BLATCHFORD ON AN UNNEIGHBOURLY COURT CASE.

To borrow from Joseph Conrad: “The horror! The horror!” It was Sept. 7, 2015, about 11 a.m. on Labour Day. Cristina Panneton was asleep in her home in the delicious, leafy, most sweetly affluent part of Toronto called Hoggs Hollow.

That’s when “the trades” arrived two yards over with their leaf blowers.

“Trades,” Panneton said, “are not allowed to work on statutory holidays.”

Though she was wearing pearls, she did not clutch them as she was testifying in a provincial offences trial at Toronto Old City Hall courts Monday.

“I was sleeping,” she continued, “and they (the vile trades) disturbed me, and I had to get up and shut the windows.”

Tragically, she could not get back to sleep, and thus made an entry in the “noise diary” municipal officials gave her. Under “Type of Noise,” she wrote: “Landscaping equipment — lawnmowers, blowers, etc.” Under “Location where Disturbed and How You are Affected,” she wrote: “Ongoing stress of violating Statutory Holiday restrictions and disturbing the quiet enjoyment in and around our home.”

For Panneton and her husband John, the incident came at the end of a summer’s worth of what they deemed relentless noise coming from the house, 40 metres and a big back yard away, owned by Rana and Hashem Ghadaki.

There were the occasional breaches by one or another of the “trades” sneaking in on a holiday. There was the music pounding from little speakers, cunningly disguised as rocks, dotting the Ghadaki yard, said music variously described by Panneton as electronic dance music, “Hispanic music” and dance party music with a lot of sax and bass.

And there was the assault on the ears from the egregious Ghadaki fountain.

Of the 30 dates Panneton documented in her noise diary, 11 mentioned the fountain.

Nader Hasan, who represents the Ghadakis, was interested in the fountain complaints as the trial — it could go five days but lawyers are praying for three — began. The fountain, he asked? “I heard water and a fountain, yes,” Panneton said.

“And that disturbed you?” Hasan asked.

“Yes,” Panneton replied. “Altogether it was …”

“The water disturbed you?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said again. “The movement was … yes.”

The Ghadakis are charged with breaches of Chapter 591 of the City of Toronto Municipal Code, which prohibits residents from “making, causing or permitting” any noise that may disturb the peace and quiet of any other residents. They are pleading not guilty.

It is their lawyer’s position, as he told Justice of the Peace Sunny Ng, that the Ghadakis will “give a starkly different version” of events, that Panneton is “hypersensitive about noise” and not the requisite “reasonable person” such bylaws are meant to accommodate, that she is an anti-noise advocate, and the Pannetons bear a “racial animus” against the Ghadakis.

“The Ghadakis are immigrants in Hoggs Hollow,” Hasan told Ng at one point, and he confronted Panneton with it, too.

“I don’t care who is making the noise, if it’s Led Zeppelin or whatever,” she snapped.

For Hasan and the Ghadakis, the telling moment came on July 3, 2015, when the Pannetons had a dinner guest and were hoping for a BBQ by their pool.

The two women were inside, John Panneton outside at the BBQ, when they heard raised voices and an argument.

At the sight of John Panneton’s red face, she flew outside and found him arguing with two people on the Ghadaki property. They were shouting, John Panneton saying something like “Turn down the effing noise” and one of the men on the Ghadaki side replying, “You don’t tell me what to do!”

Cristina Panneton said she began crying, they ate indoors, and she called Toronto police.

In cross-examination by Hasan, John Panneton agreed the last thing he shouted was, “Why don’t you go home?”

But he denied Hasan’s suggestion what he really meant was “go home to your country of origin.” Rather, he said, he meant they should return to the neighbourhood from which they’d come.

He acknowledged, however, that to immigrants — the Ghadakis are originally from Iran — his remark could have been interpreted that way, and he admitted he lost his temper.

“I just wanted to stop what was going on,” he said. “I’d had enough.”

The couples are so alike it’s a wonder they can’t see it.

The men are in their 70s, big wheels or former big wheels, John Panneton in the investment business, Hashem Ghadaki in real estate. Their wives are that right, reasonable bit younger, all of them still beautifully put together and stylish. They have lovely homes with pools in Hoggs Hollow, surrounded by ravine and city forest. They’re affluent and accomplished and lucky beyond bearing.

How does a fountain get to be at the heart of darkness?