When I heard about the Toronto Environmental Alliance members jamming a community meeting about windmills in Guildwood Village, I experienced deja vu.
Three years ago I attended a meeting of the Regal Heights Residence Association, a small community group of about 70 members, of which usually 40 attend the spring and fall meetings. As soon as I walked into the room I saw that this meeting was different: over 100 people crammed the room. The TTC were there to convince us that we had chosen a streetcar Right of Way for St. Clair, even though it would force congestion-raged drivers into our quiet side streets and eliminate 25% of parking on St. Clair, to the detriment of our retail stores.
I was stunned that every time Mitch Stambler of the TTC finished a paragraph in his power-point presentation, the room would explode with the kind of thunderous applause usually reserved for rock stars or dictators. The reality dawned on me when the TTC packed up and left at the end of their presentation: their clappers, over sixty of them, got up and left too, leaving only me and my neighbours, about the usual forty people, to debate what to do about the ROW. This was my first experience with the Toronto Environmental Alliance.
Since I fought that street car ROW to the bitter end, I can tell residents of Guildwood Village what to expect over the coming months:
First: Anyone who opposes the windmills or asks uncomfortable questions about bird populations, etc will be marginalized, ridiculed and belittled in the media by representatives of the Toronto Environmental Alliance. Councillor Gord Perks, Miller's pick for Parkdale, is a former president of the TEA.
They will call you NIMBYS (Not In My Back Yard); they will call you old, as if age is leprosy, and they will say you are afraid of change. Note: these terms are never used in reference to the Toronto Islanders, who fought a bridge in their backyard.
They will say that "the good of the greater community" trumps local concerns.
Second: Toronto Hydro will present you with statistics that are not lies, but do not tell the story. For example: the TTC bragged to us that the Spadina streetcar running in its ROW is faster than the bus that ran the year before. Here's the catch: the year before, Spadina was under massive construction for the ROW. If you compare the street car to the bus TWO YEARS before you'll find the bus was actually faster. Why? Far side loading. The bus loaded passengers at the red lights. The streetcar platforms on Spadina are on the far side of the intersection, so after sitting at a red light, the street car proceeds through the intersection and stops again to load and unload passengers. The red light is just wasted time.
Third: If Guildwood forms a citizens' group to look for other options than towering windmills, a shadowy, well-funded group will appear that is vigorously in favour of the windmills. This group will only have two or three members who are clearly from the neighbourhood. The rest will be university age people who don't live in Guildwood. In our case, a lot of planning and transportation students from the University of Toronto spoke in favour of the ROW, as did their professor at the Sept 13th 2005 deputations at city hall.
The most important thing Guildwood Village residents can do if they don't want the sight of windmills rising from the lake is to suggest an alternative.
Here's my idea: Why doesn't Toronto Hydro put up a test anemometer on Toronto Island, say about one hundred yards south of the beach? I'm willing to bet a few Islander's are members of the Toronto Environmental Alliance, so I'm sure they won't be NIMBYS and complain about the possibility of windmills marring their view of the lake. In fact, maybe they'll support a bridge to Toronto Island to make it easier for construction and maintenance of the windmills. After all, it is for "the good of the greater community," so I'm sure local concerns won't be an issue.
Mike Downtown
In this case, the opposition appears to have already been frightened away. Although I hope I am wrong.
A second, more locally oriented meeting (later this month) may prove me wrong.
Posted by: WiseGuy | January 05, 2009 at 11:24 PM