The 500+ affected residents and workers of Camden and Adelaide Streets have been through a week from hell: seven days of pounding noise 24/7, noxious diesel fumes polluting neighbourhood and city, excessive stress, interrupted sleep, headaches, and other health ailments affecting work and privates lives. What a cost.
And for what? To repair a mistake made from running a power line across one private property to another. The parties involved have a lot to answer. No one comes out unstained: terrible public relations for Brad Lamb Corporation; numerous questions about Toronto Hydro providing power to customers; and a system at City Hall that could permit such a generator to be installed as the temporary corrective.
Worst of all is the shameful and utterly disdainful treatment of fellow citizens. Knowing there was a problem for a building with 200 units, had the Lamb Corporation connected with the GDNA weeks or months prior to the installation of the generator, much, if not all of this would have been avoided. So many interventions and hours spent on correcting this gaffe. One can but hope this is a lesson learned by all who work and live in this catchment. Meet first with the people most affected. Make that the starting point of your work plan and go from there. But know this: the GDNA is now bigger, stronger, and more important to the community than a week ago.
HUGE THANKS to all residents and workers who took the time to express in writing, who made phone calls to 311, to the City, to Health and Environmental departments, to Hydro, and within their own condo buildings to bring civic action to bear on this unbearable situation.
Onward and upward!
Catherine Mitchell