Parkdale’s vulnerable hanging from a thread
Thank you very much for Lisa Ferguson’s article spotlighting the affordable housing crisis and struggles of the disadvantaged in Parkdale (NOW, March 23-29). I am one of the five people who worked for the Parkdale Neighbourhood Land Trust canvassing rooming houses.
I currently live in a substandard rooming house, after a mass eviction from the erstwhile Queen’s Hotel in 2015, with six days notice. I managed to land the room in which I’m currently flopping mere hours before the eviction. Most of the hotel’s other tenants weren’t so lucky: it was couch surfing, lean-tos in ravines, pup tents and the violent, overcrowded shelter system for them. Many lost all their worldly possessions. In the wake of the eviction, the new owners made minor improvements, doubled the room rates, changed its name to the Roncey Hotel and started advertising for tourists on AirBnB, Kijiji and Craigslist.
I am grateful for my squalid digs – mould, bedbugs, roaches and all. The alternatives are too grim too contemplate.
So it was with great pleasure that I came across your piece about PNLT. Please continue to shine a light on our struggle for a Parkdale that works for the people, not the developers. The neighbourhood’s most vulnerable are hanging on by a thread.
P. Snider, South Parkdale
Life in the fast laneway
Congratulations to Richard Trapunski for an excellent article about the housing potential of Toronto’s back lanes (NOW, March 23-29). I’m not sure how many recent laneway houses are affordable (they’re not called carriage houses for nothing), but our back lanes are perfect laboratories for experimental architecture.
Croft Street (named after John Croft, a hero of Toronto’s great fire of 1904), which looks so elegant in Tanja-Tiziana’s beautiful photographs, has been home to the Toronto Ambulance Service, Empire Auto Shop, Peerless Enterprises sheet metal fabricators, Eastern Rug Cleaning, two photographic studios, the National Bait Company and, during World War I, a munitions factory. In the 21st century a munitions factory might not be welcome, but might there be room for the arts, crafts and technologies of this age of innovation?
What Croft Street does have room for right now is graffiti, in a tight little canyon of imagination that extends from College to Harbord.
Richard Longley, Toronto
Judge’s in-court antics were sexist
Re The Rapenomics Of Sexual Assault, by Jane Doe (NOW, March 23-29). I totally agree with Doe’s critical article in support of rape survivor/human rights activist Mandi Gray. Justice Michael Dambrot’s snickering and old-boy gestures in open court were obviously insensitive and sexist. I very much hope Gray wins her appeal, but win or lose, she’s a hero in my book.
Don Weitz, Toronto
Why CSIS dismisses white rights groups
Re CSIS’s Alternative Facts Universe, by Matthew Behrens (NOW, March 16-22). CSIS has a strong incentive to downplay and dismiss the Canadian white supremacist movement: they helped to create it!
Undercover agent Grant Bristow co-founded the Heritage Front, teaching young wannabe Nazis how to harass their targets like professionals. He was the driving force behind the group’s crimes. No doubt CSIS would prefer we forget their role in that history.
Brian Taylor, Toronto
Don’t be afraid of the tap water
I read with interest your article Pesticide Banned In Europe Found In Toronto’s Tap Water (NOW, March 19). The most important point in this article, and something that should not be lost on your readers, is that no concentrations of atrazine found were above the Canadian standard set for this active ingredient.
Rather than use this to suggest that our standards are too low, it should be highlighted as a positive example of a system that works to protect the health and safety of Canadians and the environment.
While atrazine is not registered in the European Union (EU), it has received favourable reviews, including a safety assessment conducted by the UK authority on behalf of the EU.
While it would be premature to comment on the most recent review of atrazine as it is not yet final, our regulatory system is not alone in its positive assessment.
The World Health Organization and science-based regulators in many countries around the world have repeatedly approved atrazine as safe, effective and suitable for use.
Chris Davison, Head, corporate affairs, Syngenta Canada Inc., Guelph
Jewish settlers bushwhacked
Re Norman Wilner’s article The Settlers Sheds Light On Zionist Fanatics (NOW, March 15). Its allusions to “international law” regarding “Israeli settlements” don’t acknowledge that Israel is the victim and the Palestinians the aggressors.
The Palestinians and their children who experience hardship are the victims of the Palestinian Authority.
To portray Israeli construction even on disputed land as the equivalent of Palestinians blowing up buses is nothing less than monstrous.
Rodney Mazinter, Camps Bay, South Africa
