Thank you for the recent edition and in particular the area park reviews conducted by your writer Madeline Smart, I really loved the coverage of our parks.
I do wonder, however, why Paul Martel Park has such a bad rating? Have you been there recently? It is just wonderful. The indigenous community has been given a grant to add native plantings and they have done a wonderful job creating a very harmonious space and to top it all off a gorgeous mural has just been added to the entire rear wall of the park. The mural is stunningly beautiful.
Perhaps the park review was complete prior to these improvements? Please take another look and thank you again for the Gleaner.
—Carole Alexander, Annex resident
(summarized from a voicemail message with permission)
Comments Off on LETTER TO THE EDITOR (Dec. 2021)Tags:Annex · Opinion
December 17th, 2021 · Comments Off on FORUM: Tackling the climate crisis at a city level (Dec. 2021)
All levels of government must be engaged in a solution
By Mike Layton
Years ago, I moved a motion asking the city to begin its work to tackle climate change and the request for this report became TransformTO. The first report was received in 2016 with regular report-backs scheduled in the years ahead, but never have the recommendations been finalized into a plan to tackle the climate crisis until now. Finally, after two years of delays due to the pandemic and other issues with finalizing the recommendations, a plan has been put forward to promote the end of surplus carbon emissions in Toronto, ten years sooner than originally proposed.
This is a critical moment in Toronto’s history. This month the city released TransformTO – Critical Steps for Net Zero by 2040. City Council will debate and vote on new climate targets and actions for the first time in years.
We are facing this vote at a time when what the climate crisis means for real people’s lives could not be clearer. The whole country is watching as residents in British Columbia grapple with the impact of devastating floods. This past summer we saw record breaking heat and wildfires. It is clear we are facing an emergency and we need to act like it.
The targets set out in the report are the right ones and I am proud that our city is making a firm commitment to net zero emissions by 2040 – this is something that I helped fight for, alongside many of my residents and those involved in climate policy, when we passed our climate emergency motion in 2019. There have been other successes along the way as well, including the introduction of a climate lens on all capital budget decisions moving forward, and a stronger dedication to building and investing in alternative forms of transit to support our growing city in a sustainable way.
However, what is clear when looking at TransformTO and the report before council this month, is that we are lacking many of the specific actions needed to reach these targets. It is like heading on a road trip, but having big pieces of the map missing. This worries me greatly.
It is not too late. Toronto can still get it right and show bold leadership on climate change. We can learn from cities like Vancouver who have passed detailed and ambitious plans this year and from the many dedicated, smart and ambitious climate scientists and environmental organizations who are calling for faster action. We can make the realistic, and incredibly necessary changes we need so that when this comes to city council in December, I can vote knowing that I am doing everything in my power to build a better world for my daughters and everyone else who will outlive the politicians and leaders who will be deciding the world’s fate for them.
I will be moving motions to fill in the pieces of the map with strong positions and policies that reflect the urgency to change and support efforts to accelerate our progress as quickly as possible. Further, the budget debate will occur in the new year and this is where we need to show that our commitment to TransformTO goes beyond press releases and pretty images. We need to make decisions in our budget to reflect our policies and begin immediate work to fight the climate crisis.
Mike Layton is the city councillor for Ward 11, University—Rosedale.
December 17th, 2021 · Comments Off on FORUM: Premier Ford gets an “F” (Dec. 2021)
Auditor general’s report shows Ford is failing the environment
By Jessica Bell
On November 24, the auditor general released her annual report on the environment. It reads as a dry and horrifying account of Premier Doug Ford’s assault on our natural environment, health and future. Here are the lowlights.
Ontario’s new Minister of the Environment David Puccini likes to wax on about his participation in Canada’s delegation to the Glasgow climate negotiations in the legislature, but the government is on track to meet just 20% of its promised carbon reductions by 2030. Ontario’s elected leaders are failing to do their part to stop climate change.
Furthermore, the Ford government is failing at tracking and reporting on the health of our environment. The auditor general’s report says that currently, our government ministries do not adequately track and report on water quality, greenhouse gas emissions, soil health, pesticide use, pollinator health, hazardous spills, and wetland preservation. Doug Ford doesn’t want to know the harm he’s causing, so we’re not allowed to know either.
The Ontario government is regularly violating the Environmental Bill of Rights (EBR). Ontario’s EBR law enshrines our right to information and public consultation on environmentally significant decisions, as well as the right to ask for a review or to appeal these decisions.
