, Smith (1887-1983) was a library science pioneer whose profound influence on generations of librarians had a global reach. She was the first trained children’s librarian in the British Empire, taught children’s literature courses at the University of Toronto’s library school, created a classification system for children’s literature that was used well into the 1970s, and established library branches in public schools. In 1922, Smith founded Toronto’s first free-standing children’s library, the Boys and Girls House, which was located on St. George Street and would become a flagship for children’s library services available in 16 branches, 30 schools, and two settlement houses across the city.

And this October, the Toronto Public Library branch at College Street and Spadina Avenue that bears her name, and – thanks to Smith’s legacy – is home to one of the foremost collections of children’s literature in the world, is celebrating its 20th anniversary. There will be Alice in Wonderland themed events (in honour of the book’s 150th anniversary), the launch of a digital stories project, and a special birthday celebration.

“On Oct. 17, Saturday, there will be a giant book sale from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. The funds raised will support Toronto Public Library’s literacy programs,” says branch head Sarah Bradley. “We also will have a puppet show, followed by a scavenger hunt, craft making, and refreshments.”

The focus on children’s activities is a fitting tribute to the branch’s heritage and the woman for whom it’s named.

“This is a descendant of the Boys and Girls House, the first freestanding children’s library in the Commonwealth,” explains Leslie McGrath, a senior department head, who has been working at the branch since it opened in 1995. “When [the Boys and Girls House] opened in the 1920s, it was so well loved. The children literally wore the building out…that heritage of being a children’s library, belonging to the children, is quite wonderful.”

Bradley, who has been at the branch since 2009, also highlights the branch’s history: the building “holds a lot of history. [It] is beautiful. Architecturally, it looks like a castle and we have the griffins out front.”

For today’s readers, those griffins may have an added significance. The branch’s unique collections, which include the Osborne Collection of rare, early children’s books and the Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy, not only attract students of all ages but also special guests.

“Aside from our regular visitors, we have authors come in as well. You’d be surprised,” says McGrath, opening a guest book at a page signed by J. K. Rowling, who left a message alongside a drawing of the Hogwarts sorting hat. Leafing through to another page, she points to Empress Michiko of Japan’s signature, a memento of an imperial visit to the Osborne Collection.

The library is a full service branch and its uniqueness extends from its collections to its programming.

“Recently we started our literary speed dating event, [which] went really well,” relates Bradley. “People brought­ one of their favourite books as something to talk about if they needed to and spent five minutes with each person. They had literary pseudo names like Harry Potter or Jane Eyre.”

As the branch head notes, “It’s a lively space.” Her favourite yearly event is the big lion dance on the ground floor for Chinese New Year. It’s a marked difference from when she first started working there, when “the library was about the physical collections, like the books, that took precedence. But now people [use] this library to gather, study, use the free wi-fi, borrow e-books, and use apps…a lot of our collection development is around the e-services.”

One special on-line initiative launching in conjunction with the branch’s anniversary is the Digital Stories Project, the brainchild of page Christina Wong. She is collecting stories and memories of the library, the Boys and Girls House, and the neighbourhood, which will be collated into an on-line exhibition.

“I want to encourage regular citizens to be local historians,” says Wong, who hopes to develop a toolkit that can be used to create the same exhibition at other branches.

Although she grew up mostly going to the Palmerston branch, she does have vague memories – “mostly I remember the smell of it” – of visiting the Boys and Girls House as a child.

She’s still collecting stories, but her favourite so far is from a newcomer to Canada, who recorded how the branch helped her to adjust to life in Toronto.

“We take for granted what a library is,” reflects Wong. “[The story] affirmed the role that libraries can play in a community.”

The Lillian H. Smith branch (239 College St.) of the Toronto Public Library celebrates its 20th anniversary on Oct. 17 with a birthday party from 2 to 4 p.m. For further information, please visit www.torontopubliclibrary.ca. To share a story with the Digital Stories Project, please contact Christina Wong at cwong@torontopubliclibrary.ca or 416-393-7746.

—with files from Axile Gerona