Austrian-born pianist Anton Kuerti delivered an awe-inspiring opening night performance for the TSM Festival at Koerner Hall on Tuesday July 20. Courtesy Toronto Summer Music Festival

By Emily Dontsos

If master pianist Anton Kuerti’s spectacular opening night performance for the Toronto Summer Music Festival on July 20 is any indication of what to expect from the festival’s 12 remaining concerts, then classical music lovers are in for a treat.

Held at the architecturally and acoustically astounding new Koerner Hall in The Royal Conservatory of Music’s TELUS Centre for Performance and Learning (273 Bloor St. W.), Kuerti’s all-Schumann program kicked off the festival’s fifth season with a brilliant display of masterful interpretation, impeccable timing, and truly awe-inspiring musicianship.

Preceded by proud and heartfelt opening remarks from TSM president Barbara Thompson and outgoing artistic director Agnes Grossmann, the mastermind behind the festival’s inception and growth within a city previously lacking access to classical music during the summer months, Kuerti’s performance opened with three dramatic and highly varied movements from Schumann’s Novelettes, Op. 21.

Bent over Koerner Hall’s beautiful new Hamburg Steinway piano, with his shock of white hair and matching jacket adding an air of drama to the already charged atmosphere, Kuerti delved into the opening pieces with utter commitment to his music. Fully concentrated and emotionally involved, the pianist’s rendering of Schumann’s exhilarating, playful and deeply moving compositions captivated the audience completely.

The three Novelettes were followed by the soaring Fantasie in C major, Op. 17 and the powerful Toccata in C major, Op. 7, with the towering Grand Sonata No. 1 in F# minor, Op. 11 as the closing piece. Punctuated by dramatic moments of seemingly impossible silence between movements, Kuerti’s interpretation of each piece reflected a deep respect for Robert Schumann’s emotionally complex and highly intricate work. Masterfully perfecting the frequent and sudden transitions from building crescendo to peaceful melody that are characteristic of the Romantic composer’s music, Kuerti’s performance was nothing short of brilliant.

Born in Austria, Anton Kuerti was raised in the U.S. but has spent the majority of his adult life in Canada. He has toured 39 countries and has performed with most major U.S. orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, as well as the Toronto Symphony and Montreal Symphony orchestras. A leading performer of Schumann’s works, Kuerti was honoured with the 2007 Schumann Prize of the Schumann Gesellschaft in Germany, and is also a recipient of the National Arts Prize of the Banff Centre in Canada (2007) and the Governor General’s Lifetime Artistic Achievement (2008).

The TSM Festival’s opening night performance by one of the world’s greatest living pianists was an unequivocal success. With 12 concerts featuring some of the best established and up-and-coming international artists still to go, the festival’s fifth season is truly a cause for celebration.

As she prepares to move on from the festival to pursue her international conducting and concert schedule more fully, Maestra Grossmann can rest assured that what she set out to accomplish has been achieved: the TSM Festival is quickly becoming an anticipated fixture in Toronto’s classical music scene, an institution unto itself, and an integral part of city residents’ summer plans.

The TSM Festival runs from July 20 to August 13.

No justice, no grease

Annex resident and former Gleaner editor Liivi Sandy called the police after she heard “violent and very unnerving” smashing at 2 a.m., on the eve of the G20.

She initially thought her home was being broken into. Sandy then looked out her window and saw a person dressed in dark clothing smashing the windows of KFC (636 Bloor St. W.). The vandal then ducked into the Green P parking lot on Euclid Avenue.

“There was no way I was going to let those vandals take my poutine,” said Sandy.

Within minutes, a police officer arrived at her door to take a statement. While there, he told her that there were two perpetrators, who had already been caught, and that the incident was likely G20 related.

Windows at the nearby Bank of Montreal were also smashed. Both businesses had replaced the damaged windows by the end of the weekend.

—Emina Gamulin

Well spent, well spent, one dollar

The G8/G20 Alternative Media Centre had a run-in with the law during the G20 weekend.

Police visited the centre on June 27 to investigate complaints from neighbours of possible squatting and/or breaking and entering.

“[The police] came and they wanted to talk to people and we said ‘You don’t have a warrant, we don’t want to talk to you,’” said Gwalgen Dent, a spokesperson for the centre.

Dent remained skeptical that any neighbours had actually complained in the first place.

“I’m not sure how a complaint could have been made by a neighbour given that we had flyered every single neighbour in this area and informed them of why we’re here and what we’re doing.”