The government didn’t use the EBR process when it approved Ministerial Zoning Orders to bypass land-use planning rules, nor did they use the EBR process when it gutted conservation authorities’ power to protect us from flooding. Our EBR law should be strengthened, not ignored.
Now on to waste management. Our province is a competitor for most waste per person in the world, and we do a very poor job of recycling and reusing the waste we create. Condos, apartments, industry, business, and big institutions, like schools, are the worst offenders. The vast majority of this industrial and commercial waste ends up in landfill. Materials that have been separated into recycling and compost bins are often re-diverted to landfill by the poorly regulated waste management industry.
To incentivize recycling and reuse, provinces like Nova Scotia and Quebec have increased the cost of landfill use by banning the dumping of certain products and increasing landfill fees. There is also huge value in taking upstream measures to reduce the production of waste in the first place: banning single use plastic, strengthening consumer protection and warranty rights to improve the quality of products sold in Ontario, and instituting right to repair rules to stop companies from stymieing the production and sale of generic replacement parts, can all help.
Ontario companies spill hazardous materials about 8,000 times a year into our air, land and water. Most of these spills are from the oil and gas sector. The Environment Ministry does not tell Ontarians where a hazardous spill has occurred, who caused the spill, or what specific impacts a spill could have on human health and the environment. The government has also reduced its inspection and enforcement power to stop companies from repeatedly spilling. In 2021, companies operating in this province can spill with near impunity. This is immoral.
If we don’t take meaningful and bold measures to protect and respect the living world, the people of this province face a harsh and miserable future. You and I know this. It is our responsibility to guide Ontario towards a sustainable, thriving and fair future. It’s why our Green New Democratic Deal platform to transition to a truly sustainable and green society and economy is a priority for us. Doug Ford is clearly incapable of doing anything close to this. His time in the premier’s office should end.
December 17th, 2021 · Comments Off on LIFE: Honouring son in area parks (Dec. 2021)
Suicide seen as collateral damage during COVID-19
Christine Andreopoulos plays chess at the table she donated to Jean Sibelius Square in honour of her son, Kye Andreopoulos, “a loving and faithful son and friend.” Kye took his own life, age 28, due to failures in our under-resourced mental health system, stretched to the breaking point by the pandemic, she said. “That psychiatrists couldn’t see their patients in-person. To me, that was the wrong part.”
NICOLE STOFFMAN/GLEANER NEWS
By Nicole Stoffman
Local park goers may have noticed a new chess table at Jean Sibelius Square. It is dedicated to the memory of Kye Christian Andreopoulos, “A skilled player, a generous soul, a creator of communities, and above all, a loving and faithful son and friend.”
Mr. Andreopoulos took his own life during the second wave of the pandemic, due to failures in our under-resourced mental health system, stretched to the breaking point by the pandemic, said his mother, Christine. “I truly think that if it wasn’t for COVID, he would be here,” she said.
He developed bipolar disorder (BD) a few years into a promising career as a business analyst. According to his mother, the stress of working in IT, running a business on the side, experiencing a break-up, and smoking pot to self-medicate triggered his first episode in 2017.
There is no known single cause of BD, but research points to changes in how some nerve cells in the brain communicate. This increases vulnerability to stress, so that upsetting experiences or substance use can trigger episodes, according to the Mood Disorders Association of Ontario.
A 2020 survey conducted by the Canadian Mental Health Association showed that suicidal thoughts or feelings rose 27% during wave 2, among people with pre-existing mental health conditions. Ms. Andreopoulos told the Gleaner that she believes his life could have been saved if he had access to appropriate care.
Ms. Andreopoulos described getting help for her son during the pandemic as a “horror story.” As an outpatient at CAMH, she says, he would have to wait five or six hours every week to see a different psychiatrist. Those appointments would usually last for 20-30 minutes.
She says she finally screamed and cried for one psychiatrist to work with her son. In response, a third-year student resident in the Moods and Disorders clinic was assigned to work with him that very same day.
Mr. Andreopoulos had 30-minute online appointments with the resident, every 2-3 weeks. His mother persisted in asking for in-person, more frequent psychotherapy. On their website, CAMH recommends psychotherapy, alongside medication, as the treatment for BD. Before the pandemic, Ms. Andreopoulos said her son had been “on a good road,” while getting in-person care at the Stratford Hospital, where he had travelled during a manic episode.
