I got along with my neighbour, Antonio, for years. We talked every day in the backyard and in the front yard. About his vegetables, the garbage-spilling raccoons, my trees, and what grows in the shade. We even exchanged Christmas gifts. But then I stopped talking to him.
He pissed me off. He didn’t sign a letter of support for our plan to expand our third floor. He said it was because the neighbors didn’t like it. Then he said he didn’t like it either. “I’m looking out for the future,” he said. What?! The same guy that expanded his house at the back to give us a grand view of concrete and bricks from our backyard?
What future are you talking about? My kids live here. They’re growing up here; they need more room and that’s why we have to expand our little house. I didn’t say any of this to Antonio because he’s older and I respect seniors.
But that’s what projects in neighborhoods do. They create strife, wrinkles, upsets. Our own plan to turn our attic crawling space into a livable space is already pissing off our neighbors.
I’m also upset.
I used to have coffee on my backyard patio and look up at the big blue sky and tall green trees. Now I’m looking at a building with a huge window and balcony. And it doesn’t stop there. They want to build another place about the same size beside it. And that’s pissing off my other neighbour, who’s collecting signatures from house to house to prevent the project from going through.
But the truth is that the old Toronto I grew up in, in the 1970s, the industrial era of factories, is over. We’re in a different time now. The age of condos, the age of building three or four storeys on top of bungalows, and the age of never-ending residential construction.
Toronto is growing and people need places to live, especially affordable ones. But like a neighbour down the street, Billy, said: “no one is against building more; we just want it done right.”
You can do things like require trees or have privacy screens to make sure that neighbours below new four storey buildings don’t feel like monkeys in a zoo being watched by spectators up above.
And if those changes happen, maybe Antonio and I can share a coffee in the backyard without looking up and feeling trapped in our own homes.
Because in the end, Antonio did sign the letter of support. No matter how much I pissed him off.
It seems like Antonio was the mature one in this situation having decided to sign the letter of support after consideration. Not talking to someone because you are “pissed off” is immature and blocks all means of communication. Good for Antonio.