A 40-year-old archaeology professor at the University of Toronto has been awarded a MacArthur “genius grant”. Dimitri Nakassis, who studies Late Bronze Age (Mycenaean) Greek society, will receive $625,000 over five years to spend however he chooses, but is still not sure how he will use the grant.

“My interpretation of the award is that the foundation thinks that the work I’ve done so far is productive, interesting, and innovative, and the money gives me the opportunity to continue to do that kind of work,” said Nakassis in an email. “But I only have one shot at getting this right, so I need to proceed carefully and thoughtfully.”

Nakassis added that there is still so much to be found and studied in Greece.

“Greece is a country that’s been the focus of a lot of archaeological exploration, for sure, but amazing new discoveries are being made all the time — a new Mycenaean palace was recently found near Sparta, for instance — and scholars studying ancient Greece are increasing our understanding of it constantly,” he said. “It’s a really exciting field, and I hope that my award can bring some much-needed attention to it.”

Although the professor spent most of his childhood vacationing in Greece and was fascinated by it at a young age, it wasn’t until he got to university that he became convinced that he wanted to study Greek archaeology.

An initiative of the American independent John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the MacArthur Fellows Program awards no-strings-attached grants that “celebrate and empower the creative potential of individuals”. Grant winners, called “fellows”, come from a broad range of professions.

—Summer Reid/Gleaner News

The community had its first formal opportunity to review Westbank Corp.’s plans for Mirvish Village at a public consultation at the Bickford Centre Cafeteria hosted by the City of Toronto on Oct. 7. The area includes Markham Street, Honest Ed’s, and the adjacent properties on Bathurst Street. Many of those in attendance expressed concerns about adding density to the neighbourhood, and the project’s lack of green space.

“I don’t see any green space around and I see the entire site covered by buildings,” said a Euclid Street resident. “We’ve got a few things here: we’re talking transportation, we’re talking massive density, and we’re talking lack of green space.”

Paul Unterman, who has been on Markham Street for over 30 years, believes the project is “way, way too dense for the neighbourhood”.

“I hope that some of the heritage properties, if not all of them, are kept,” he added. “And I’m very concerned about the parkland. We have so little in our area as it is, and to add a thousand units with God knows how many people is concerning for us.”

“The issue is not the fact that they are modernizing,” agreed Brunswick Avenue’s Kevin Lim. “The issue is this: you’re bringing congestion into an area that’s already congested.”

Other residents are trying to remain open to the proposal, even as they express their reservations.

“I don’t like how big it is. The size seems kind of out of place,” said Toni Papa of Spadina Road. “But I like the concept, and I like how it looks in the renderings. But renderings is one thing, what it actually is in reality is another.”

City Planning received Westbank’s proposal on July 10, and presented its preliminary report on the application at the Oct. 6 meeting of the Toronto and East York community council. It has developed a detailed website that includes the application and its accompanying materials: www.toronto.ca/planning/mirvishvillage.

—Annemarie Brissenden with files from Summer Reid/Gleaner News

An argument between two men in the College Street and Spadina Avenue area escalated to a stabbing Oct. 27 at 12:16 pm. The men were seen arguing, with one attempting to walk into a store when the other stabbed him in the back and fled the scene. The suspect is described as white, approximately six feet, with a medium build and a black beard. He was wearing a dark toque and winter coat, as well as a grey hooded top.

In an unrelated incident on Sept. 18 at 12:45 am, two unknown men approached a victim and attempted to rip a gold chain off his neck in the Brunswick House bar on Bloor Street West. The 20-year-old victim was stabbed when he tried to retrieve the chain. The Toronto Police Service has released security footage of the suspects from outside the bar: one man is black, tall, and slim, and was wearing glasses, a grey zip-up sweater, and a plain white T-shirt. The second man is black, tall, and slim, has a goatee, and was wearing a grey and white baseball-style graphic T-shirt and cargo shorts.