“Kye needed therapy to deal with everything that was going on in his life,” she said. “He was getting divorced, living with his mom, feeling dependent. He needed to cope with his thoughts and his depression and his weight gain. He was obese. He needed so much more than medication.”
Kye Andreopoulos took his own life, Dec 29, 2020. He was 28 years old.
He left his mother a suicide note. “The tragedy is that he didn’t feel there was anyone who could help him,” she said. “And that’s what he said. And that’s the unfortunate thing, is to die thinking that way.”
Ms. Andreopoulos says that she was looking for alternatives to CAMH prior to her son’s death, but could not get him into residential long-term care because they were not accepting patients due to COVID-19. She adds that she was not able to get him in to see a private therapist, because he was an adult, and had to make the request himself and was not motivated to at the time. She was not told by the resident that she could apply to be a Substitute Decision Maker (SDM), for this purpose.
The Gleaner was unable to corroborate Ms. Andreopoulos’ story because CAMH declined to comment on the case, citing patient confidentiality. CAMH also declined to answer the Gleaner’s more general questions in relation to their suicide protocol, and whether they experienced a shortage of psychiatrists during the pandemic.
Ms. Andreopoulos says she came up with the idea of the chess tables one day as she was walking through Sibelius Park.
“Kye loved the chess culture in cities like New York, where strangers can meet over a game. I think Kye would have sat down, and he would have played anybody,” she said. “And maybe if he made that one connection in the park one day, maybe that would have been it. A mom can only do so much.” Kye’s father, Chris, passed away from cancer in 2007, when Kye was 14.
She reached out to Councillors Layton and Bilão in June. By September 16, the project was complete. Two chess tables and a bench were placed in Dovercourt Park, Kye’s local park, and one chess table was at Jean Sibelius Square, his childhood park.
“It should not need to take an increase in deaths to act,” Councillor Layton told the Glaner. “And the province continually works to reduce access to these integral supports.”
Ms. Andreopoulos buried Kye’s baby teeth under the bench in Dovercourt Park. She says she hopes the community will enjoy the chess tables, but also be reminded that it’s ok to talk openly about mental health.
“I think what she did is pretty amazing,” said Michael Sutton, at the Chess Institute of Canada. “There’s a huge mental health aspect to chess. It’s a great way to teach kids about decision-making. You can stop kids from going down these dark paths, and making choices they can’t come back from.”
Ms. Andreopoulos has sold her house and is off on a journey. She is going to hike a rock formation in Scotland that her son didn’t finish climbing when he was studying at the University of St. Andrews. She will walk the Camino de Santiago, beginning on Kye’s birthday, and plans to work on a turtle reservation. She will scatter his ashes everywhere she goes.
If you or someone you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts or behaviours, call Distress Centres of Greater Toronto at 416-408-4357 or text 45645. If it is an emergency, call 911.
Comments Off on LIFE: Honouring son in area parks (Dec. 2021)Tags:Annex · Life
December 17th, 2021 · Comments Off on LIFE: Finding tombstones in your yard (Dec. 2021)
Palmerston area resident traces origins of Hebrew headstones
(From left) Doug Reeve, Greg Beiles, Yael Schacter, and Melanie Reeve inspect about 50 flagstones mysteriously engraved with Hebrew lettering. The stones were found on Miriam Schacter’s front lawn, and she is asking for community input to identify their origin.
COURTESY OF MIRIAM SCHACTER
By Margarita Maltaceva
In September, Palmerston area resident Miriam Schacter noticed Hebrew engravings on flagstones that her landlord dug up while working on her front lawn.
When she realized that the inscriptions were in fact names, she started to wonder if they had found gravestones.
“The ground beneath my feet literally changed,” she said, describing her feelings when she noticed the Hebrew lettering. Now she is looking for family members of the people whose names are engraved on the stones.
“It’s out of respect for a community that existed in the past,” Schacter said. “Their stories are important, even if this is the tiniest memorial that signifies that someone lived and someone died.”
Schacter gathered a small group of people to help her lift the heavy stones and spread them on the lawn. Some of the lettering was done by hand and resembled carving from the early 20th century.
One stone had the family name “Kirschenboim,” while the rest had Hebrew patronymics referring to the father’s name. Some of them were made of marble, and the stones had different sizes and thicknesses.
Schacter learned that unlike traditional Jewish gravestones, these stones lacked important features including dates of birth and death; as well as the Hebrew letters peh and nun, meaning “here lies.”
