The Greening Of Toronto Starts With A Bulldozer

Imagine an oasis in the middle of suburbia, filled with many varieties of trees and birds. Now imagine the city having it cut down

If the supposed green city has its way, there'll be more exhibits for that tree museum Joni Mitchell sang about
By JOE WARMINGTON

They plan to pave paradise and put up an "affordable" housing project.

And a parking lot, too. What did Joni Mitchell sing way back when? "Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got till it's gone." She might not like this story since it was she who wrote "they took all the trees, and put 'em in a tree museum, and they charged the people a dollar and a half to see them." But what makes this story so strange is it's not Joni Mitchell and her leftist pseudo-environmentalist pals who will be chaining themselves to the trees when the time comes to chop them down.

It will be some anti-pinko protestors instead.

"I just may do it," radio talk show host Craig Bromell said at the site of the Wood Green Ravine yesterday. "I am now officially a tree hugger."

Now I have seen everything. Is there a bigger SUV-loving, Al Gore-bashing person on Earth than Bromell? The roles are reversed. The dynamiters in this town who stop things like the Olympics and other big developments are getting a taste of what it's like on the other side.

But what it comes down to is one person's scrub land is another person's rain forest. This time it's the city wanting to eradicate a 2-hectare green space.

"It's the hyprocrisy that upsets me," said the AM 640 radio personality. "I thought this was supposed to be a green city. I mean, here they are wanting me to conserve everything and then they are doing this!"

He and show partner Tina Trigiani, producer Dan Leggieri, reporter John Fielding and engineer Harrison Mercer broadcast live there in protest. Residents are angry about the coming construction of some 60 "affordable" housing units in the Wood Green Ravine area of Scarborough.

"They will end up taking down 2,000 trees," says Don York, of the Manse Valley Community Association. "This should remain as a wild area."

Some say it's more like 200 trees but you can see the area for yourself southeast of Lawrence and Morningside Aves. or by going to the video link on torontosun.com. The lot in question was actually expropriated originally to be part of the killed Scarborough Expressway.

Karen Hughson, 37, remembers the forest fondly.

"I used to play in there as a kid and when I was 7 I found an Indian arrowhead," she said. "The ROM tells me it's 10,000 years old."

Maybe they'll put it with the trees at the museum and charge $20 and a half to see them.

You can see both sides of this argument. The real question for me is, is this really an affordable housing project? Affordable for who?

Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti, chairman of the affordable housing committee, calls it a start and I listen because I have always advocated something be done in this area. He says semi-detached homes in the range of $200,000 will give people now in city housing a chance at owning their own home. With city fees and other expenses waved, these homes would have been in the $300,000 range, but residents argue the true figure of what will be charged is $250,000.

"Who are these people who are going to get mortgages for these kind of homes?" Hughson asks. "You would need an income of $60,000 for something like that." She is correct, but Mammoliti insists the candidates will come from public housing. "We can't just keep putting people on welfare in large complexes because all that does is lead to problems." He's right, too. A mix of people and smaller projects will work better.

This project, which has a partnership with some Catholic groups, Habitat for Humanity and the Daniels building group, is probably worth a shot -- but perhaps in another location.

What I would rather see is something similar in some of the buildings and townhouses all over the city. It would be neat to see how it would work if some good families were given a chance to rent-to-own their units and enjoy the pride of ownership while breaking the rent cycle. The city should not be a slum landlord either.

Mammoliti promises encouraging people to purchase their own units will be happening. When it does I will be the first one applauding. It has been done before in England and has led to tremendous results.

If Miller and his "gotcha" cars-are-bad environmental crowd that fine people for putting out their garbage on the wrong day want everybody else to live green, they should be forced to as well.

Sometimes it's true we don't know what we got until it's gone.