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Aesthetic or ugly? Poster fight builds
City panel to debate new bid to limit ads on hydro poles
By JEFF GRAY
Saturday, February 12, 2005 - Page A16On some of the lampposts, hydro poles and hoardings that line Queen Street West, worn and torn posters advertise "Essay Writing," a party hosted by someone named "Delirious D" and the "Sex and Violence Cartoon Festival." In some places, only a thin layer of chewed-up, illegible fragments of old posters remains.
To some -- including several city councillors -- the practice of "postering" is an urban blight, a class of vandalism just a step above graffiti. But to Jason Collett, a guitarist with the Toronto rock band Broken Social Scene, posters are an integral part of the urban landscape, as well as the only way local musicians can get the word out about gigs.
Mr. Collett is among seven Toronto artists -- including headliners Sarah Harmer and Bob Wiseman -- playing a benefit concert on Feb. 18 for the Toronto Public Space Committee, a group of activists fighting a new proposal at City Hall to restrict such posters in a repeat of a drama played out two years ago.
The activists won that time. But now similar restrictions are once again before a council committee, which is set to debate the plan in March. That has Mr. Collett and others worried about stifling the city's local music scene, as well as the trampling of free speech.
"It's important not just for musicians, you know, but even somebody who's got a lost cat," he said yesterday. "For those of us who live downtown, it's an urban tradition."
He said that the force driving the bylaw, which would limit posters to just 4,000 hydro poles -- a fraction of the estimated 250,000 in the city -- is a "suburban notion."
"They want an urban place to have all of the predictability that is only about suburban living," he said, adding that he plans to put some posters up in the coming weeks to promote a series of concerts in Kensington Market featuring local songwriters. "This is a part of the aesthetic and the texture of the city."
But Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong (Don Valley East), who supports the bylaw's resurrection, says the "silent majority" of Torontonians feel the ad-covered hydro poles are an eyesore.
"It's pollution and it's litter," Mr. Minnan-Wong said. "It's people trying to make a buck at the expense of having an ugly neighbourhood."
Mayor David Miller, who has spearheaded a "clean and beautiful city" initiative, has said that the city needs to be mindful of constitutional free-speech issues in any attempt to regulate posters.
He was unavailable for comment yesterday. But a spokeswoman for the mayor, Andrea Addario, said Mr. Miller would be wary of anything that smacked of an onerous limit on free speech. "It's not about sterilizing the face of Toronto," she said.
Dave Meslin, the co-ordinator of the Public Space Committee fighting the ban, said he did not think the proposed bylaw would stand up to a court challenge.
While the Supreme Court of Canada did strike down an outright ban on posters in Peterborough as a violation of the right to free expression, it did rule that a municipality could regulate the size, location and length of time a poster could stay up.
The proposed bylaw will likely come up for discussion before the city's planning and transportation committee on March 7. City council would then debate it in April.
"If the bylaw passes, we will be encouraging people to violate it, and be charged," Mr. Meslin said. "And we'll support them in court."
He said the concert next Friday at the Bloor Cinema will likely bring in about $6,000 for his group's fight, which he said is bigger than just a crackdown on hydro-pole posters.
The real problem, he said, is the city's double standard. While toying with the idea of restricting posters put up by local bands and community groups, it has been allowing big corporations more and more opportunities to put up large advertising billboards.