Howard Goldstein, the coordinator of the JGS Toronto Cemetery Project, assessed the stones and concluded that they might have been “first drafts” of headstones, which a stonemason did not complete because the family did not like them.
Alternatively, the stonemason may have been practicing his carving skills on the stones.
Goldstein does not think that the stones were ever placed on a grave.
“With the exception of any historical value, there’s no need for these stones to be treated as anything other than rubble,” he wrote by email.
Nevertheless, Schacter, who is the only Jewish person in her building, continues her search to unravel the history of the Hebrew rocks.
After she posted the pictures, a volunteer named Carolynne Veffer offered to match the only full name on the stones – Samuel Kirschenboim – with names in Jewish cemeteries.
She said she used a powerful tool called JewishGen to look for a match.
In its Worldwide Burial Registry, Veffer matched Kirschenboim‘s name with one of the graves located in Roselawn Cemetery in Toronto.
However, when Goldstein compared the headstone from Roselawn cemetery with the stone found on Schacter’s lawn, he said they bore “no resemblance.”
Although the mystery of the rocks has not been resolved, Schacter refuses to throw them away. She wants to find a proper place to keep the stones out of respect for the people whose Hebrew names are carved on them.
Schacter added she wants to create a website to post the pictures of the flagstones with translated Hebrew inscriptions.
She’s also gathered a group of six people to help her decide what to do with the stones next.
For more information or to get involved in the project, email Miriam Schacter at danceabilitiescanada@gmail.com.
—With files from Nicole Stoffman
Comments Off on LIFE: Finding tombstones in your yard (Dec. 2021)Tags:Annex · Life
December 17th, 2021 · Comments Off on GREENINGS: Avoid the stress of stuff at Xmas (Dec. 2021)
Do it for the planet, and for yourself
By Terri Chu
As an environmentalist, few things make me cringe quite like Christmas does. We are heading into the season when Canadians will each discard a staggering 50 kg of trash over the holidays.
Experts with the waste electrical and electronic equipment forum estimate that in 2021 alone, the world will discard a mass of e-waste equivalent to that of the Great Wall of China, the world’s heaviest human made object.
This is a gentle reminder that most of us don’t need more stuff. Uncle Joe definitely does not need another “Best Uncle Ever” mug and the grandkids really don’t need another battery-operated Jeep.
Christmas has become an event in consumerism and barely resembles the religious roots it came from – which may be perfectly fine in a secular society. Only, it’s not making us any happier and it certainly isn’t making us any healthier.
The politics and stress of gift giving over the holiday season has gotten out of control.
The holidays are a source of so much stress that CAMH has created a guide for managing Christmas anxiety. Last year, COVID-19 was a great excuse to give us a nice reprieve from the usual holiday anxiety. The Omicron variant may give some of us a similar excuse this year, but we shouldn’t be using the pandemic to get us through traditions that seem to have a stranglehold on us.
Here are some tips that I use in order to create a more manageable and meaningful holiday season.
Draw Boundaries
Years ago, I loudly opted out of Christmas. I told my mom she can either have her 80 person Church-filled house party or she can have me home for the holidays, but not both. Dorm was closed for the season, but I would couch surf if that’s what it took. My dad and brother both hated the event.
It was a costly and time intensive undertaking that nobody in our household wanted except my mother in the name of showing “face.”
Under no circumstances was I going to spend the holidays at home if that party was happening again. What seemed like a harsh and unloving move on my part saved my dad, brother, and extended family a lot of grief and as a result, we all started to enjoy the holidays together after that.
Drawing boundaries, especially with your own family can be very difficult but can be well worth the initial blow up.
Even if you can’t draw such a harsh line as I did, it’s okay to draw your own boundaries around the holidays. Let the parents or in-laws know that you will do this, but not that.
Opting out can be as simple as not participating in the gift exchange.
Gently (or not so gently, your call) tell whomever you need to that you won’t be doing gifts this year or hint loudly that gifts need to follow certain guidelines.
Cite climate change as a reason or a house overflowing with useless stuff as a reason, give whatever excuse you need. You’ve got one more year of using COVID-19 as an excuse.
Food Gifts
Though nearly 60% of food is wasted, giving gifts of food is still better than electronics or anything made of plastic over the holidays. If you make it yourself, all the better. There’s something about homemade food that feels very special to the receiver.
