Communism has nothing on City of Toronto
Councillors Rob Ford, Denzil Minnan-Wong, tear down this wall!
During the summer of 1990, I had the opportunity to travel to the newly liberated Eastern Europe and it was about a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall and dissolution of The Iron Curtain. The people were, of course, welcoming and quite pleasant.
One of the big advantages of travelling to that region was the incredible value the Canadian dollar received against its respective currencies. Many of the products were fine in quality, as was the workmanship and pride put into them.
However, I began to notice an unusual trend in the retail stores. Here is how the process of buying a sweater tended to go: one person asked you for help, their colleague would show you to the sweaters, another clerk would help you select the colour and size, their counterpart took the item to the cashier, the cashier rang up the sale, the person near the boxes would pack it, and finally another person placed it in a bag. That was the Communist Party's notion of full employment breathing its last gasp.
I suppose we should all be thankful that an intrusive, bloated government with its hands in every facet of private life and property does not exist here, or does it?
My mother is a fairly new homeowner in an older Scarborough neighbourhood. The trees are mature and some are sadly on their last roots. There were two trees in particular that rocked and swayed in windstorms, so much so, my mother was quite alarmed at the damage they could do to our home, the neighbours' homes, and the adjacent police station parking lot.
We knew that a city bylaw existed that stated one could not cut down trees on their own private property without the express permission of the city.
So, we had to contract a private arborist at our expense. His first visit was a free estimate that was accompanied by a permit application we needed to fill out for the city. Once the permit and its fee were acquired by the city, it would review the application and send out another person to put up a notice from the city that we were cutting down two of our own trees.
We then received a form in the mail that asked us what type of tree we would like to replace the two that were cut down. This form had all of the choices the municipal government wanted us to plant on our own property.
Then disaster struck, there was a terrible thunder storm, and many trees were damaged on private property. It was announced that the city's forestry department was swamped with permit applications from private homeowners and that there would be a huge backlog.
We waited until October and finally the permit was approved. However, it was accompanied by a manifesto that would make Karl Marx envious: the contract stipulated that we were responsible for the care of the new trees for 25 years, even if we sold the property! The trees were finally felled, and we arranged for a family friend to have all of the wood. However, another city memo came around forbidding the transport of wood outside Toronto's boundaries in case some disease was spread.
While I thought about a check-point Charlie-type escape for the malicious mahogany, I simply created a wood pile.
Today, a firm that is an associate of the City of Toronto is coming over to do an assessment as to where the new tree should be planted (I have some ideas about that one). My mother will write them a cheque and this will cover the assessment and the cost of the crew and tree, which will come at a later date to plant it.
Laugh out loud, communist sympathizers, although you lost Eastern Europe and Russia, you still have China, Cuba and the City of Toronto.
Perhaps the heady days of Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin are back again.
Manfred J. von Vulte