Anyone with information about these or any other crimes is urged to contact the police at 416-808-1400, or anonymously via Crime Stoppers at 416-222-8477.

—Summer Reid/Gleaner News

Research measures economic impact of pilot bike lanes

Kelsey Carriere (right) interviews a legally-blind member of a tandem bicycling club that travels along Harbord Street. Carriere is part of the team studying the demographics of Bloor Street West between Shaw and St. George streets before and after the installation of a pilot bike lane in April 2016. Summer Reid, Gleaner News

By Summer Reid

A study investigating the demographics of Bloor Street began last month in the Annex. Aimed at understanding how people travel to and from the area, and what business they conduct along the street, it will also measure what impact, if any, the April 2016 installation of a pilot bike lane on Bloor Street West between Shaw and St. George streets will have on the area’s businesses.

The University of Toronto will conduct the study in partnership with the Toronto Centre for Active Transportation (TCAT). It will cost $22,500, and is being paid for by the Bloor-Annex and Korea Town business improvement areas (BIAs), which have committed $6,500 and $4,000 respectively, with the Metcalf Foundation, a local charitable organization, contributing the balance.

“The idea is to get an overall demographic of who uses Bloor Street and how they get there, by what modes of transportation, what degree of regular customers these people are, how far they come from,” related Kelsey Carriere, a member of the crew conducting the study from the University of Toronto. “Right now we’re doing customer surveys, merchant surveys, and cyclist counts. Then after the bike lane pilot project is installed by the City of Toronto next year, we’ll come back in a year’s time and we’ll do the same study.”

She said that six people are conducting the surveys, with three pairs each going to the Annex, Korea Town, and the Danforth.

“Since the City of Toronto is looking at putting in the pilot project on the stretch of Bloor Street including both the Annex and Korea Town BIAs, that’s our study group,” he explained. “And then the Danforth is our control group, so we can see if there are any overall changes in demographics in cycling, for example, throughout the city in general. And then we can pull out if there’s anything that we can specifically relate to the bike lane pilot project.”

The bike lane pilot project is part of a 10-year cycling plan that Toronto City Council approved on Sept. 30. The trial may necessitate a 50 per cent reduction in parking along Bloor Street, and the BIAs would like to measure the economic impact of the bike lanes on their members throughout the trial period.

“Research shows that over 70 per cent of Torontonians would cycle more often if infrastructure were improved,” said Andre Vallillee, the director of the Environment Program for the Metcalf Foundation. “We think [this is] a great opportunity for Metcalf to partner with two local BIAs to support timely research by a well-respected organization. As an Annex-based organization, we value the vibrancy of this neighbourhood, and are drawn to the fact that the study will explore the local economic impacts of bike lanes along a corridor we frequent often by bike and by foot.”

“The need for a study is clear in my mind,” said Bloor-Annex BIA board member Jonathan DaSilva of Hot Docs Cinema. “Getting answers as to what the impact would be directly on businesses is something that we need to know to move forward on the issue.”

Although the study is moving forward, not all of the members of the Bloor-Annex BIA board were in agreement. One objected to having the study conducted through U of T and TCAT, while another wondered if spending money on a study was actually necessary.

“Is it worth it to really study the obvious that we’re going to know anyway?” asked Sumit Kapur of Future Bakery. “I just can’t see the value in something like that, [because] if we’re going to have a pilot project, we’re going to know the impact through the merchants.”

“[We] need to know, locally, what the impact is,” said Joe Cressy (Ward 20, Trinity-Spadina). “We don’t normally do this as a city. Normally you have councillors who say ‘we support bike lanes, our residents want bike lanes so, we’re going to put in bike lanes’ and then we hear anecdotally whether it’s good or bad.”

Carriere said the study is also researching what people think about the idea of a bike lane pilot project, and is finding that “it’s actually incredibly inspiring how much people have thought about it”.