Dent says the last thing that police said as they left the AMC was “You’re only making this more difficult than it has to be.”

The owner of the space, David Patrick, who also owns the adjacent Linux Cafe, explained to police that he was renting out the space to the organization.

Patrick welcomed the AMC after members of the group—who had been using his cafe as a meeting place this spring for their campaign efforts against Canadian mining company injustices—approached him to use the cafe as a meeting place for citizen journalists covering the G20.

“[The people at the AMC] aren’t activists, they’re journalists,” explained Patrick, who rented out the space to the AMC for $1.

The AMC was a temporary set-up of independent media organized by The Toronto Community Mobilization Network. The group operated out of a workshop on Jersey Avenue, just north of Harbord. It launched on the 21st and operated 24 hours a day, seven days a week, until it closed its doors on June 29.

—Tim Legault

The media, united, will always be invited

Due to the closure of the University of Toronto campus during the G20, CIUT 89.5 fm radio made a temporary home at the Gleaner office (720 Bathurst St.).

CIUT started their emergency programming on June 24 and had what will likely be their last broadcast from the Gleaner on the Monday after the summit, with their regular local morning news program Take 5.

Amy Goodman, founder and host of Democracy Now, was a guest host for CIUT’s G20 special. The Gleaner caught up with Goodman after her talk for a fundraiser for CIUT radio at Trinity St. Paul’s United Church (427 Bloor St. W.). She spoke of the importance of independent media and communities. She urged communities to get organised, get informed and share that information.

“Understand that the experts are the experts in your community,” she said. “Don’t be fooled by the corporate networks that bring us this small circle of pundits, who know so little about so much, explaining the world to us and getting it so wrong.  The experts are in our communities, on every issue. People who are living the reality on the ground—they are the ones with wisdom, and that’s why local media is so important.”

Democracy Now can be heard on CIUT every weekday. For a full schedule, click here.

—E.G.

Artists Eric Moschopedis and Mia Rushton are turning parks into bedrooms. Courtesy The Theatre Centre

By Brendan Hair

On July 17 and 18 The Theatre Centre in partnership with Cooking Fire Theatre Festival will be presenting a public napping project called Z’s by the C.

At this event residents can craft their own sleeping mask and have a sweet dream or catch up on lost sleep from the hectic work week.

The project, founded by artists Eric Moschopedis and Mia Rushton in 2008, began in Calgary when anti-loitering bylaws were passed. According to Moschopedis, the bylaw restricted the amount of time people could spend in parks without a specific purpose and prohibited feet resting on benches. Eventually these laws led to public napping becoming illegal.

Since then, Moschopedis and Rushton have used this project as way to protest the privatizations of public space.

He believes public sleeping is viewed by many socially unacceptable behaviour. According to Moschopedis, public sleeping is often seen as threatening behaviour. And since it’s usually a private activity, Moschopedis sees this project as one that’s “transgressing social norms.”

Theatre Centre Director Franco Boni previously participated in the project at the Magnetic North Theatre Festival in Ottawa.

“I’m looking at it as a performance piece but I’m also looking at it as a community event because that’s what this kind of work can do,” said Boni.

Moschopedis believes that as a community, if we’re not acting in a genuine manner then we’ve lost our grip on public space.

“I think that’s the risk,” said Moschopedis.

Moschopedis believes dreams differ depending where you sleep. To him dreams are a site-specific activity.

“When you’re in your bedroom you have [a] certain type of dream and when you move to a different environment [like] a hotel or camping your dreams change.”

Besides Calgary and Ottawa, the project has stopped in New York and Zurich. But what makes Moschopedis excited about Toronto is the event’s setting at the proposed Lisgar Park. While the site is currently just a parking lot with sod, Moschopedis believes it suits the concept of this project.

“People can come to this park and dream what might be possible [and] what this new public space [might] look like.”

By Min Kang

Mayor David Miller has officially proclaimed July 12 to 18th  Mad Pride Week.

“It’s throwing the word back in the face of the general public who think mad is a horrible kind of state to be in, so we throw it back into the face of society, just like gays throw queer back, and there are various groups in Mad Pride who take different positions on the whole matter. Some are psychiatrized, some are just  ‘normal people’,” said Mel Starkman, a co-organizer of Mad Pride.