It’s more intimate because you put time and energy into making something instead of shelling out, even for expensive packaged goods. Takeout and delivery have been on fire since the start of COVID-19 and almost everyone I know is sitting on a pile of black plastic food containers. Reuse those for gift giving this season. I promise, no matter how disastrous you think the batch of cookies turned out, it will be better received than anything you can buy. For those of you not into baking, try your hand at something simple like making your own hot chocolate mix. I’ve been in love with Karma co-op since I discovered their bulk section. You can buy hot chocolate mix or the ingredients to make your own using your own containers. Last year’s spiced hot chocolate in reused jelly jars were a big hit for me.
Pillowcase/Newspaper Wraps
And lastly, if you really can’t do away with gifts, the lowest hanging fruit would be to at least wrap with newsprint or get pillowcases for the task. Either reuse some old ones or make a big song and dance about getting some festive pillowcases you can reuse year after year. Whatever it takes to get the rest of the family on board.
Reducing our reliance on fossil fuels also means reducing our reliance and addiction to stuff. It takes an incredible amount of fossil fuel to mine for the materials, to produce, and finally to transport our gadgets and gizmos over to us. We tend to think about climate change only in terms of the fossil fuels we see burning (driving being the main one). The fossil fuels that went into making our stuff is what engineers refer to as “embodied energy.” It might not seem like much, but if we all opted out of Christmas, we would do immense damage to a system that keeps us hooked on fossil fuels.
November 11th, 2021 · Comments Off on ON THE COVER: Greenspaces graded (Fall 2021)
A man sits at the edge of Jesse Ketchum Park on one of the many stone benches facing the public school of the same name. Find out how Annex parks have fared in the second summer of the pandemic in our annual park reviews, part two. MADELINE SMART/GLEANER NEWS
November 11th, 2021 · Comments Off on NEWS: Freeland wins despite lower turnout (Fall 2021)
Order of results in Uni-Rosedale largely unchanged this round
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland was re-elected for the third time in University-Rosedale on September 21. Her message that the Liberals could be relied upon to finish the fight against the pandemic and bring in $10-a-day child care earned her 47.5 per cent of votes in the riding, despite fewer polls and lowered voter turnout. COURTESY CHRYSTIA FREELAND
By Nicole Stoffman
Chrystia Freeland was re-elected for the third time as the member of Parliament for University-Rosedale in Canada’s 44th election on September 21. The Liberals won all 25 seats in the City of Toronto. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will lead his second minority government in a row with 160 seats.
University-Rosedale was formed in 2012 out of sections of Trinity-Spadina and Toronto Centre, and has only ever been represented by Freeland, the country’s current deputy prime minister and minister of intergovernmental affairs. She was first elected MP for Toronto Centre in 2013.
Voter turnout in the riding was down from 69.1 per cent in 2019 to 61.3 per cent this election. Pandemic voting protocols leading to long lines and fewer polls in University-Rosedale (down to 31 from 82 in the last election), likely had a role in discouraging voters.
Nationwide, voter turnout for the 2021 General Election was 62.25 per cent, down from 67 per cent in the last election.
Minister Freeland won with 47.5 per cent of the vote and 22,451 ballots, down from 51.4 per cent and 29,652 ballots in 2019.
Mail-in ballots have been available since 1993, but due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, over 1 million voters decided to vote this way. In the 2019 election, only 50,000 mail-in ballots were cast.
The incumbent overtook Nicole Robicheau, the NDP candidate, who received 25.2 per cent of the vote with 11,921 ballots, a vote share increase up 3 per cent from 21.9 per cent and 12,573 ballots in 2019.
“The Liberals were down 3 per cent and we were up 3 per cent,” said Robicheau, “Maybe there was less of a feeling that Conservatives were going to take power, so people were voting with their hearts as opposed to voting strategically.”
Robicheau says she met a lot of young, first time voters at the door, who were planning to support the NDP because climate was their priority issue.
Steven Taylor, the Conservative candidate, earned 20.1 per cent of the vote with 9,307 ballots, a vote share increase up from 16.3 per cent and 9,473 ballots in 2019.
“Families are worried that their children won’t be able to afford housing in the Toronto area in the future,” Taylor said. “I think the Conservative housing and economic plan offered some hope to residents in the riding.”
Tim Grant, the Green candidate, came in fourth place with 4.2 per cent of the vote and 1,974 ballots, down significantly from 8.5 per cent or 4,861 ballots in 2019.
