Two Structures Out in the Cold
BY MICHAEL TAYLOR
Photo by Kristen Morith / Unsplash.
One of the best decisions I’ve made all pandemic was to save up MONTHS worth of old salad containers to use as brick-molds for our ice fort. Man, we loved that thing!
In a bitter, dark, boring winter with both kids at home and where each day was like every other, our fort gave us something to talk about other than virus numbers and lockdown measures.
It helped us occupy the kids on lunchtimes and weekends, and it was a great (convenient!) setting for masked-up playdates.
It was a simple way to show the kids what it’s like to have a long-term goal and work towards it, brick by icy brick, and to encourage them to take pride in the fruit of their labour.
But even more than that, it felt like putting our fort in the front yard helped tether us to our community. It felt like we were making public art. Everyone who walked by had to stop and take a look, or chat for a few minutes if we were outside working. We loved that our work progressed slowly and that we recognized lots of return visitors who incorporated our house into their walking routes, coming by regularly to check in on us.
For the first couple of weeks I worried that someone would mess with it. Maybe a smartass tween would give it a good kick to see what would happen. In the early days I saw more than one toddler straddle the walls and I had panicked visions of pounds upon pounds of brightly-coloured ice collapsing in on a three-year old. Would cats or raccoons move in? But everyone loved our fort. As it got taller and sturdier, as we added lights and an inflatable Olaf as the gatekeeper, I became confident that no one could really mess with it even if they wanted to.
I was bummed when the fort eventually collapsed, but I wasn’t crushed. I loved that thing, but it was always a temporary engagement. When Natalie told me it had finally succumbed to the warm weather, my first thought was: Well, it served its purpose. It had helped us through the worst winter weeks of the worst year, and for that we were grateful.
My second thought was, I guess this means this goddamn winter is finally coming to a close. As the pandemic drags on with no end in sight, I found the reminder that all things—good and bad—must come to an end was surprisingly potent and uplifting. And our fort had a really good run. The fact that through our own planning and modest labour we could bring some joy to others, that we had brought a little bit of light into this miserable winter, felt positively utopian.
Some other stuff has happened since then, and now that utopian glow feels long-gone.
I was bummed when I heard the news about a supported housing building moving in right across the street from our kids’ school, but I wasn’t crushed. I love that school, that park and this neighbourhood and this news meant that they would all be changing in big ways that I still can’t quite get my head around. But people in this city desperately need places to live. The first time I read the news, my very first thought was: For the 11 years I’ve been in this city, I’ve shaken my head at stuck-up Toronto NIMBYs. Now I am being called to show that I can stick to my values when it counts.
It’s an understatement to say that I understand all the concerns. I have all the concerns, too. And when I heard the news about this development, the second thought I had was: People are going to lose. Their. SHIT! Everyone around here has little kids, and you can’t expect people to mess around when their kids’ well-being is on the line. Under the circumstances, the panic that has followed this project’s abrupt announcement is completely predictable and understandable.
Which makes the city’s shitty job of rolling this out all the more frustrating. Right or wrong, city planners should have anticipated the uproar that their announcement would trigger. The way they introduced this project suggests that they’re either idiots or assholes, and that’s a really, really tough way to start any kind of relationship. They could have sought after some buy-in and tried to build trust. Instead, the conversation around this building is dominated by cynicism thanks to their ineptitude.
As I think about this, it’s hard to get past the city’s incompetence in how they rolled this out. It really is. But their mishandling of the whole thing isn’t what’s got me down. It’s not our city councillor’s wishy-washy, ass-covering politicking, either.
It’s certainly not the foolishness about parking spaces or a parking lot being “the heart of the community.”
It’s not the ridiculously out-of-touch, cartoonish misrepresentations of poverty and homelessness that people in my neighbourhood are tossing around.
It’s not even the fact that this dialogue is being kept so hostile and ugly that there seems to be no room to have a conversation about the very real, very valid, very answerable questions that people have about how exactly this facility is going to work and how it might be set up for success.
No, what’s really got me down is the lack of self-awareness. The lack of gratitude for everything that we have here. The city has been very, very good to those of us who own homes in this neighbourhood. Any conversation about access to resources and space in this community that doesn’t put our power and privilege front-and-center is as absurd as it is shameful. What’s really got me down is that all the pearl-clutching NIMBYISM has been so loud that it’s made it very difficult for people to slow down, take a breath and reflect: “Yes. Ok. I get it.”
The response has been dismaying. Because back when I first heard the news about this project, the third thought that entered my head was this:
Maybe it could work.
Maybe we could take this fucked-up, backwards plan the city dumped on us and make it into something that could win.
Maybe we could harness the strong community spirit we have here, our commitment to each other and to our neighbourhood’s success, and apply it to something really impressive. Maybe this is the place where expectations for a project like this could be exceeded.
Maybe we’re being presented with an opportunity to demonstrate to our kids that— like them— we can do hard things.
Maybe this is an opportunity to build our community in a way that our families and our new neighbours could be truly proud of.
But a lot has happened since I had those initial thoughts, and I don’t know what the future holds.
Here’s one thing I know: it’s bitter cold out there tonight. On my front lawn, Olaf is perched on a mound of icy rubble like a dragon looming over the ruins of a fallen castle.
This winter isn’t done with us yet.
MICHAEL TAYLOR is an East Toronto-based family man and business professional. He writes about family, fatherhood and culture at descentintodadness.com.