Borrowing from Gay Pride, Mad Pride attempts to reclaim terms that are used against them as a source of empowerment, giving the self-proclaimed mad community the opportunity to celebrate their own difference, and raise awareness of the obstacles that they face including the stigma attached to being in the psychiatric system

The Mad Pride organizing committee comprises of a group of psychiatric survivors and friends within the city including The Friendly Spike Theatre Band (TFSTB), an artist-run community theatre dedicated to encouraging theatrical expression for psychiatric and consumer survivors.

Heinz Klein, a co-organizer and technical director for Mad Pride explains that the psychiatric survivor community in Parkdale is strong because many survivor migrated to the area after deinstitutionalization.

“Parkdale in itself was really close to Queen Street and to the old Lakeshore hospital. So people gathered here together and they really created a life for themselves here. That’s why there is a high population of psychiatric survivors and others who have been affected by the mental health system in this area. There are certain services here that other parts of the city don’t have or only sporadically have, like the Parkdale Activity Recreation Centre (PARC), created to accommodate people who have been pushed out of hospitals just simply to give them a place to hang out.”

Starkman added, “Basically it grows out of poverty. You know, when you are poor and you can’t cope with society you get into a situation where you’re strung out and more and more people are entering that stage in this failing economy, and more and more people are turning to the whole concept of madness to express themselves—they are angry they have to live in such a way that they are oppressed, and that’s a very dangerous way to live.”

Klein believes that Mad Pride Week is just the right outlet for channelling that expression.

“To celebrate Mad Pride and make it a weeklong event is actually using something which I call, ‘creative resilience’. That means we are overcoming the obstacles in the kind of creative way that claims for us the label mad as something positive, whereas everybody else is looking at that and says it’s something negative.”

The big event at this year’s festivities will undoubtedly be the “Bed Push,” on July 17, involving survivors in pyjamas pushing a gurney dressed like a bed with sheets covered in words of empowerment. Ruth explains that the bed push—originating in 2006 by Rufus May, a psychiatric survivor and activist in England—is a metaphor for Mad Pride.

“We push out of the medical model of understanding difference and into the community,” said Ruth Ruth, community theatre director with TFSTB. The Bed Push starts on the grounds of CAMH, down Queen West, into Parkdale and stops at PARC.

Though this may sound “crazy” to some, Klein observes that there are much crazier decisions going on in the world.

“We have over a hundred thousand homeless people living in the city, and yet the government wants to spend over a billion dollars to accommodate 20 people instead of spending only ten percent of this money to accommodate a hundred thousand of their own kind in this country. That is madness. And they call us mad. But what they are doing is madness.”

Every year The Friendly Spike Theatre Band develops a community based play. This year they will be staging, The Dega and the Delbasid, at 20 Westlodge Ave. on July 16 at 7 p.m. To find out more details of events happening on Mad Pride Week, click here.

On June 26, the Gleaner documented the Queen’s Park protests through photography. Check out these photos on our Flickr page. Perry King/Gleaner News

A map of the security zones for the upcoming G20 summit, June 25-27. Courtesy G20 Integrated Security Unit

By Jacob Arnfield

At a price of $1 billion dollars, with international financial leaders, media, police, and protestors all congregating downtown, the G20 will be an event unlike any other the city has ever seen.

In case some of the disparate accounts have left you confused, here are some details for how the summit will alter the downtown core during the June 25 to 27 weekend.

The Integrated Security Unit (ISU) policing three separate zones will organize security. A separate entity from the federal government, the ISU brings together the RCMP, Toronto Police Services, Peel Regional Police, the Canadian Armed Forces, and the Canadian Coast Guard.

The Security for the G20 summit will include three separate zones.

The most secure zone—the red zone—includes the interior of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre (MTCC, 255 Front St. W.) and some hotels where the delegates are staying. This zone will be patrolled by RCMP and can only be accessed after going through an intensive accreditation process.

According to George Tucker, a member of the community relations division of ISU, the inner perimeter “won’t have a very big impact on people and the business in the downtown core.”

TPS will patrol a secondary perimeter, which will be fenced. That zone will be accessible by anyone unless the ISU receives notice of a security threat. If that occurs, the gates in the fence will be closed and the outer perimeter will become inaccessible. If you work or live within the perimeter you can voluntarily register with security to receive a pass for the zone. This is intended as an “express pass,” because those without passes will be stopped at the fence and asked questions by police.

The ISU anticipates that a line will form and the registration card will allow holders to bypass that line. Registration will not require the background check process that accreditation does. The information stored for the registration is intended to be discarded after the summit concludes.

