Blowing smoke on the water
Eye - May 12, 2005
EDITORAL
Blowing smoke on the water
We'd like to register a noise complaint. We understand how sound carries across the water, so sometimes what seems a perfectly reasonable decibel level on one shore sounds like an overwhelming cacophony when it reaches the other. It's possible the noisemakers are decent people, but really: we've got to live here, so could they please shut up?
We're speaking, of course, of the residents of the Toronto islands, whose self-righteous, high-pitched whinging has been making it impossible for the rest of us to concentrate for more than a generation.
Most recently, the little cottage community raised an almighty shriek on May 4, when they discovered that the Wakestock Festival -- a four-day, daytime-only festival of wakeboarding, skateboarding, motor-cross racing, bands and bikinis expected to draw 40,000 visitors -- would be coming to Centre and Olympic Islands in August. Island residents and the city councillor who represents them, Pam McConnell, cried that the boisterous festival would be too much for their little community to handle. "I can tell you there is no way this is going back to the Toronto islands next year," McConnell was quoted as saying in the Toronto Star.
These complaints come from faces already red from screaming about the noise from the summertime sports and drinking theme park that is The Docks nightclub on the waterfront, at the foot of Cherry Street. There are some things we don't love about The Docks -- the drunken jocks who dominate the patio, for a start -- but when they opened 10 years ago in the nearly deserted industrial ghost town of the port lands, we never imagined noise complaints. After all, no one lives down there, right? Except, of course, the 600 privileged souls paying a buck a day to lease public parkland on the islands across the eastern gap. The thumping bass of The Docks, the islanders say, is tortuous, keeping them up all night. In response, the city has supported their contention that The Docks' liquor licence should not be renewed.
A little background may be helpful here: once, the Toronto islands were busy and well populated, housing "Canada's Coney Island," a baseball park and hundreds of homes. In 1956, ownership of the islands was transferred to Metropolitan Toronto for the purpose of being transformed into a public park. The businesses and homes on Hanlan's Point and Centre Island were demolished as leases expired. Then in 1973, after having already granted a one-time lease extension, Metro Council voted to evict the remaining residential tenants -- those on Ward's Island and Algonquin Island -- so that plans for a parkland oasis for all Torontonians could be completed. The residents, however, fought. And fought. Finally, in 1979, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled on the issue, upholding the eviction and ordering the residents out. Still, the residents refused to move.
In 1981, the province passed a law juggling jurisdiction so that the islanders could stay. But because of disputes over leasing terms, the residents paid no rent (or city taxes) for several years, forcing Toronto taxpayers to pick up the tab for them.
For some reason, this lawless recalcitrance was rewarded by the provincial government in 1993, when the residents were given 99-year leases on their property for about a dollar a day.
So the legal question was resolved: island residents have a contractual agreement to lease the land. Some may say they got too good a deal, but a deal they have, and no one recently has suggested we renege.
Still, the islanders don't have to be such sore winners. At every turn, they protest any use of the public parklands around them that upsets the bucolic feel of their community. They opposed the construction of a wave pool on Hanlan's Point in the '80s, they opposed the construction of a new residential co-op on the island (!) in the '90s, they oppose The Docks and they oppose Wakestock.
Even when we agree with their position -- as we did when they led the fight against the island airport expansion in 2003 -- we doubt their motives are the same as ours. We were worried about maintaining the possibility of a harbour, island and mainland that all Torontonians could enjoy. We suspect the residents of the Toronto islands were worried their neighbourhood would get noisy.
We don't begrudge them their homes, nor the fact that they rent land from us at a price significantly lower than market value. But it'd be nice if they keep in mind that they live on land owned by all of us and set aside for community use, surrounded by land set aside for community use, across the water from land we very much want to develop into a vibrant part of Toronto. Sometimes the community will want to build a nightclub. Sometimes the community will want to give noisy kids a place to play. And if the island residents can't handle the decibel level, they can always move to the suburbs. Things would sure get a lot quieter on the waterfront if they did.
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Seriously, I've had enough and if I was Government of Ontario today, I would have evicted their asses off the Island long ago.
Louroz
