#9006 - Nov 1990

Digital Archiving Completed by the Ethnography Lab, A University of Toronto Anthropology Initiative
and Produced in Collaboration with David Perlman/Wholenote Media Inc between July-December 2015.
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The Kensington Market Drum, November 1990
MARKET MATTERS
7
Garbage Crunch II
ADler Supports_Extra Pick Up
-
by Mike Milando
Just before going to press,
Drum learned that City councillor
Amer has written to
City Public Works Commissioner
Vardin, supporting a
request from Market residents,
merchants, and environmentalists
for an extra
weekly garbage pick-up.
In the letter, Amer recognized
that Kensington Market
includes a market and
thus has a need for more frequent
garbage pick ups than
a strictly residential community.
But she tied her support
to the effectiveness, one year
from now, of the comprehensive
waste reduction strategy
being developed here.
Before the next meeting of
Kensington's garbage action
gr-oup some time in the last
week of November, group
members plan to survey merchants
asking what the
breakdown of their garbage
is and if they support the call
for City collections Tuesdays,
Thursdays, and Saturdays.
Councillor Amer has been
invited to this upcoming
meeting. Downtown Metro
councillor Dale Martin has
already said he will attend.
Martin's involvement is
seen as crucial. While City
Public Works collects
garbage, it's. Metro Works
who must do something with
it: reduce, reuse, or recycle it
at best; put it in landfills or
incinerate it into the atmosphere
at worst.
At a recent composting
conference, councillor Martin
criticized Metro Council's
"reckless strategy" for carrying
out this responsibility.
He spoke about the lack of
public involvement and catalogued
Council's inaction.
Such delays by Council, he
said, are leading inevitably to
more large-scale landfills and
incinerators before or without
environmental assessments,
instead of reduction,
reuse, and recycling on a
smaller and more decentralized
basis.
The strategy's "profound
weakness", he maintained, is
its "top-down approach", not
involving the public. He went
on to summarize a report
adopted by Metro Council a
year ago containing 5 steps
for bottom-up, communitybased
consultation processes
for the siting of waste management
facilities. Though it
was adopted, it hasn't been
implemented, he said.
When informed of efforts
in Kensington to organize
composting of merchants
organic· waste, he mentioned
plans for a composter and
organic waste management
facility at the Ontario Food
Terminal. Metro Works commissioner
Ferguson will be
reporting on it in two weeks
and Martin will report to
merchants inform residents
and merchants at the garbage
action group meeting.
At another recent conference,
of the It's Not Garbage
environmental coalition,
Maura Mcintyre and Bruce
Pearce, executive assistants
to City councillor Amer, distributed
copies of the October
issue of Drum. They
highlighted the article
reporting on efforts to organize
extra collection and
composting in the Market.
November -s, 1990
Mr Nick Vardin
commissioner
~ublic Works Department
23ra floor, East tower
City Hall
Re:
CITY OF TORONTO
Councillor Elizabeth Amer
City Hall, Toronto M~H 2N2 Telephone 392-7911
Ward Five
Request for Additional Garbage Pick-up in· Kensington Market
Dear Mr vardin,
A group of residents, merehants and environmentalists in Kensington
Market has requested that the City add an extra weekly garbage pickup
in the market. I support this request, and ask that you give it
your favourable consideration.
My office has been working with the community to develop a waste
reduction strategy and we will soon be submitting our
recommendations to the City.
There are more then 200 businesses within the community, many of
which are restaurants and green grocers. The existing collection
system--designed for a strictly residential community--does not
address the waste problem posed by the large retail -community.
I recommend that an extra weekly garbage pick-up be extended to
Kensington Market in recognition of this problem and of the
community's efforts to develop a comprehensive waste reduction
strategy. If implemented, such a pick-up should be reviewed in a
year's time to evaluate the progress of the reduction strategy.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
cc Kensington Drum
Kensington Market Area Task Force
, 'H'Hf!l/&.1!: •1.111!!1'Ja13 • 'lll.S: 392-7307
A Sec>ao de Tradu>6es lnforma-o aobre assuntos thunicipais. na sua pr6pria lingua. 392·7348
Per lnformaliOni circi i ~rvizi municipali. chiaman:. I'Ufficlo Traduzioni al 392 .. 7373
_ __ _ ____ _ ____ __ ___ _ _ _ _____ __ _ '!h_e _ qt) _ cf_~o~o_n!_O _ ~a~ _d~-~~~ i_~~~f _tc? · ~ ~ _N_u~l-~r- ~~~s - ~r~- ~n_e _ _ _ _ _
Changes
by Angie Choly
Autumn is definitely here
and there has been enough
crispness in the air to remind
us that winter will soon
break in upon the scene.
Changes.
On the corner of Bellevue
and Nassau sits a little variety/grocery
store, the kind of
store that reminds one of
days gone by. It's the type of
place that's becoming scarce,
run by elderly couples who
have made it their life.
It was the cheap cigarettes
that initially made me return
again and again, until I realized
that this shuffling lively
pair was the real reason I
was there.
On any given day I'd go in
and ask the wife for a package
of cigarettes and she
would start to look about for
my brand. Her husband who
was always determined that
the whole exchange should
only take seconds would proceed
'to interrupt as if she
were incompetent. At that
point she would look at me,
patience streaming out of
her smiling eyes.
· With heaps of freshly
sliced tomatoes, fresh buns,
various cheeses, cold cuts
with unpronouncable names
(they made sandwiches,too)
an old weigh scale, a cash
register, piles of boxes and
old fridges, there wasn't .
much room for the two of
them back there. Giggles
would ensue-I had witnessed
this scene many times
before.
She'd roll her eyes and
lean over the counter with a
conspiratorial air and say
that he liked to do this, then
reach back and magically
. produce what her husband
was still looking for. I
admired her acceptance.
I've had a busy week. I
went into the store today and
they weren't there. I asked,
they'd retired nine days ago.
I
Changes.
As I walked away I was left
with a feeling of betrayal. I
thought that they would
always be there. It stings
because I never even got to
know their names.
photo: Peigi Rockwell
i
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