The majority of the space between Wellington Street and Lake Shore Boulevard, Bay Street and Blue Jays Way will be inside the fenced perimeter. For full details, see the included map.

After the summit, the ISU estimates a week will be required to remove the fence.

The third zone, —a traffic control area—will be bounded by Yonge Street, Spadina Avenue, King Street, and Lake Ontario. There will be no fence to designate this area, but police will be stationed at major intersections.

It has been reported that all mailboxes, bike rings, and other street furniture will be removed from the traffic control zone for the summit. Seventy-seven new security cameras are being installed in the area for the summit. The cameras will be removed after the summit ends, but it has been reported that police will keep them to be redeployed for future use.

The arrivals and departures for “Internationally Protected People” before and after the summit are likely to cause significant traffic disturbances. Many of the dignitaries who receive this designation will, according to Tucker, be attending the G8 summit in Huntsville and not the G20, which will be visited mainly by international finance ministers and bank managers. However, all traffic will be shut down for the passage of the motorcades of any internationally protected person, including the subway lines underneath. These motorcades are likely to entangle not only the downtown core, but the highways leading from the MTCC to the airport. Additionally, the G8 takes place on June 25 and 26, and it’s likely some of the most prominent international leaders will visit the G20 on June 27.

Tomasz Bugajski/Courtesy blogTO

Recent reports estimate the total cost for security for the G8 and G20 summits have greatly exceeded their initial $179 million dollar budget, soaring to $833 million, with room in the budget for an additional $100 million.

Local councillors asked the federal government to post a bond that would cover property damages caused by the G20, but their request was denied, and local businesses and residents will need to collect through their own insurance for all third party damages.
There are a number of other prominent areas that will be affected by the summit.

Obvious sites near the MTCC will be closed. The CN Tower will not be open and Toronto Blue Jays moved their weekend series out of the Rogers Centre. The Direct Energy Centre (100 Princes’ Blvd.) will be the home of the International Media Centre for the roughly 5,000 journalists expected to attend. Kensington Market’s Pedestrian Sundays was denied a permit for June 27 due to concerns it could become a rallying point for demonstrators.

Queen’s Park will be the site for the Designated Speech Area (DSA). The DSA is legally mandated by the Supreme Court of Canada to give a site where demonstrators can be seen and heard by the summit’s participants.

A stage with cameras and audio will be erected. Those feeds will be displayed within the MTCC so that demonstrations can be viewed within the summit.

Trinity Bellwoods Park was originally announced as the home of the DSA, but due to public concerns, the ISU chose to move the area to Queen’s Park.

The move to Queen’s Park was not without consequences. It has been reported that upon hearing of the new location, U of T has decided to close the St. George campus from June 23 until the end of the summit because of its proximity to the DSA. This includes relocating those who live in residences on campus for the four days.

Dozens of demonstrations are planned beginning as early as June 18, but the bulk of them are scheduled to take place on the days of the summit.

If you plan to attend demonstrations that weekend, a new concern are the four long-range acoustical devices—more commonly referred to as sound guns or sound cannons—that Toronto police recently purchased for the summit. These cannons can cause significant pain and even hearing damage, and the Council of Canadians will be giving away earplugs to combat its effects.

Purrr play the Bread & Circus June 19. Courtesy Christopher Wadsworth.

By Karen Bliss

More than 2,500 artists applied for a spot at the 2010 North By Northeast music festival, which takes place all over the city from June 14 to 20, so the 650 bands and solo acts that were accepted have obviously been given the thumbs up from the organizers.

“We have a jury that goes through all the [online] Sonicbids [entries] that we receive and then they’re marked by a rating system and at a certain level it will be a no,” explained Yvonne Matsell, director and music programmer of NXNE. “As soon as they’ve gone through them all, I usually come in from January and start working on the schedule.”

Matsell, who is also the year-round booker at the El Mocambo, works alongside NXNE’s Crispin Giles on the enormous task of placing the 650 acts in the 40-something venues, determining who plays where, when, and if the line-up makes sense.

“Generally, we have a master list of the clubs we’ve used in the last couple of years and then we’ll go through them and decide, ‘Does this work again?’” says Matsell. “Sometimes, some of the places have closed but then others open too. So it’s a case of going to check out the new clubs, or the club people will contact us.”