Green party support cratered nationwide this election, from 6.5 per cent in 2019 to 2.3 per cent in 2021. Former leader Elizabeth May said the party’s poor performance was due to leaked stories about internal conflict within the party under leader Annamie Paul, who lost her seat in Toronto Centre.
Justin Trudeau called the election on August 15 when his party was ahead in the polls. The Conservatives caught up and led in the polls for a few weeks. Following the debates, Grits and Tories remained in a tight race until the bitter end, with the Liberals gaining only three seats to win a minority government with 160 seats, and the Tories losing two seats, for a total of 119 seats. With the Bloc Quebecois and NDP in third and fourth place respectively, the 44th Parliament of Canada is almost unchanged from the 43rd. The Conservatives won 33.7 per cent of the popular vote, compared to the Liberal’s 32.6 per cent.
Three Liberal cabinet ministers lost their seats, prompting Conservative pundits to call this election “A 600-million-dollar cabinet shuffle.” Trudeau was attacked for calling an election during the fourth wave of a pandemic by opposition leaders throughout the race. The prime minister countered that he needed a new mandate to steer the country out of the crisis.
Minister Freeland spent much of the 5-week campaign outside the riding in support of her fellow candidates. She campaigned on the idea that the Liberals are the best party to finish the fight against COVID-19. She also reiterated the Liberal promise to bring in a $10-a-day national child care program, build affordable housing, and a create a green economy.
From 2015 to 2017, Freeland served as Canada’s Minister of International Trade, overseeing the negotiation of Canada’s free trade agreement with the European Union (CETA).
From 2017 to 2019, she served as Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, leading the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
She was appointed deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs in 2019 and Minister of Finance in 2020.
In 2018, she was recognized as Foreign Policy’s Diplomat of the Year.
Ms. Freeland was born in Peace River, Alberta. She was educated at Harvard University before continuing her studies on a Rhodes Scholarship at the University of Oxford. Before entering politics, Ms. Freeland was a journalist for the Financial Times, The Washington Post and The Economist. She served as deputy editor of The Globe and Mail and the Financial Times. She was also a managing director at Thompson-Reuters.
She has written two books: Sale of the Century: The Inside Story of the Second Russian Revolution (2000); and Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else (2012). Plutocrats is an international best-seller and won the Lionel Gelber Prize and National Business Book Award.
Ms. Freeland speaks Russian, Ukrainian, Italian, French, and English. She lives in Toronto with her husband and three children.
After the official results came in, Freeland took to Twitter to thank those who supported her, and promised to work just as hard for those who didn’t. Due to the ongoing pandemic, there was no victory party in the riding. Minister Freeland watched the results at home with her family.
November 11th, 2021 · Comments Off on NEWS: TDSB consults after community garden razed (Fall 2021)
New plans and promises accompany hurt feelings
The once full community gardens along Palmerston Avenue Junior Public School now sit empty. MADELINE SMART/GLEANER NEWS
By Madeline Smart
On September 8, Trustee Chris Moise held a community meeting to address the abrupt razing of the Palmerston Avenue Junior Public School. The school and the TDSB faced major criticism from the community over the action, especially by those who volunteered countless hours maintaining and planting the garden over the 20 years it had stood. While sincere apologies were made and accountability was taken by Senior Facilities staff, the plans for the replanting of the garden fell short of what most community members were hoping for.
The replanting of the community garden will be added into a large-scale master plan because Senior Facilities staff are already redesigning the outdoor space that childcare and kindergarten classes share.
The school has also received other suggestions about how to use the grounds over the years, so they are taking the opportunity to redesign the entire site. This would mean that minor landscaping projects could take place in 2022 but any major ones will happen, at the earliest, in 2023 – and those will depend on available funding. Some community members expressed their concern that the garden’s progress and direction would be slowed down by bureaucracy.
“We want restitution and we want the garden to be unhitched from the master plan,” said Howard Law, a former parent of the school and community member. Law commended the board for taking accountability and creating a process in which something like this wouldn’t happen again, but he and other volunteers of the garden were taken aback by this announcement of a master plan.
“It kind of came out of left field,” he added. “I think there were some people that felt like our gardens were being railroaded into something else.”
Law says that adding the garden to a larger scale plan doesn’t provide the community with enough reassurance that it will be restored in a way that honours all the work people put into it over the years.
Richard Christie who led the meeting and works on the TDSB sustainability board encouraged any community members who wished to be involved in the master plan to connect with the school’s principal Rory Sullivan in order to become a community representative. He added that there will likely be three separate planning meetings regarding the master plan before any work will begin.
