John Sewell at Lakeshore Planning Council Conference

John Sewell and yours truly

I went to Saturday's Lakeshore Planning Council conference at the Toronto Police College on Birmingham St. I understand this was the first outside event to take place in this new facility so obviously it was accessible and it was five minutes from my apartment. Former Toronto mayor John Sewell was guest speaker along with Etobicoke-Lakeshore MPP Laurel Broten. Local city councillor Mark Grimes was nowhere to be seen. I'll get to that in a minute. I have been a John Sewell fan since he was a maverick city councillor in the late 60s. He was mayor of Toronto in the pre-amalgamation days. He's probably one of those guys that was more effective in opposition. The main point of his speech was that since Toronto amalgamated, it's impossible to get through to city staff or councillors. Amalgamation promised a streamlining of services but instead it's more bloated and non-responsive than ever. It hasn't been very effective. A lot of us probably wish he was still in politics but he's still writing and you can get his latest book right here on the blog. Laurel Broten followed with some boring self-congratulatory nonsense about South Etobicoke becoming a hub for food manufacturing. Yeah, right. Laurel should remember that a pat on the back is eighteen inches away from a kick in the pants.





Afterwards, we split up into groups covering different topics. What we were supposed to do is come up with solutions for specific problems. So I chose the Recreational panel. I knew some of the folks from the LAMP and the Lakeshore Community Centre Workgroup. Of course what most folks would like to see is a city operated community hub. Instead we're getting a lot of half baked inadequacies that don't satisfy anyone. As Terry Smith of Friends Of Sam Smith said, do you see our city councillor here. The bottom line is if that's what you want, he isn't the guy to do it because he's not listening to us. So we have to get rid of him in this fall's civic election. It's always difficult to get rid of a bad councillor because most people don't pay enough attention. But there are other ways to get a real community centre if the city isn't interested. We have to start looking at doing it ourselves and financing it privately. As long as Mark Grimes acts like a fool, we'll do what we have to do. I'm not going to go into it but all the panels presented their conclusions and for the most part it was an interesting day. And it was fun to meet John Sewell.