I got a little insight into the NIMBY anti-development thing this morning from a co-worker who is affected by the developments on Taylor Avenue or to be more specific Parker Avenue.
Are my knee-jerk reactions to anti-development protests as annoying as the knee-jerk reaction to development announcements? Perhaps.
It is always good to hear the other side. Sometimes they are right. I can be swayed.
In this particular case, I think I may soften my opinion. A tiny bit.
I don’t think I have changed my mind about the narrow-minded attitude of a lot of people in this city. And if this was the only protest, I might have been initially more sympathetic. As it was, it was one of three going on at City Hall at the same time.
There are two issues — the development and the process. As far as the development goes, there are some things people need to be concerned with and I wouldn’t trust a developer as far as I could throw him. There are plenty examples of promises made that are then completely reneged upon with zero consequence. Waverley West anyone?
In the Parker case, this piece of land has been used as a park but it isn’t a park and everyone knew the potential for development was always there. And if someone proposed huge mansions that would pump everyone’s home values, the locals would be saying “fuck the trees.” So, I still hold that development isn’t inherently wrong there are some good aspects re infrastructure and roads. Local residents may even benefit from now not having those evil Linden Woods types driving through the neighbourhood as a short cut to Pembina Highway.
The real problem lies with deals being done at City Hall behind closed doors between people who have personal relationships, which are then sprung on everyone with no notice. The result of this is the perception of dirty dealing and insider trading. Add in a rubber stamp city hall and everyone immediately suspects the worst. And in the vacuum of no information the worst case scenario is always suspected. This could be the best thing the city has ever done but the perception of slimy palm greasing makes it smell.
In the Parker case the worst case scenario is thousands of public housing spots being plopped down in a semi suburban neighbourhood and then filled with refugees from the core. Could this happen? Well, without info to the contrary it might.
But the reality could well be a new version of Tuxedo’s Portsmouth Bay. Or something in the middle, which wouldn’t be so bad. Although as it was explained to me today, if it would be so great then why was it hidden and then rammed through at the last minute?
Which brings me back to my point that if the city had a plan then these sorts of things may be avoided. For example the plan could indicate this land is slated for development and these are the three types of housing that will be considered – single family houses, mixed residential units or apartment building no higher than three stories and 30 units per. Everyone can then make decisions based on those criteria. If people object they can do so in plenty of time. If someone wants to invest in the surrounding area they can with the appropriate facts at hand.
So, I can see where people are coming from. If there is anything I hate more than lefty beard and cardigan types protesting anything new it’s greedy monopoly board developer types pulling off Brechtian play-like scams.
So perhaps a little transparency might end a lot of this NIMBY like behavior.
Townhouses -- dens of inequity
News report
Winnipeg. July 22. 2009. It’s a field day for the beard and cardigan brigade as they descend upon Winnipeg City Hall today with placards, bull horns, fiery torches and chants of “Development No! Stagnation Yes!”
Vickie Snotgrass, local activist for the Let’s Keep Everything As It Is Collective, said “We have had enough building and enough development. It is time we stopped all this and let the city return to nature.” Vicky is sending money to Iran to aid in their nuclear program in a hope it will really speed things up with regard to getting everything back to nature. Snotgrass slinked off to apply natural berry juice to her third degree sunburns received at the Winnipeg Folk Festival when her organic, cucumber sunblock failed.
Another activist, Brent Dingleberry with the We Hate Anything New Alliance, says he is opposed to it all. Just what it is, he is not sure, but he added “If a politician is involved it must be stopped.”
Police were called when members of the For God’s Sake Stop Cooperative hurled recycled pine cones at City Council and began chanting “Save our Pristine Forest-like Railway Cuttings!”
Sarcasm aside, the usual suspects are out in force to oppose a whole whack of potential developments in the blossoming berg of Winnipeg. For the anti-development gang it must be disconcerting…all these cranes, diggers and tarmac layers. The city is changing before their very eyes. Winnipeg will never be the same again and they must feel overwhelmed…so many things to oppose, so many trees to tie themselves to, so many politicians to e-mail. There is a land swap development on Taylor, the waste water plant thing and the Exchange Building annex to be torn down.
I tuned into CJOB the other day and caught the tail end of a debate regarding one development. People were phoning in warning about the crime, the crack dealers and how people wouldn’t be able to walk safely in their neighbourhood. I thought people were phoning in about a half way house for murderers going up on Sutherland Avenue or something. But no. The source of all this angst is an apartment and townhouse development on Taylor.
Now, if we are talking about public housing complexes where we are exporting urban problems to the ‘burbs well fine then. But no one is saying this is going to be the case. Winnipeg is the only place in the world were living in an apartment is equated with being a down and out loser, one KD dinner short of a life of crime, dealing drugs and eyeing up the local kids. If you live in an apartment you obviously can’t manage money, have a screw loose or be one of those shady single types with who knows what weird proclivities. What freak wouldn’t want to own their own house? Sometimes, I wonder if I am living in a modern city or some 17th century Romanian peasant village.
People were outraged that a developer wanted to put in three-bedroom apartments and condos. I have said this before, if I were a developer I would be moving my business to Calgary and let Winnipeggers fight over the last remaining vacant poo hole apartments.