Brian Burchell, the publisher of this newspaper, is also the chair of the Bloor-Annex BIA

After the Federal Court ruled in February that Zunera Ishaq, the woman at the centre of a now pivotal controversy, could wear her niqab while taking her oath of Canadian citizenship, Steven Harper’s federal government sought a stay of the ruling pending an appeal. For many, it appeared like an attempt to keep discriminating against Ishaq until the government got its day in court. But during the federal election, the Federal Court of Appeal denied its application, and Ishaq swore her oath, so that only days later she was able to cast her vote, one that would hold greater weight than Mr. Harper could have imagined.

Ultimately, the Conservatives’ mid-campaign decision to keep this issue alive would prove to be their undoing.

Mr. Harper pressed the niqab issue because he believed most of the Quebec population, and his own base across the country, supported him. The niqab issue was a perfect example of how he unapologetically ignored court rulings asserting the government’s responsibility to protect the rights of its citizens under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and continued to propose legislation that the courts would never uphold.

Focusing on such divisive issues was part of an overall Conservative strategy that sought to elicit fear in the electorate, and suggest to voters that they could only trust Mr. Harper to helm the tiller. Indeed, the ad hominem attacks on Justin Trudeau spoke volumes about how worried Conservative strategists were that the Liberals, who began the election in third place, would displace them.

A solid 15 per cent of voters were not swayed by these tactics, and wanted to evict Mr. Harper from the prime minister’s office. How to achieve this end remained unclear until the end, and these Anybody But Harper (ABH) voters found themselves straddling the wedge in Liberal and NDP camps.

By keeping those ABH voters divided, Mr. Harper could hold onto power with a minority government. But the Conservatives needed to ensure that no issue would bridge the electorate.

It was a strategy that initially seemed to work until Mr. Harper himself gave ABH voters a signal. In order to score critical Quebec votes, he continued to press the niqab issue, and even proposed a Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act, the evil twin to his government’s assault on the niqab. Zero tolerance indeed.

Meanwhile, the NDP’s Tom Mulcair strongly defended the right of women to wear the veil. With a significant number of Quebec seats, his party had the most to lose, and it became clear after a late September French-language debate that support for the NDP had softened enough to make it unlikely that they would form a government.

“There’s a deep irony here,” wrote Thomas Homer-Dixon, the Centre for International Governance Innovation Chair of Global Systems at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, recently in The Globe and Mail. “It was the very receptivity of a portion of the population, in Quebec, to the Conservatives’ divisive strategy on the niqab that generated the signal that progressive ABH voters elsewhere in the country needed to coordinate their behaviour.”

ABH voters were no longer divided.

In just two weeks, in our own University-Rosedale riding, polls went from a neck and neck race between the Liberals and NDP to a two-to-one victory for the Liberals. This shift was not a result of anything that happened locally. Both Jennifer Hollett and Chrystia Freeland were smart capable candidates who ran good campaigns, and either one would have made an excellent MP. Many voters were torn over whom to choose, but the forces of the ABH movement hovered above them like a collective unconscious, and Mr. Harper pointed the way with his wedge.

It’s fitting really.

Opportunity for positive, visionary change

By Mike Layton

In the last term of City Council we were up against Rob Ford and Stephen Harper. We found ourselves saying “no” and simply fighting to hold on to our public services.

We lost some battles. We watched our waste collection get handed over to the lowest private bidder and witnessed the carving up of Transit City (the light rail expansion plan that reached into our most marginalized communities). The deep cuts to our social service budgets now mean our shelter systems are over capacity and our state of good repair backlog in Toronto Community Housing is so great that we have thousands of people living in unfair conditions.

We won some battles too. Tens of thousands came together across the city and stopped a downtown mega casino proposed for my ward. Just as many more came together to fight against cuts to our public library system — and won. We fought proposed budget cuts to city services — and won. Locally we fought back against a parasitic Walmart and big box next to Kensington Market —and won.

