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In a city where disabled homes look like this,

This blog is a backup to Junctioneer.ca every week blog posts are backed up to this blogger site.

This blog is a backup to Junctioneer.ca every week blog posts are backed up to this blogger site.

The last mirroring was on May 24th 2019 and the previous one May 13th 2019

The next mirroring shall be on or about May 31 2019 or within a week of that date.

This update post will stay at top of blog until Dec 31 2019 and will be updated regularly.

Thks

More about Maria Street, Mar 29, 1965 The Globe and Mail

Young, Scott

pg. 6

 

More about Maria Street

 

By Scott Young

 

Last Wednesday I was in City Hall checking for background to City Councils decision to expropriate Benny Stark's salvage yard business on Maria St. This busy short old street backs on to the Canadian Pacific Railway freight yards not far from the west-end stockyards and packing plants and is just south of St. Clair off Runnymede Road.

 

One of my conversations was with Alderman Mary Temple. Maria Street is in her ward. She took dead aim on Benny Stark's yard more than five years ago, when Stark bought it. She and a militant group of Stark's neighbors had lost every round until last summer when they began to win.

I told Mrs. Temple I was interested in how Stark's business could be ruled legal by the Metro Licensing Commission in 1959, by a magistrates count in 1960, by a county court judge in 1961, and by a voluminous police report in 1964 – and still could be expropriated in 1965.

 

She wanted to know if I had spoken to any of Stark's neighbors. I had. Stark's business, by its very nature, never will win any Home Beautiful awards. But some of his opponents became his neighbors voluntarily, knowing fully what business he was in. Also, some did not agree with expropriating Stark. And several other businesses on the street are there only because their licenses, like his, pre-date a 1953 zoning bylaw. (This is called a legal non-conforming use, madam).

 

"He never should have been allowed a license there to start with, you know," Mrs Temple said.

How did he get it, then? "He had help."

What kind of help? "You know – under the table. Somebody exerting pressure."

Who exerted the pressure? "I'd rather not say," she said.

 

Somebody in City Council? She said yes.

 

Subsequently I repeated this allegation of influence to Mr. Stark. He denied that anyone at City Hall ever had exerted influence for him that he knew of.

 

If Mrs. Temple always has believed there was undue influence exerted in granting the Stark license, it may help to explain her dogged pursuit. But if she has any evidence, should she not have offered it to the City Council publicly at the time or in the many times later when the matter has come up?

I also found disturbing her reaction to the court decisions in Stark's favor. "Those decisions were a laugh," she said.

 

I got much the same reaction from Alderman Horace Brown, who telephoned me on the matter Friday. He scoffed at the court decision in such a way that I said, "if you are going to call a judge a fool, why don't you do it out in the open and see what happens?" He said he had, but I do not recall the occasion myself.

 

I should correct one impression given in my capsule account of this strange case Friday. Board of Control was NOT unanimous in voting for expropriation. Controller Herbet Orliffe suggested sensibly that the Planning Board should provide a list of the worst non-conforming uses in the city. He thought Council could use such a list when planning expropriations, instead of shooting the bounders down more or less haphazardly. His amendment was defeated 4-1. Incidentally, Real Estate Commissioner David Alexander says there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of non-conforming uses in the city. But only Benny Stark has his neighbors, and the favorite alderman.

 

As a footnote, City Council does not seem to have been given full information in this case before voting for expropriation March 15. Old hands could remember at least some of the background, of course. But the eight freshmen aldermen could only put their faith in the good reputation of Mary Temple. And her reputation is among the best on Council However, in this case it was something like voting old Junius at the top of the page.

 

 

2020-07-17-More-about-Maria-St.txt

 

 

Back to Maria, Benny Stark’s scrapyard at 118-122 Maria St. Great quotes

Back to Maria St.

 

 

Nov 11, 1965;  Newspapers: The Globe and Mail

pg. 6 By Scott Young

 

There wasn't much public notice on Oct. 27 when Toronto City Council finally passed the bylaw required to expropriate Benny Stark's scrapyard at 118-122 Maria St. Alderman Mary Temple

 

apparently thought no one had noticed. This must have made her feel like the Light Brigade getting to the other end of the Valley of Death and then learning that the press bu had been five miles away, with a flat tire.

 

 This expropriation is a victory for her and for a little band of lady vigilantes who are Stark's neighbors on Maria St. By Tuesday Mrs. Temple could stand the silence no longer, so she sent me a copy of the Stark expropriation bylaw with her compliments.

 

Well, I'd been going to call Benny Stark on the matter anyway. There were great promises made in City Council last spring that he would be helped to find alternative accommodation, including some made in person by Mrs. Temple. I asked Mr. Stark whether there had been any success in this line. The short answer is: not yet. But the expropriation is going ahead anyway. The city has no urgent use for the land, it is a legal business, it is a family's support, but Benny Stark somehow has to go and that is that.

 

To clear one point in advance, the Stark Iron Metal Co. is no rose garden. But it was there, operating, when some of the complaining neighbors moved in. There are thousands of other legal non-conforming uses in the city.

I asked Mr. Stark how things had been going. He told me a story that illustrates perfectly the kind of Gilbert and Sullivan life he has been leading.

"Did you hear a few weeks ago about me ordering an alderman off my place?" he asked.

 

I hadn't. "Well," he said, "one Saturday morning when I was very busy, Ben Grys came in." Mr Grys is the junior alderman in Ward Seven. "He parked his station wagon in my driveway, with the rear of it across the sidewalk and into the street. He too me and look pointed to a fence and said, "Look Ben, that fence is falling over." I said, "Ben, that fence is not falling over. It was built that way on the plans okayed by the city."

 

We were talking back and forth about how I had built that fence myself so the neighbor there wouldn't have to see my scrapyard, when all of a sudden there was a lot of screaming and uproar in front, and one of my neighbors came yelling. "You. Stark and Mr. Grys, come and see what happen here." She was pointing at the sidewalk. There was a crabapple on the sidewalk, from a tree above. She yell at me, "It is your fault, because a truck have to come up on the sidewalk to get by, and dirty up my sidewalk which I just sweep."

"Which truck?" I ask.

 

"That one right there!" she say, and point to a brewery truck, making a delivery. Now, it have to go on the sidewalk to get around the end of Ben Grys's station wagon, and being a high truck it hit the crabapple tree and knock one down. I try to ask, how come I am responsible for a brewery truck knocking down a crabapple to get around an alderman's car, but threats were made to hit me or kill me. Because of this, I call police – the first time I have ever called police. The police come, and when I tell them what happened, Ben Gryus interrupt and say, "No, no, no. Ben is not decent to these people, he is the one making all the trouble." And I say, "If I am not decent, get off my property." And he say he had a right to stay, because of complaints, but the police tell him I own the property and if I say go, he should go, so he go."

 

End of sample joy of running a legal scrapyard on Maria St. in opposition to Toronto City Council. Negotiations will begin Friday on price for the expropriation. Real Estate Commissioner David Alexander said yesterday that he sill hopes a place can be found for Mr. Stark to do business.

"I have always found him co-operative," Mr. Alexander said, "He really wants to get out." No wonder.

 

 

 

2020-07-17-Back-to--St.txt

 

Cooling centers in Toronto are now much less restrictive in the stage 2 Covid 19 comeback.

Photographed Sat June 18th 2020 a cooling centre in Toronto, show Social distancing.

Shelter Bus TTC

status: draft

A  shelter TTC bus used to transport to cooling centre in July 2020.

Regent Park new concrete right of way on lands recovered from late 50's buildings

status: draft

Annexation years for communities now making up Toronto