The artists come from all over Canada and many from the United States, but there are also some that make the trip from Israel, Denmark, Ireland, Japan, England, Australia, Hungary, Norway, Iceland and France. But if you want to stay strictly local Matsell has some recommendations.

On June 17, Matsell says the alt. folk/country band Elliott Brood and indie rockers Dinosaur Bones at The Horseshoe Tavern should be a good one.

That same night, Modernboys Moderngirls, fronted by Kensington resident Akira Alemany, play The Boat at 1 a.m. “He’s a hardworking guy, that one,” she said. “It’s indie pop rock.”

If you can’t make it out to that show, there is also the chance to check them out at The Rivoli the following night at 2 a.m.

Also on the 17th is a great bill at Lee’s Palace, called Outlaws & Gunslingers featuring such notable singer-songwriters as Blue Rodeo’s Jim Cuddy and Greg Keelor, Hawksley Workman, Colleen Brown, Justin Rutledge, Oh Susanna, Andy Maize, and Amelia Curran.

On June 18, Rancho Relaxo hosts a “very cool psychedelic blues rock band” called Revolvers and the El Mo has the much loved indie pop/rockers The Golden Dogs.

The Cadillac Lounge hosts “a lot of good stuff,” that same night, including The Heartbroken, which is the new band formed from Damhnait Doyle (Shaye); and folk act Flashlight Radio, comprised of singer Suzy Wilde and bassist Ben Whitely, the offspring of Nancy White and Ken Whitely, respectively. The following night, the same venue has highly touted rock band Five Star Trailer Park and a jaunt east on Queen at the Horseshoe CBC Night features Attack In Black, now based in Toronto.

Also on June 19, producer/composer Byron Wong hosts the night at Bread & Circus and featured on the bill is Purrr, an intense rave-rock trio that is mesmerizing live.

Tickets/wristbands are a steal for all the talent one will get a chance to see. The five-day pass is $50 and one day is $25. They are available online at www.nxne.com, as well as at various locations, such as Rotate This (801 Queen St. W.) and Criminal Records (493 Queen St. W.). The full schedule is also on the web site.

NXNE is now in its 16th year and has expanded from the music festival and conference (June 17 to 20th) with panels, keynote speeches and interviews to include more than 40 music-centric film screenings (June 16th to 20th), an interactive media conference (14 to 16th), and charity soccer game (20th) between the Rockers and The World.

The music festival also includes stages at Pearson International Airport and Union Station, and free open-air concerts at Yonge-Dundas Square.

By Tim Legault

A proposal to build a massive 42-storey academic residence at 245 and 253 College Street, between Spadina and University, was met with a general unease from local residents during a May 18 community meeting.

“Nice building, wrong location,” said Ceta Ramahalawansingh, who has lived in the area since 1971. She added that the building does not seem to fulfil its promise of providing a quality community for students. “What I see is a very traditional, ordinary floor plan, which will not do.”

The site is currently home to a five-storey storage warehouse and a smaller two-storey building used by U of T Press.

The University of Toronto and Knightstone Capital Management Inc., a real estate development company, own the buildings. The proposed development would be a private venture by Knightstone.

“This is not a U of T residence, but rather a building to house students,” said Lucy Fromowitz, assistant vice-president of Student Life at U of T. “Quality student housing in close proximity to our campus is something we would support.”

Knightstone said the building provided a solution to U of T’s ever increasing demand for student housing in the area.

The building would be composed of two- and four-bedroom units to house roughly 1,200 students. There would be zero parking and there are also plans to relocate the U of T bookstore, currently at the Koffler Centre (214 College St.).

Knightstone’s development team suggested they would likely create a drive-thru connecting College Street with Glasgow Street—a small residential street adjacent to the proposed site—sparking anxiety from a local woman who has lived on Glasgow for over 40 years. “I’m not looking forward to stepping outside of my house and looking at this big tall building with 1,200 new neighbours every year moving in, moving out,” she said.

Some residents expressed fewer objections to the building’s size if it meant that the residence would swallow up a large number of students who currently dominate the area and occupy the area’s stock of rental units.

Other proposals for high-rises in the area have met similar resistance. In 2005, public outcry from U of T and the local community led to the cancellation of a 40-story condominium that was to go up where the former Planetarium sat.

Councillor Adam Vaughan (Ward 20, Trinity-Spadina) was in attendance to moderate the event. He held no official position on the proposal and insisted his role was to facilitate discussion between the developers and the community.