But each of these battles were fights to maintain a status quo and existing programs. That was the position we found ourselves in. We haven’t had an opportunity to fight for anything new and visionary.

Today we have an opportunity to fight for what we want for Toronto. Today the people in charge are very different. Gone are the days of Ford as mayor. We can finally put the days of Stephen Harper behind us. We have a new majority government federally and a majority government in Ontario. It will be a few years before our next election and with their majority, if the government is convinced they can get almost anything through, let’s make sure it’s what we want.

There are at least two ideas that depend on the federal and provincial governments that I’d like to see implemented.

First is a national childcare strategy that will bring us $15/day child care. This would significantly change the lives of many families in Toronto and improve the lives of tens of thousands of women. We have close to 20,000 children on a waiting list for a subsidized space in Toronto. When you don’t have a subsidized space, you pay $107 a day to have a 17-month-old in care in the city. That’s upwards of $24,000 a year. The Universal Child Care Benefit (cheques of just over $100 a month that the Harper government sent to families in place of providing child care) barely covers a single day of child care.

Second is a living wage for Toronto. It costs more to live in Toronto than many other cities. The cost of childcare, groceries, food, household expenses, and rent are simply higher in Toronto. The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives estimates that you need to earn $18.52 an hour in Toronto to make ends meet. If we really want to help move families out of poverty and make sure our kids aren’t going to school on empty stomachs then Toronto needs the ability to set its own minimum wage.

I have some more ideas for our city, but I’m curious what you’re thinking.

What is it that you want for Toronto?

We have a lot of work to do to reinvest in what we have lost, but what is it that we want to build? What is a bold idea for a better city that you’d love to advocate for? Let me know. Email me at councillor_layton@toronto.ca or send a note on Twitter @m_layton. It’s time we started talking again about the city we want to build.

Mike Layton is the city councillor for Ward 19, Trinity-Spadina.

Distracted drivers, riders, walkers most vulnerable at intersections

By Scotty Robinson

Speed is not behind the numerous car accidents, injuries, or pedestrian and cyclist deaths that occur. Our system of too many red lights and stop signs has dumbed down the majority of us, including pedestrians and bikers. It’s like zombie land out there, and then once you add in all the cell phones and other distractions, you have super zombies.

Intersections on arterial roads are by far the most dangerous places. Cars in our society are inherently selfish. This is seen by the rampant red light running going on. This is where the vast majority of pedestrians cross a road and puts pedestrians, cyclists, and cars turning left all in a dangerous position. Slower speed limits do not stop making drivers selfish. Add in the zombie factor of way too many pedestrians at intersections and you have a bad situation.

Where are the police?

They are too busy setting speed traps at one of the billions of stop signs, or at the bottom of small hills where nobody is getting killed. Intersections are where they should be and I will bet pedestrian deaths go down once drivers realize they will get a ticket.

Red light cameras at all intersections would solve this too, but they are not provided.

Add in that the lights are not synced, which increases traffic jams and dumbs down drivers more, adding to their frustration. If you synced the lights to where cars were doing no more than 40 or 50 km/hr, they would hit all the lights and would solve much of the problem. A car flowing more often means a calmer driver and thus a safer driver. Our system is red, green, red, green etc., on almost all our roads. It is beyond stupid and makes zero sense.

I found last month’s editorial cartoon perfect timing. The average pedestrian now stares straight ahead and never looks left or right; they see a red hand and they stop, they see a white hand and they go. There could be zero cars on the road, but they will still hit the button and stare straight ahead. They step off the curb not looking left or right. The old adage of look both ways before you cross the street is nowhere to be found. That button has zero effect at most intersections and only on small side roads but they will hit it anyway.

But the average driver does the same; they stare at the space in front of their car and never look way ahead. They don’t check their mirror every four to five seconds, or even their signal lights. It’s a deadly combination.

