When complaints enter the realm of the absurd
Grumpy Torontonians, I’d like to make a gentle suggestion, if you don’t mind. If you find yourself printing up fliers, setting up barricades and (this is important) calling the newspapers about a proposed change to your neighbourhood, stop first, and listen to your own complaint.
Then, ask yourself one question: am I being absurd?
If that proves difficult to answer, try another: is my complaint so transparently petty and smallminded that it will make me look like an entitled whiner?
If your answer to either of these is “Yes,” stop what you are doing. Better safe than silly.
It sounds obvious enough, but diagnosing your own level of petty ridiculosity is apparently more difficult than it sounds, judging by the amount of patently absurd, petty, small-minded, entitled whining by concerned neighbours that makes it into the news.
Exhibit A: Helen Coltrinari of Cabbagetown, a past chair of the local preservation association, recently found herself talking to Justin Skinner, a reporter from the local Metroland community newspaper, about an umbrella over a splash pad being installed in a local park. This is what she said: “It’s a bright blue, which isn’t even a heritage colour.”
If you’re struggling to understand why this is something a person would say out loud, you don’t know Cabbagetown. But it gets worse. It seems the city had already acceded to her complaint, and promised to replace the blue umbrella. She’d won! But she remained grumpy. “Now the concern is, will they pick a heritage colour? Lime green’s not a heritage colour — we want something muted in the park.”
Oh, yes, of course. If there’s anything that suggests “muted” as the appropriate mood, it’s a children’s water playground. You start with the bright colours and kiddies might get the idea they’re supposed to have fun.
Fun. That prospect seems to be the source of concern for another neighbour quoted by Skinner, who suggested it was going to be a “hyperactive Disneyland of waterworks,” on the order of a miniature “Cirque du Soleil.”
See, to most people a park playground that could be compared to Disneyland or the circus would be a desirable community asset. But in Cabbagetown, I suspect many reason that if you build something festive in the playground, people with young children might be attracted to the neighbourhood, and the next thing you know they’re putting basketball nets in their front yard and chaining bikes to the porch.
And then you have to write a passive-aggressive letter about it and become the object of citywide mockery.
But here’s the thing: the attempt to head off that prospect by complaining about the park draws citywide mockery itself, because it is selfevidently absurd. The whole thing backfires.
Ask the residents up on Keewatin Ave., who had their own complaints, about so-called “density creep,” inspire citywide mockery late last month. The group objected to a proposal to build a four-storey townhome development on their street, which is near the transit hub of Yonge and Eglinton. At least some of them were worried — gasp! — that it might break up their millionaires row by introducing a lower class of resident, mere half-millionaires. “They’re looking at putting in places that are only $500,000,” a stay-at-expensive-home mom told the Star.
The transparent elitism, combined with the fact that a four-storey development doesn’t even rise to the level of midrise, combined with the fact that the proposed development faces directly onto the lots of a bunch of existing highrise apartment towers, made their awareness campaign become the butt of jokes rather than support.
There are plenty of legitimate reasons to be concerned about development and change in Toronto. Is enough infrastructure being built to support particular developments? Are historical and important buildings being demolished? Are buildings being designed in a way that will keep the neighbour- hood’s streets vibrant?
These are good questions that often inspire valid complaints. There are even legitimate cases where proposed changes would transform the entire character of a place for the worse — ruining a great place to live.
But townhouses and splash pads, really, are not typical of those proposed overhauls.
Most often, “preserving the character of the neighbourhood” is simply a NIMBY code-word for “my complaint is absurd.” When you hear people talking about it, they generally accomplish little more than to give everyone else the idea that the neighbourhood’s existing character is marked by petty, whiny jerkiness.
And that’s a bit of local heritage none of the rest of us really cares to protect. Edward Keenan writes on city issues ekeenan@thestar.ca. Follow: @thekeenanwire