Vaughan did warn that such a large building with a high density could impact the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation’s (MPAC) assessment of the areas property taxes, causing them to increase.

Vaughan and the developers stressed that there is still a long way until building plans are officially decided upon and the end product may be radically different from the initial proposal.

“As you can understand, we shared some very early stage conceptual drawings at the meeting, solely to introduce the project to those in attendance as a way to help create context for a productive dialogue,” wrote Danny Roth, a PR representative for Knightstone, in an email. “Of course, the renderings are only in their earliest design stages and are under ongoing review.”

By Jacob Arnfield

Is there a difference between a fraternity and a rooming house?

Historically, municipalities with rooming house laws say yes. When Toronto’s rooming house legislation was first instituted, fraternity and sorority houses were exempted, but this is not likely to be the case for much longer.

Earlier this year, Councillor Adam Vaughan (Ward 20, Trinity-Spadina), passed a bill through Planning and Growth to remove the exemption. Because of a bureaucratic error, the bylaw revisal never made it to city council, and has yet to be fully enacted as law. Vaughan disagreed with the original exemption, which he said was made by a previous councillor who thought he was doing students a favour by not regulating fraternities and sororities.

The fact that the law has yet been passed did not stop Vaughan from discussing the alterations as if they had already been enacted. “We’ve stripped them of that exemption and they are now to be regulated as licensed rooming houses and will have to come forward and comply with all the bylaws,” said Vaughan, citing a need for increased regulation of fraternity housing property standards and fire safety.

Beyond ensuring a safer environment in fraternities, and providing their parents with an increased sense of security, the removal of the exemption is also aimed at curtailing what Vaughan says is some of the worst frat boy behaviour. “They’re going to have behave themselves like adults, or at least like teenagers, or maybe like 12 year-olds, but they can’t act like 8 year-olds and disturb and destroy and violate virtually every bylaw in the city,” said Vaughan.

When asked whether this change was necessary, Vaughan listed some of the worst recent offences. “I had a fraternity house in the ward that got a half-dozen pig heads and stuck them on spits and left them out over a long weekend during the summer. I’ve had park benches stolen and put on frat property. I’ve had parties and beer kegs and people shooting flaming balls out of windows.”

Vaughan said the fraternity and sorority houses have been notified.

Dovi Henry, a sociology and philosophy student responsible for public relations for his fraternity, Delta Upsilon (182 St. George St.), had not heard about the proposed changes that would affect his house. “It sounds pretty fishy,” he said.

When the Gleaner met him at his frat house and explained what Vaughan was proposing, he did not agree with the changes. He said his brothers understand they live in a residential neighbourhood, and make an effort to be good neighbours. Henry said at his fraternity will soundproof the house for large parties, and if an issue arises they are willing to alter their behaviour when approached by neighbours.

“Complain to us, you know. Come to me and say ‘Look, you’re having parties, you’re loud. I don’t like it.’ Don’t go to the government. Come to us at first at least,” Henry said.

He said there are significant differences between a rooming house and a fraternity. To start, the fraternity owns the property, which creates a different dynamic between landlord and tenant than a regular rooming house. Also, Henry said the communal relationship between fraternity brothers makes living in a frat house a different prospect than living in a rooming house.

“We’re just a group of friends who have an awesome mansion that we all hang out in basically,” he said. “If we were a rooming house, we’d all be here to live here, and that’s pretty much the extent of it.” He continued to say he felt the communal nature of their living arrangements were both the cause of the councillor’s ire, and the reason they should be exempted. They live in and maintain their house and conduct various fraternity activities together. That relationship, working together as a group body living in a shared space, is different from a collection of individual renters and makes licensing and supervision unnecessary, he said.

When asked about who is in charge of managing the property, Henry said the brothers vote two to three times a year to elect a property manager from their brothers.

An additional concern for local residents is non-fraternity members who live in fraternity houses, particularly in the summer time when school is recessed. Frank Cunningham lives near two frat houses at St. George Street and Lowther Avenue, and said during the year when he has a complaint he will approach the house directly. But, during the summer the people who choose to live in these houses are not as amenable to their neighbour’s concerns. Henry confirmed that his fraternity does rent rooms to non-fraternity members.

Cunningham supports the change. He said he is not as upset by fraternity house behaviours as others in his area. He understood the fraternity’s concerns about the need to be licensed, but said: “they can’t have it both ways and say, ‘You can’t apply rooming house laws ‘Cause we’re something different’ and then rent out as a rooming house.”