The plan to swap four acres the developer owns and that the city needs for its green rapid transit project with 25 acres of scrub land next to the railway lines north of Taylor that the city owns, seems like a good idea on first blush. It also means the city can link up Sterling Lyon Parkway with Taylor and Pembina Highway and not have to build an underpass on Waverley. It is infill housing that doesn’t require huge infrastructure funding. It allows the city to link up traffic routes and increases tax revenues.
But, it would be nice if the city had a plan where these things were anticipated and people could examine the whole process beforehand and not have these things winged through council at the last minute. There is an element of shadiness to a lot of these deals that cause angst. Usually unecessary angst, but people immediately fall victim to their worst fears and are then exploited by the anti development crowd. If there was a plan in place, a transparent paln they maybe everyone could be in on the progress and have a little less of the whinging.
Oh, here’s why.
Turner Broadcasting ran a very obscure British war movie last night and, being a baby induced insomniac, I watched “Overlord” for the second time in my life.
I had seen this movie way back when I was probably sixteen on the BBC. I didn’t remember much about it except the shocking last scene.
The movie was made in 1976 and intertwines movie footage with actual archival footage from WWII. The cinematographer filmed the movie segments using World War Two era German cameras to make the scenes fit together somewhat seamlessly. It has a weird, dream like quality about it and it’s definitely an arty film. It is certainly more Thin Red Line than Saving Private Ryan.
Warning spoiler alert ahead. If you want to see this film, and I recommend it, stop reading.
The film deals with the build up to D-Day and follows a young British lad who is remarkably normal, dull and boring. His girlfriend isn’t Kate Beckensale and he isn’t destined to save the world. And that is what makes the film remarkable. He fears his death, but just goes through the role of becoming a soldier, a cog in a great machine that as he says gets bigger as he gets smaller. He fantasizes about the actual invasion and what he will do after the war. Get a girl, get a job. Be boring. The end of the film sees him killed as soon as they hit the beach. All those dreams, fears, hopes gone in a flash. The first incoming shot it seems.
I remember seeing this film as a young guy and it having a profound effect on me. The non-hero. The randomness of it all and the shocking finality. This wasn’t Steve McQueen or John Wayne. This was one of us going down before even getting a shot off. It was really a death. No heroics — just dying.
This brings me to the deaths of the British and Canadian troops in Afghanistan this week. They are dying by the dozen – equally young men and women who have hopes, fears, families, dreams whose lives are snuffed out in a second by some unseen hand. War is futile, it is only about death. There are just wars I guess, and Afghanistan is pretty close to a just war. But it doesn’t make the finality of death any easier to comprehend.
As I get older, I begin the notice how young these soldiers are and how fragile their lives become. They are certainly brave for volunteering to go. But they are so subject to chance that they don’t usually get to be brave.
I guess that is the point of the film.
Thunderstorm over downtown
I am considering building an ark. Given the torrential rain that seems to be the norm in Winnipeg this summer it seems like the prudent thing to do.
I grew up with rain. In a perverse sort of way, I like the rain. The sky is more interesting. It adds a little drama to the weather and of course an element of violence. It also greens everything up and gives some texture to the air. There is something exciting about a thunderstorm, the lightening and the crashing, the tropical downpour. The smell après le deluge.
When I lived my inveterate existence in my high rise downtown apartment it was great to watch the anvil shaped storm clouds – white, red, pink, black — roll in with silent flashes of light.
What I don’t like is the endless weeks of rain. When I was younger I didn’t know any better and it seemed OK to me. Ramsgate seemed to get a lot of rain. All year round. I remember going to the beach each day in the summer and it always seemed to rain on the way home. And winter was just a grey raining season. But I never remember complaining. Perhaps a short memory.
I do remember everyone else complaining about it. In fact it is a national sport in England. Ooo the bloody rain. Oooo the bloody heat.
Canadians are no different. Although with reason – for half the year the weather can kill you.
I imagine there is some place on earth where the weather is perfect. I hear San Diego is pretty close. But I bet people moan about it there too. There must be a gene…a bitch about the weather gene. When mankind moves into space, we will go mad unless we somehow recreate crappy weather on our space stations.
But now we in Winnipeg are getting nothing but an endless parade or rain storms, drizzle, thunderstorms and showers this summer. Relentless and soggy. Winnipeg has such brutal winters the only upside are the great, hot summers. But when you get the sort of summer we are getting…cool and wet you just feel ripped off. It is depressing.
I was in southern Ontario last week and it poured there too. White knuckle driving from Ottawa to Cornwall in a monsoon. Nice. I had hoped to walk along the St Lawrence but instead got to sit in a hotel room and watch reruns of Law and Order. So much for global warming. I am sorry, climate change or global weirding or whatever it is.
It was America’s big day on the weekend. Much like Canada’s big day last week. Only much bigger, grander and more about pride and community than arrogance or smugness.
It is a day that a lot of non-Americans roll their eyes at. But let me say this up front. I don’t hate Americans. In fact, the last 4th of July I attended…in St. Louis of all places…was a blast.