We need a system more like that in Vietnam: it has almost no lights and no crosswalks. Everyone drives like a pod of fish, without any hurry. It’s not selfish, not one car versus the other, as everyone hurries to beat the next red light.

The “pod” works together, and works with pedestrian and traffic flows. It’s beautiful. It has been proven that if you take the lights out of an intersection, remove the curbs on sidewalks at the intersection, and paint a traffic circle, collisions and pedestrian accidents go way down. It teaches people to think and pay attention again and keeps traffic flowing.

Several cities around the world have done this. Toronto has thought about testing it and has not done so.

Recently Japan made all accidents equal responsibility no matter what, and guess what happened? There was an 80 per cent reduction in traffic accidents, because it taught people to drive defensively and think again.

When I grew up we had more yield signs than stop signs; this taught you to slow down and look way before you got to the end of the street so you were ready to make the decision to stop or go as needed.

We need to create a system that makes us, all think again.

Scotty Robinson is a Gleaner reader and Robert Street resident.

Liberals take new riding of University-Rosedale

Polling University-Rosedale

Chrystia Freeland, Liberal: 27,849 (49.8%)

Jennifer Hollett, NDP: 15,988 (28.6%)

Karim Jivraj, Conservative: 9,790 (17.5%)

Nick Wright, Green Party: 1,641 (2.9%)

Jesse Waslowski, Libertarian: 233 (0.4%)

Simon Luisi, Animal Alliance/Environment Voters: 126 (0.2%)

David Berlin, The Bridge: 122 (0.2%)

Steve Rutchinski, Marxist-Leninist: 51 (0.1%)

By Dilara Kurturan

The red wave that washed over Canada on Oct. 19 and brought Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party to power swept up University-Rosedale in its wake.

Liberal candidate Chrystia Freeland took nearly 50 per cent of the vote, winning 27,849 ballots, a big margin over New Democratic Party (NDP) candidate Jennifer Hollett, who received 15,988 votes, or 28.6 per cent of those cast. Conservative candidate Karim Jivraj won 9,790 votes (17.5 per cent) — two-thirds of what Hollett received — while the Green Party only garnered 1,641 votes (2.9 per cent), with the four fringe candidates taking a combined total of 9 per cent of the vote.

The results came only weeks after a Forum Research telephone poll showed the Liberal and NDP candidates neck and neck, with the riding separated by only a one per cent margin.

Forum Research post-election polling suggested that one-quarter of voters nationwide changed their allegiance during the course of the long campaign, including 35 per cent of those who voted for the NDP for the first time in the 2011 federal election. Forum’s research also suggests that 29 per cent of those who switched to the Liberal Party did so because of the promise for infrastructure spending, while those who switched to the NDP did so because of that party’s promise to balance the budget, with a lesser number switching because of the Liberal’s deficit spending promise.

Such flip-flopping is not unfamiliar to the area, which as the former riding of Trinity-Spadina has long seen a back and forth between NDP and Liberal rule. Before the riding redistribution, Liberal candidate Adam Vaughan came out on top with 53.6 per cent of the vote during the 2014 by-election. But the old riding also saw wins for the NDP: in 2011, that party’s Olivia Chow, the incumbent since 2006, beat Liberal candidate Christine Innes by 20,000 votes. That year also reflected results across the nation, and mirrored the Liberals’ historic loss in the federal election. However, in a 2014 by-election necessitated by Olivia Chow’s resignation, the Liberals easily won back the seat with Adam Vaughan as their candidate. Vaughan, who ran for the Liberals in Spadina-Fort York, defeated Olivia Chow this time around, as that riding and University-Rosedale once again reflected the national picture: a Liberal win that resulted from a 148-seat gain, the largest increase by a political party in Canadian elections.

Memory builds sense of community

The Boys of Major Lane, located south of Harbord Street between Brunswick Avenue and Major Street, honours a group of young men who grew up on Major Street and never returned from the Second World War. Photo by Summer Reid, Gleaner News

By Annemarie Brissenden

It used to be that children roamed in packs.

