Deputation for: City of Toronto Planning and Growth Committee
June 18, 2012
Good Morning/Afternoon
My name is Terry Smith and I am a resident of Fourth Street
in South Etobicoke and I am speaking on behalf of family, neighbours and
myself. We all live near the lake end
of our street.
I have lived in the Lakeshore area for thirty years, am on
the steering committee of Lakeshore Planning Council and I am a co-founder of Friends
of Sam Smith Park. The Etobicoke Guardian elected me last year Urban
Hero for the Environment.
We are delighted to see that the Toronto Preservation Board
is here today to ask the committee to receive proposed Heritage Policy
revisions to the Official Plan that include amendments to the View and Vista Policies section. We are even more delighted
to see that, within that section, Fourth Street, our street, among others, is
listed as an “important vista” on the Official
Plan Map for Conservation and that the view of Lake Ontario from the bottom
of our street should be protected as a view of “an important natural heritage
feature”.
This is formal,
official language for something that those of us who live on our street and in
our lakeside community as well as the countless visitors who pass by on the
Waterfront Trail already know in our hearts.
The spots at the road ends along our shoreline listed by the heritage
staff connect us to the lake and provide small, intimate opportunities
for interaction with the water. We can
see the lake, hear the lake, the birds, the waves, the creaking of the ice in
winter, watch the storms approach, taste the coolness in the air, the fog,
marvel at the view of downtown and the Toronto islands across the bay, the
kayaks and sailboats or simply experience on a warm, still day the close,
comforting, presence of the water that soothes our souls with its natural beauty. These are places where there once were
public swimming beaches and fishing holes, piers, picnic spots, places where
people launched canoes.
Visual and physical
access to the lake is our heritage, both natural and cultural. The very historical identity of Long Branch,
New Toronto and Mimico - the Lakeshore - is rooted in our connectivity to the
lake.
But these spots have
long been under threat. Although they
are public lands - road allowance - there has been widespread, ongoing
encroachment by adjacent property owners for years. Virtually every waterfront
road end has some degree of encroachment.
Our street, Fourth
Street, is a particularly egregious example.
Hundreds of square meters of public waterfront land and tens of meters
of shoreline have been appropriated for private use for decades. Fencing initially and, in recent years,
tall, impenetrable shrubs have brought about privatization and severely limited
public access to the lake at our road end.
In the 90’s, the City of Etobicoke initiated a policy
called “Windows on the Lake” to cover improvements along the Etobicoke
sections of the Waterfront Tail. Staff
identified lakefront road ends and earmarked them for development as lake
windows for the community and trail users once unauthorized private use had
been resolved and encroachments on public land cleared. Fourth Street was to be
the first lakeside parkette on the list to be developed and a survey and
landscape design were duly completed.
It might be interesting here to quote Mr. Riley,
Etobicoke Parks Commissioner at that time, from his July 1994 report to
Council. “In order for the City owned
property located within lakefront road ends to be available to all residents of
Etobicoke in an equitable manner, the removal of all unauthorized private
encroachments must be achieved. The
public’s full enjoyment of the Lake Ontario waterfront must be pursued in
earnest”. This report and others like
it were all adopted by Etobicoke City Council whose intentions and values were
very, very clear, as Councillor Milczyn will no doubt recall.
Then amalgamation happened and the visionary “Windows
on the Lake” initiative seemed to evaporate.
But, thankfully, here it is again today in a different,
wonderful form. We have a second shot
at it, another opportunity to identify and protect lake windows, to bring the
city to the water and the water to the city in as many places as possible. Who knows, with will and foresight, maybe
one day these places will all be connected by a continuous waterfront trail as
well. Maybe we’ll be swimming and
fishing again in these spots with the water becoming increasingly cleaner as
the City continues to tackle storm water management in the west end.
We urge the City to identify all the potential lake
windows along all of our shoreline, firmly and finally enshrine their
heritage significance, see that encroachments are removed, develop plans for
building parkettes at these road end locations and, very importantly, transfer
responsibility for them from Transportation to the more appropriate Parks
Department so that they can be protected, valued and maintained forever. The
community is happy to work with the City in any capacity to bring this about,
including fundraising and stewardship.
We applaud the recommendations and background report
from the City’s Planning staff and encourage this committee to accept and
support them. We look forward to the
public consultation this coming September.
Thank you for giving
me an opportunity to speak today.
Terry Smith
64 Fourth Street
Etobicoke
416 251 5930
