I am trying to imagine the absolute misery of a life that would lead someone to say — publicly — about the sound of children playing in a backyard, that “the idea of tolerating this type of noise is frankly ludicrous, and completely incongruent with this, or any other, residential corner in this city.” How scarred and dark the psyche of an adult human being would have to be for her to stand up in a room full of other people and suggest that strollers on a front porch present an unbearable “heritage concern” or a threat to the “character” of a neighbourhood.The horrible experience of the world that would lead a man to consider the presence of a day nursery in a downtown neighbourhood to be an “outrage.” One can almost conjure the misanthropy of a character holding such attitudes, but the cartoonish level of oblivious villainy that would lead a person to stand up and make those arguments in public, as if they should be considered reasonable? It stretches credibility. And yet, there they were, residents of Cabbagetown and their professional advocates, making just those arguments in speeches and letters to the city’s committee of adjustment on Wednesday, as reported by my colleague Jennifer Pagliaro. Worse, the committee bought it, and turned down the application to allow a daycare in a corner-lot, double-sized house. The local political representative, unelected placeholder councillor Lucy Troisi, whose appointment itself was a disgrace, disgracefully sided with those who find childcare an affront to urban life. “The protection of this delicate neighbourhood is imperative,” she wrote to the panel. A neighbourhood so delicate as to be threatened by a few dozen toddlers may be beyond protecting, I think.The loudest complaint made, the one cited by the committee panel in its decision, was about the volume of traffic an 82-child facility would bring to the side street it was on. This was also ...
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