In a time when television and the Internet weren’t even a twinkle in a scientist’s eye, and telephones were shared not just among families but between families, neighbouring children spent a lot of time together. They played together, went to school together, and often worshipped together. In essence, they grew up together.

They even went to war together. But in many cases, they never returned, not even to be buried together.

And so it was with the Boys of Major.

Memorialized with a laneway named in their honour and a Harbord Village History Storypost featuring the voices of those who knew them as children, the Boys of Major were a group of young men, all from Major Street, who fought in the Second World War.

“They were just young guys, off on an adventure,” relates the Harbord Village Residents’ Association’s Rory “Gus” Sinclair, who spearheaded what he terms the “community building exercise” that saw several unmarked local laneways named for the community’s historical figures and events. He said that of all the potential names, the Boys of Major was the most popular.

“It was one of the first to get picked,” he says. “It was a natural.”

Dr. Nicole Schulman experienced something similar when she produced the Storyposts, bright yellow outdoor plaques with QR codes that when scanned by a smartphone guide listeners to an audio collage.

People who grew up on Major Street fondly remembered the boys, and when they were interviewed, she says, “they really wanted to talk about these young men. They were quite passionate about it.”

There’s anecdotal evidence that of the 10 men who lived on Major, College, and Bloor streets, only four came back. However, data from an interactive map based on a municipal card file that tracked the city’s war dead during the Second World War suggests there were seven who perished in the conflict: Charles Barron, Frederick August John Kemper, Arthur Gold, Irving Lindzon, Bernard Webber, Charles Harry Males, and Solomon Kay.

Four of the young men — Kemper, Lindzon, Males, and Kay — were in the Royal Canadian Air Force. Barron was in the Royal Canadian Artilery, Gold in the Princess Louise’s Dragoon Guards, and Webber in the Royal Canadian Navy.

Even as the Storypost’s voices recount how dashing the young men looked in their uniforms, particularly those in the Air Force, there’s a sense of the enormity of the loss that still resonates today.

“The statistics were really gruesome. If you were in the Air Force, you were much less likely to survive,” says Schulman. “The people that loved them continue to miss them to this day.”

Most of those people no longer live in the neighbourhood and were part of a bigger migration up Bathurst Street as they became more prosperous.

As Schulman explains, the area at the time “was heavily Jewish; for a lot of people, this was their landing point, and they eventually moved out of the neighbourhood”.

But not before making a huge sacrifice.

“They gave their sons up,” says Sinclair, “and for many of them, they were the first generation to live in Canada.”

He not only believes that we “would be the poorer if we forgot them”, but that in remembering these young men, we realize that we are more than just living in the present.

For Schulman, they are worth remembering as we move forward because they tell the personal stories that underpin a huge cataclysm that profoundly shaped the world. And she wonders if there is more to mourn as well.

“It harkens back to a strong sense of community. They all knew each other and were friends,” she says. “That’s why their loss was so powerful.

“It’s something I worry we lose in our modern [world]: that feeling of community and closeness. You lose something when you don’t grow up with a whole cohort your age.”

But Sinclair suggests that remembering is a way of hanging on to that sense of community, even as we move forward.

“We’re related to the long history behind us through the fabric of our community, which are the houses,” he says, “and those friendly ghosts that live with us while we’re living here.”

Celebrations include gala dinner, auction, and school tours

Central Technical School celebrated its 100th anniversary with an open house, tours of the school that featured Decades Rooms, a silent auction, and a gala dinner, all over the Oct. 16 weekend. The popular Decades Rooms marked events that occurred during each of the school’s 10 decades, while a silent auction raised money to help set scholarships and bursaries, as well as fund school activities. Called “Tech” by staff and students alike, the school has produced several notable alumni, including Olympic decathlete Michael Smith; boxer George Chuvalo; artists Doris McCarthy, Lawren Harris, and Bruno Bobak; physicist Leon Katz; producer Sidney Newman; and political cartoonist Terry Mosher.

