UP THE CREEK
Cutting down trees on your private ravine property may not be legal. But don’t think the lands are protected from condo developers
Homeowners say Toronto isn’t doing enough to protect ravines on private land,
Olev Edur bought his property on the north side of Kingston Rd. near Main St. because he loved the backyard, a steep slope that went 30 metres down into the Glen Davis Ravine.
He didn’t have trees on his property but he loved the views of evergreens growing in his neighbours’ backyards. And there was a stand of red oaks in the distance.
It was December 1997 and the deciduous trees were bare. The next spring, Edur had lost his view of the ravine, a small forest of trees hemmed in by houses and all on private land.
Fast-growing Manitoba maples — sometimes called “weed trees” because of their ability to self-seed — grew like “Triffids” in his neighbours’ backyards.
Their limbs stretched all the way to Edur’s yard, where their leafy growth eventually closed out the light.
The branches were so close they would “knock on my kitchen window,” Edur says. “You’d have to look straight up (from the window) to see the sky. It was pretty scary.” The living wall made his backyard so dark he needed a flashlight to get around in daytime.
But what he did about it wouldn’t be legal now.
With his neighbours’ help, Edur climbed trees and began cutting them down. Within about five years, he had cleared the land. He used the stumps to hold back soil so he could terrace the steep grade behind his house. And he dragged abandoned bricks from the ravine’s bottom and cemented them to form the borders of gardens.
Edur chronicled his yard’s paradisiacal transformation in his book, Ravine Diary: Of How a Rubble-Strewn Wood-Infested Urban Ravine Became a Spectacular Wildlife Mecca.
That magical metamorphosis could never take place in 2016. City staff wrote a tough new harmonized ravine bylaw in 2002 that effectively says Edur can’t cut down a tree of any size, add or remove soil that would change the grade, or build on it without a permit.
Then in 2011, the city approved a developer’s proposal for a six-storey condo next door.
The building is symbolic of the paradox in Toronto, where the official plan — the city’s multi-year road map — says the ravines should be protected and enhanced but doesn’t say that developers can’t build on them.
Forty per cent of the city’s ravine land is privately owned, like Edur’s, and spread over 30,000 residential addresses. Homeowners pay taxes on the land, which is their backyard.
A new ravine strategy is being worked on by city staff. It will look at climate change, managing infrastructure and utilities, way-finding and raising awareness, but only for public ravines — the biggies like the Humber and Don Valley.
Staff aren’t looking at issues such as development on private ravines. Or even how to manage invasive species like the Norway maple and Manitoba maple, a problem not only in the Glen Davis Ravine but citywide.
In some areas, such as Rosedale’s Park Drive Ravine, invasive species have already taken over 40 per cent of the forest, according to University of Toronto researchers. When there are fewer tree species, the forest becomes less resilient and could collapse more easily when stressed, says researcher Anqi Dong. Eventually, the dominant trees and vines will change the way our forests look.
The ravine strategy is also not expected to produce new bylaws.
“We have a lot of layers of protection of the ravines and they’re pretty robust,” says Jane Welsh, a city project manager for environmental planning who wrote the harmonized bylaw in 2002. “If we felt we needed augmented protection, we would have done that when we revised the official plan policies last year — the environmental sections. We felt it does and is working well.”
In neighbourhoods like Edur’s, residents don’t always feel that it’s enough.
At a public meeting in early 2010 to discuss the proposed condos beside Edur — at 580, 590 and 592 Kingston Rd. — more than 50 people showed up to voice their dissatisfaction.
Residents were concerned the building was too big and would set a precedent for other developers on Kingston Rd. They worried about water runoff, which could increase basement flooding, already a problem in the area. They were concerned about erosion and the impact on the ravine.
The city sought a number of changes but approved the condo in princi-
ple in January 2011. But the delayed decision meant the developer could go before the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB), an independent body that has the power to hear disputes. Community members formed Friends of Glen Davis Ravine and mobilized to fight the developer, and the city, at the OMB.
“What we wanted was responsible development,” says Viive Raamat, whose home on Glen Davis Cres. backs onto the condo. The developer wanted six storeys instead of four, which was the height the property was zoned for.
The group held silent auctions that regularly brought in thousands of dollars, says Raamat, who served as secretary. They organized concerts and produced a calendar signed by Geoff Cape, the founding CEO of Evergreen. They raised $100,000, and used part of it to hire an environmental law firm.
“It was a full-time job,” says Raamat of her role. “I had a full-time job, but I’d come home and you’d start all over again.”
The Friends “lost badly” in December of 2011, says Raamat, and at the time, the group was still in debt.
The OMB ruled in favour of the developer, declaring that the building was in keeping with the existing homes and mid-rises on Kingston Rd. and that the light and privacy issues would be dealt with by stepping back the upper floors. A loading space was also moved to the side of the building instead of further into the ravine.
“We were shocked because we had a leading environmental law firm go to bat for us,” says Martin Gladstone, who belonged to the Friends, although he didn’t live on the ravine. “We were reasonably confident we had all the facts and law on our side.”
The builder was allowed to remove 15 of 17 existing trees in return for planting 27 native species and 208 shrubs.
“Honestly, city hall seems to be driven by developers,” says Gladstone. “It’s a different ball game for homeowners. They are tied to the rules and regulations. But developers can change density, change absolutely everything.”
The OMB hearing was the third time Raamat had gone to bat for the land. She originally asked the city for the ravine classification in 1988, a year after she bought her house, and it was granted.
Two years later, she and a neighbour defended the classification at the OMB against a developer amass- ing property on Kingston Rd. Then alderman Tom Jakobek, who lived nearby, fought to get a city solicitor to represent Raamat and her neighbour at the hearing, and they won. That was another year or two out of her life.
“It was pretty awesome that we did win (the classification),” says Raamat. “But it was just a designation with some of what we thought was going to be ravine protection.”
Then she fought the condo beside Edur’s at the OMB. The exterior of that building was finished last year and there are two more condos going in just east of it.
“Everybody along the strip is doing six storeys, says Raamat. “It’s continuous. They’re going to do the whole ridge.”
She’s lost her winter sun, although she concedes, as did the OMB, that hers is one of only a few homes affected. But during those months, when the trees are bare, “it’s like living in a fishbowl,” she says.
Security lights from the condo lit her home’s interior like a showcase, until she called the city to have them repositioned. And everything is amplified, says Raamat. She can hear the building’s fans. “It’s a ravine. I can hear the guy on his balcony talking about what kind of drink he was having last Friday with his buddy.”
Now neighbours farther up the road on the Glen Stewart Ravine, which is much bigger and has public and private land, are gearing up to fight a seven-storey proposal at the corner of Beech Ave.
“You slowly inch away at the private ravines,” says Raamat, “and eventually you’re left with nothing.”