I watched the Jonathan Woss show on BBC Canada on the weekend and he had as a guest Stephen Fry, who recently did a show traveling around America. I am sure it will air on BBC Canada in 2014. Right between an eight year old episode of Top Gear and Holmes on Homes (wft?). He was explaining how the snooty English attitude toward Americans says more about the English than it does Americans. And I might add the same thing applies to Canadians.
While there are plenty of yahoo Americans who more than live up to the stereotype of moronic, gun-totting, bigoted, xenophobes most Americans are quite the opposite. I’ve driven through the US and visited a few of the major cities and have to say Americans are generally a welcoming, open, friendly and genial bunch.
I was in a bar in Tucson Arizona a couple of years ago. The Iraq War was raging and the bartender upon hearing my obviously non-American lilt started chatting about American foreign policy and George Bush. I gently opined my point of view. A couple of rough looking cowboys down the bar asked me pointedly in a very Clint Eastwood sort of way, “You aint French are ya?” But even if I had said “Mai Oui. Je Suis un Frenchie travestie!” I don’t think I would have suffered much more than a disapproving grunt.
Move to London the same year, and I am in a pub in Millwall and I swear I actually felt like I was going to get my head kicked in at any moment. The bartender, an ugly, tattoed, mustachioed, mean bastard, practically spat in my beer and gave me a look that indicated if I didn’t drink up tout de suit I was going to meet with harm.
And she was only about 25.
I kept thinking to myself, if I want to die I would only have to say “Hey, anyone here a Tottenham fan?” or if I wanted a swifter exit “Anyone want to go see the Hammers tomorrow afternoon?”
So much for the notion that America is a violent place. Lambeth is much scarier.
I remember watching the movie Borat and thinking that while some of it was really funny, the thing I really hated about it was the way it ridiculed ordinary people. I have no problem with exposing and ridiculing absurd people or hypocrites or self-important idiots –the anti-Semite hunting guide for example –but I don’t get making fun of people who are just trying to be nice or friendly. It’s cynical.
Hey, I can be as ironic and snide as the next guy and am more than happy to prick the pretensions of pretentious pricks, but I am increasingly bored by the attack on niceness. What’s so funny about peace, love and understanding? So, nice people are kind of bland and boring and a bit twee. But so what? What are they doing to Borat to piss him off? Are we making fun of people because they are open and gullible? Look at those Americans, they’re not ironic and cynical like me. Hrrranah Hrrranah.
Canada’s Rick Mercer does his Talking to Americans schtick wherein he finds some local rube and asks them what they think about polar bears roaming the streets of Ottawa and how global warming is melting our ice parliament. Hrrrnah Harrnah.
Funny thing is, you don’t see an American film crew walking down Arlington Street finding our local rubes and asking if they know who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb, if Dick Cheney is the only VP to have actually shot someone while in office or how global warming is washing away the bridge to Rhode Island.
They don’t feel the need to. Why do we?
canada day winnipeg
Another Canada day. A day to sit in the sun, swat mosquitoes, drink beer, take the kids to a street festival, ooh and ahh at fireworks or curl up in front of the TV and watch the celebrations from Parliament Hill featuring acts that no one outside Quebec City jazz clubs or seedy Toronto bars has ever heard of. Basically ‘Up with People’ only more bland and inane.
It’s a day to celebrate all things Canadian…the great Canadian smug fest where we all reflect on how lucky we are to live in the world’s greatest country with the world’s greatest and friendliest and bestest and most giving people and how its all just so special and great that we all get along so well.
Canadians can over do it a bit.
But why not have a bit of pride in your country? And it could be worse. We could be in Afghanistan. I bet they don’t have face painting, beaver tails, folk festivals and fireworks on their day. The only enjoyment you get there is adulterer stoning and deep fried cave rat on a stick.
Canada Day is typically Canadian. Cheap, a bit slapdash, all about the children, strenuously multi-cultural and generally dull. And Quebec doesn’t take part.
Britain doesn’t have a ‘day.’ What would you celebrate? Magna Carta Day? Well, that wouldn’t work as no one know when that it is and it’s probably in February. Victory over the Boche day…well, Britain is all very European and let bygones be bygones and all that. Agincourt/Crecy/Poitiers/Waterloo/Blenheim/Trafalgar Day then…sorry sorry. The Queen’s birthday? Well she has two and frankly both are pretty dull. Lots of trooping and marching and riding around in open top coaches or addresses from the shooting room at Balmoral.
And you have the Scots to think about too. Perhaps they want a day. Act of Union day sounds kind of naughty so maybe not. Ireland has St Patrick’s day and I have commented on how St George’s Day (and St Andrew’s and St. David’s come to think of it) is ignored.
The Last Night at the Proms always seemed a little over the top to me and vaguely vulgar in its patriotic display and so I think until Britain becomes a republic and creates a constitution there will be no real holiday…just the strangely named Bank Holidays. Which was a bloody laugh as every day was a holiday for the banks.
Well I am going to enjoy a beer on my deck, enjoy the sun and actually reflect on how lucky I am to live in this fine land and how really wonderful my neighbours are and…oh god I’m becoming one of them.