—Annemarie Brissenden with photos by Summer Reid

Albert Wallace, who never graduated, returned to the school he attended for one year in 1938. Many alumni took advantage of the occasion to reconnect with people that they have not seen in years.

Alberta Nye (left) and friend Rose Kita, both class of 1958, staff the auction table. The alumni were raising money for the school and its activities.

Long-time friends Stan Goldstein (left) and Jack Reiter, who graduated from Tech in 1950 and 1948 respectively, meet in one of the Decades Rooms.

Disposable diapers get taken out of green bin, sent to landfill

By Terri Chu

When people see my little one in a cloth diaper, I inevitably get questions about how I like them, what kind I use, and how eco-friendly they really are. While I try to answer most of them with grace, there’s one that’s been getting my goat and the City of Toronto really needs to educate new parents better.

Not one, but no less than FIVE moms have recently asked me some variation of “why even bother with cloth diapers when you can compost disposable ones now?” The first time I heard it I just thought someone wasn’t thinking this through, but by mom number five, it became clear there’s a big misconception out there.

Yes, Toronto allows diapers in the green bin.

No, plastic, toxin-filled diapers do not compost…even if they did, you probably don’t want to use them on your vegetable garden.

When they moved garbage from weekly to bi-weekly garbage pick up (alternating with recycling), there was some resistance, particularly from parents having to keep soiled diapers for two weeks. As a compromise, Toronto allowed diapers into the green bins so that residual household waste could then move to a two-week cycle. Toronto is one of few (if not the only) municipalities that has this quirk. Other municipalities just put up with stink for an extra week (this goes for cat litter and animal poop too).

Allowing diapers in the green bin does NOT mean that we have magically found some way to compost plastic. While the poop and the cotton lining might get separated out, the plastic and the absorbent chemicals are immediately sent to landfill. Diapers still end up in landfill, now just with a two-step process. (What is incomprehensible is that the “diverted” diapers also count toward the city’s waste diversion targets, as do a few other things, but that’s a whole other article.) Toronto giving in to complaining is part of the reason we have notoriously low quality compost. Poop from carnivores doesn’t make great compost.

Somehow in the decade since instituting green bins, moms in Toronto have been misled into believing that disposable diapers are somehow “green” because they go into the compost. One mommy blog went as far as describing the process of separating out diapers from other trash as a “good cause” worth the effort, whereas in reality it just means more work for someone at the receiving facility. It’s one thing to choose disposables for a litany of reasons, but being misled into thinking that they are “green” should not be one of them.

I fully understand the allure of disposable diapers. A lot of parents are also doing it solo, and a little one is enough of a handful without adding loads and loads of diapers to the mix. Disposables are convenient and great at preventing diaper rash, as these petrochemicals are fantastic at doing their job. No cloth diaper can possibly compete no matter how much arrowroot flour or cornstarch you throw onto a baby’s bum. There are legitimate reasons to use disposables and not everyone is an environment freak. What’s important to me, though, is that people make their choices based on accurate information.

Whether they intend to or not, the city accepting diapers in the green bin with little explanation of where it goes from there has misled moms for the past decade. The city needs to fix this misconception so moms can make the decisions for their family with the best available information.

This can be as simple as an information graphic on the annual waste management calendar that tells families what day their garbage and recycling will get collected. A simple diagram explaining that diapers get fished out and sent to landfill would suffice. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect all moms to understand the nuances and complexity of our municipal solid waste system. Diaper mass also shouldn’t count towards the city’s waste diversion targets. If Toronto wants to be a green city, it needs to fix this smelly problem.

Terri Chu is an engineer committed to practical environmentalism. This column is dedicated to helping the community reduce energy use, and help distinguish environmental truths from myths. Send questions, comments, and ideas for future columns to Terri at terri.chu@whyshouldicare.ca.