Letting people park to pray shouldn’t be so hard
One day a week, for a few hours, so people can pray.
It’s not a big ask.
Yes, traffic at Dominion Boulevard and Northwood Street is a nightmare, with two schools, a mosque, dozens of new houses nearby — and an absurdly inadequate road that merges into two lanes with ditches at the side. The fix is coming, but it will eliminate 47 parking spaces on Dominion between E. C. Row Expressway and Northwood to redesign the road and intersection. And that will exacerbate another problem, inadequate parking for Muslims who stream to Windsor Mosque at that intersection on Fridays to worship. Should the city allow parking on five nearby residential streets on Fridays for five hours to help accommodate them? No! residents declared.
People don’t want more traffic in their neighbourhood, understandably. But will a few hours, until a permanent solution can be found, threaten the safety of their children and the value of their homes, as some residents argued at city council on Monday? Will it prevent ambulances and fire trucks from accessing the neighbourhood for emergencies? Is it a “monumental safety issue,” as one resident proclaimed? Does it violate residents’ rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms?
No.
At his final council meeting, after four years of sometimes putting his foot in his mouth, Ward 10 Coun. Paul Borrelli was eloquent.
Some of the residents’ arguments are justifiable, he said, “however some of the arguments mentioned to me are not justifiable and lack a sense of fairness and goodwill that is needed to sustain a peaceful and healthy community.” Worshippers at other churches in Windsor are allowed to park on residential streets for a few hours to attend services. Why can’t Muslims to do the same to attend their mosque?
The mosque isn’t the sole source of the problem. Northwood public elementary school, on the other side of the intersection, has capacity for 824 students. It has 1,048 students. It has been over capacity for at least six years. It built an addition in the last decade and still has at least seven portable classrooms. Needless to say, the school board didn’t expect this. Holy Names high school, next to the mosque, has capacity for 1,083 students. It has 1,239 students and 12 portable classrooms. An entire new subdivision with new streets and dozens of new houses has popped up nearby, west of Dominion. Ward 10 is one of the fastest-growing wards in the city.
And the mosque, too, is growing.
About 3,500 Muslims attend mandatory Friday prayers. When the mosque was built in 1968, it could accommodate everyone. Then, after the Gulf War in 1991, when more Muslims came to Canada, it built an addition. Then came the Somalis, who are Muslim. Windsor welcomed more than 3,000 Syrians over the last several years. The majority are Muslim. Many go to Windsor Mosque because it offers a food bank, help with housing and employment and counselling. Windsor is one of the most diverse cities in Canada.
We have something like 35,000 Muslims, the highest percentage in Canada, said Imam Mohamed M. Al-Jammali.
Is adjusting to changing demographics part of the problem? The problem, say some people, is that the main day of prayer is on a weekday, which adds to the traffic. But that is their religion. The mosque is too big for that location, people say. It’s trying to address that. It offers two services to accommodate all the people. It has encouraged people to carpool and attend prayers at other mosques. It has looked at expanding its parking lot by buying adjacent houses. It bought a lot on the corner for parking, but there are challenges to using that. It also bought a former church on McKay Avenue that it uses for teaching and parking.
It hopes to buy a building in the west end within a year to convert to a mosque for Muslims who live there. It’s also looking for land in the east end to build a new mosque.
“We have a short-term plan and a long-term plan,” said AlJammali.
Led by Borrelli, council agreed to allow parking on Fridays for four hours on four residential streets. But that’s probably not the end of this, a staff report warns.
Under the city’s parking policy, if at least 60 per cent of residents petition council to reverse its decision — 76 per cent signed a petition last year opposing the change — it will be reversed. I’m not religious, but maybe we could use a little reflection.