Christie also announced during the meeting, a new process of communication to ensure that nothing can be done to the garden without approval from the Senior Facilities managers and the Board’s team of landscape architects. This system will be implemented across all TDSB schools with community gardens.
“Moving forward, any work to be completed in this capacity will first be communicated with the school, providing them time for consultation with school/community groups involved, should there be further discussion/consultation about the scope or the work and what can/cannot be done,” wrote Principal Sullivan in an emailed statement following the meeting.
“There were definitely lessons to be learned here,” Moise told the Gleaner. “We are in education and I think [we’re demonstrating] the ability to show our students that it’s okay to make mistakes. As a system I think we are recovering from this and we’re moving forward, hopefully with our community.”
The Board is committed to covering the full cost of replacing the garden but it seems that for many who spent so much of their time and energy working on the original, it hurts to start from scratch after over 20 years of effort.
“All that work, all that effort, all that money, all that coordination, all that community feeling, it’s hard not to get emotional about it, because it was something that was near and dear to a lot of us,” said Caroline Murphy during the question period of the meeting. Murphy is a former parent of the school and early volunteer with the garden.
Principal Sullivan also stated that they are working on establishing a steering committee to oversee the consultation process for the master plan.
Law and other “community garden activists” have requested that the replanting of the community garden be disconnected from the master plan and start in April 2022.
November 11th, 2021 · Comments Off on NEWS: City fails to move forward as Avenue Road plans evolve (Fall 2021)
Bike lanes added to Avenue Road re-design
Avenue Road Safety Coalition has introduced a project that would create a bike lane on the east side of Avenue Road in a shared space with pedestrians. COURTESY BROWN AND STOREY
By Margarita Maltceva
Avenue Road Safety Coalition (ARSC) and Brown & Storey Architects Inc. held an online meeting September 13 to discuss their plans for making Avenue Road safer for pedestrian traffic. The project launched following the death of an 18-year-old cyclist in August, and following a report by the City of Toronto that estimates some 60,000 cars speed on the road each week. However, the city still has not hired a consultant for the project and its time frame remains unknown.
Last May, Councillor Josh Matlow moved a motion for city staff to study how a bike lane on Avenue Road would affect the flow of traffic. The initial plan by Brown & Storey Architects did not include a bike lane, but widened sidewalks for pedestrians. This would have brought the street back to what it was in the 1950s, before extra lanes were added to accommodate more cars.
After the city added a temporary bike lane on Bloor Street this year, Brown & Storey added a bi-directional bike lane to its plans for the east side of Avenue Road. This new design would consist of two 1.5-metre bike lanes separated from pedestrians by trees and lighting.
ARSC coordinator Albert Koehl told the Annex Gleaner that the new bike lane would become a part of the bike lane network connecting downtown streets.
The innovations on Avenue Road would also create a linear park with 580 new trees, potentially providing access to the Green Line and making new entrances to Ramsden Park.
James Brown, one of the founders of Brown & Storey, said the structured verges would hold trees and plants, separate the sidewalks from the road and create a “linear garden running all the way along the street.”
Councillor Matlow, who attended the meeting on September 13, expressed frustration about the lack of progress the city has made on this project.
“It will take several months or a year to do all the work, the study and the consultation,” he said, and explained that one of the reasons why the project is taking so long is because the transportation staff that would have worked on Avenue Road have been seconded to other priorities.
Matlow stressed that safety on Avenue Road also should be a priority for the city.
“The city has demonstrated during the COVID-19 pandemic that when it wants to reimagine how we use the public realm, it’s able to do so very quickly. We’ve seen that with ActiveTO and with CaféTO. Why should Avenue Road be any different? Why should it be left any less safe than any other streets?”
Apart from the pilot project, he said the city should take immediate steps to create more space on Avenue Road for pedestrian safety.
Koehl stresses that creating a safer environment for pedestrians and cyclists would also help the city achieve its Net Zero strategy – which sees residents walking or cycling to make 75 per cent of their trips under five km by 2050.
“We know we need to reduce motor traffic,” said Koehl. “And in fact, that’s exactly what the city’s policies say.”
Councillors Layton and Matlow will move another motion on October 2 to ask the city to evaluate and consider the changes proposed by the ARSC.
