The (noisy) fountain at the dark heart of affluence
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,” said Ms. Panneton, “are not allowed to work on statutory holidays.”
Though she was wearing pearls, she did not actually 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 had given 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.”
In fairness, for Ms. Panneton and her husband John, the incident came at the end of a summer’s worth of what they deemed was relentless noise, and of all sorts too, coming from the house, 40 metres and a big backyard away, that is owned by Rana and Hashem Ghadaki.
There were t he occasional breaches by one or another of the trades sneaking in on a holiday. There was the music pounding at them from the little speakers, cunningly disguised as rocks, dotting the Ghadaki yard, said music variously described by Ms. Panneton as electronic dance music, “Hispanic music” and dance party music with a lot of sax and bass.
And there was, too, the assault on the ears from the egregious Ghadaki fountain.
Of the 30 dates Ms. Panneton documented in her noise diary, 11 mentioned the offending fountain, sometimes as the lead item.
A sample, from July 7: “Type of Noise: Fountain, Amplified Hispanic noise, drums bass, shouting in yard, vocals.”
Nader Hasan, who represents the Ghadakis, was very interested in the fountain complaints as the trial — it could go five days but the lawyers are praying for three — got underway. The fountain, he asked? “I heard water and a fountain, yes,” said Ms. Panneton.
“And that disturbed you?” Hasan asked.
“Yes,” said Ms. Panneton. “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. It is apparently a problematic bylaw because of its vagueness.
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 Ms. Panneton is “hypersensitive about noise “and not the requisite “reasonable person” such bylaws are meant to accommodate, that she is an anti-noise advocate to boot and that 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 Ms. Panneton with it too.
“You’re concerned with noise created by people who are culturally different from you?” he asked.
“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 lovely BBQ outside by their pool.
The two women were inside, Mr. Panneton outside at the BBQ, when they heard raised voices and an argument.
At the sight of his red face, she flew outside and found him arguing with two people on the Ghadaki property. They were shouting over the yard between their places, Mr. 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!”
Ms. Panneton said she began crying, and in the end, they and their guest ate indoors, and she called Toronto police.
But by Mr. Panneton’s admission, in cross- examination by Hasan, he also agreed the last thing he shouted was, “Why don’t you go home?”
But he denied Hasan’s suggestion that 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’d lost his temper.
“I j ust 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, Mr. Panneton in the investment business, Mr. 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?