November 11th, 2021 · Comments Off on CHATTER: ARA’s ambitious tree audit planned for renewal in 2022 (Fall 2021)
This 400 year old oak tree off Spadina Avenue is one of the oldest trees in the city. The ARA is about to update its survey of all 10,000 trees in the Annex. New data will help protect the tree canopy from developers, says project lead, Terri Chu. GLEANER FILE PHOTO/COURTESY MICHAEL LOW
In 2009 the Annex Residents Association (ARA) took on the impressive task of cataloging over 10,000 trees in the Annex neighbourhood. A team of forestry students and numerous volunteers worked over the course of four summers logging the trees’ species, age, varieties and their ownership. Now, 12 years later, they’re looking to do it all over again.
“If we don’t collect data, we won’t know what has happened to our trees,” said Terri Chu, the chair of the ARA’s Environment Committee. The last 10 years have been hard on the Annex tree canopy, especially with the wind and ice storm of 2018 which Chu estimates caused a loss of about 1,000 trees. So, the canopy is overdue for a checkup.
The survey will give the ARA an accurate accounting of where trees have been lost and where new ones need to be planted. This will also help keep the City of Toronto accountable to their promise of expanding the city’s tree canopy to 40 per cent by 2057, said Chu.
The data can also be beneficial when it comes to new developers looking to build in the neighbourhood.
“How will we argue in favour of preserving trees, especially really mature ones, if say a developer wants to uproot six of them to put a larger condo in?” Chu asks.
Chu supports densification in the city, but says she also believes there needs to be a balance. With a newer set of data on the trees in the area Chu says they’ll be able to better fight back against developers in order to continue to preserve the canopy.
A comprehensive study on the individual species of trees will possibly help catch any early warnings of disease and help predict which trees will soon be reaching the end of their life span.
“Conceivably we’re going to start having gaps in the canopy here and there in 10 years, 20 years, and the time to start planting those trees is not 10 years from now, it’s today.”
It’s no secret that the Annex is known for its tree-lined streets. The trees add practical value like shade on hot sunny days and increased property value but they also simply make it more beautiful and enjoyable to get outside and take a walk, something that has become increasingly important during this pandemic.
The committee estimates that the survey will cost $15,000 for each of the four years but, if they can raise half, or $7,500 per year, they can apply for a grant for the rest. The committee received $2,000 from Cohen and Masters, and $5,500 from a community fundraising drive, reaching their goal for this year. The campaign will repeat yearly for the next four years. Chu hopes to raise another $7,500 with a grant from MITACS, a national non profit that partners with industry and academia. If she is successful, she’ll be able to hire two U of T forestry students to expedite the survey.
November 11th, 2021 · Comments Off on CHATTER: Access to winterized washrooms set to improve (Fall 2021)
In 2021, the City of Toronto opened up 79 new public washrooms for use throughout the winter, nearly doubling the previous number. This project was a direct response to pandemic restrictions which made access to public washrooms extra challenging, making life especially hard for vulnerable segments of the population.
Bickford Park and Dufferin Grove are among the 148 City of Toronto parks that now have accessible public washrooms all year long.
To build and improve upon this project, the city’s parks department wants to make five more washrooms operational and increase the number of park pathways and trails that get ploughed following a snowfall. High traffic areas and pathways that link parks and community centres to major roadways and TTC stations will be prioritized by this plan.
Councillor Mike Layton (Ward 11) supports this plan. His own experience of having to carry a stroller with a child inside through three feet of snow along the sidewalk beside Christie Pits Park demonstrates its necessity, he said.
However, Deputy Mayor Denzil Minnan-Wong questions the larger plan of expanding access to park washrooms through the winter months, suggesting that providing this service may “have the unintended consequence of encouraging encampments.”
Edith Wilson, who runs a website called torontotoilets.org says the deputy mayor’s resistance to the expansion of public washrooms is “classic City of Toronto.”
In 2018, Wilson completed a Master’s Thesis in Sociology from the University of Guelph titled Washrooms for Customer’s Only: Space, Dignity and Sh*tting in the City.
“My archival research showed that not having public washrooms in the city was politically deliberate, and the strategy dates back to the 1950s,” says Wilson. “Any time there is an expansion of public washrooms I consider that a good thing, however, the expansion of their maintenance needs to happen as well. There’s no low-cost solution to this.”
Councillor Layton moved to adopt the motion at the city’s October 26 Infrastructure and Environment Committee Meeting.
—Meribeth Deen/Gleaner News
Comments Off on CHATTER: Access to winterized washrooms set to improve (Fall 2021)Tags:Annex · News
