Make yourself heard

The importance of expressing your opinion

I recently came back from a wonderful two weeks, visiting friends in Paris, Malaga, and Madrid. Nothing went wrong! I did not leave my handbag on a train — although the one train ride I’d booked was cancelled and no one informed me. But luckily I learned about it in time and got a bus ticket. And I did have a heart-seizing moment when I thought I’d left my backpack — with laptop and Canadian money — at CDG airport. But no, it was safely there in the overhead bin. When you travel alone, the heart-seizing moments take a toll. But it’s worth it for the joy of exploring new places.

On my way back into Toronto from Pearson one Thursday late afternoon, I was appalled, once again, at the gridlock that is Toronto traffic. Paris is phenomenally forward-looking, with many separated bike lanes, superb and extensive public transit, more and more pedestrianized green space. Madrid has several enormous, beautiful parks full of leisure amenities for its citizens. Toronto has none of these things.

So at dawn the next day, Friday, as my jet-lagged brain absorbed its first coffee, I sat to write an op-ed essay expressing my dismay and anger at the mismanagement of my city by our dinosaur premier and his henchmen. I sent it to the Toronto Star, which has occasionally printed an op-ed of mine but far more frequently has ignored what I send them.

And yet, she persisted.

This time, an hour after sending, I received an email: they were buying it and would run it on Sunday. And incidentally, the editor was a former writing student of mine.

The piece generated 70 comments on the Star website, and more when I posted it on FB. Even if people disagreed, they were thinking about transit and green space and bike lanes in Toronto. I was hugely chuffed.

Today I wrote an impassioned letter to three Toronto members of parliament and the federal transportation minister about blocking jets at the island airport. And I will keep writing to them and to others. They say every protest letter a politician receives represents hundreds of silent people. They do pay attention.

Never downplay the possibility and importance of expressing yourself and getting the word out there. Your opinion matters.

Op-ed in the Star

Link to article here.

Letter to Dr. Danielle Martin, M.P.

Dr. Martin, welcome to Canadian politics. As the representative of the riding closest to Billy Bishop Airport, I hope you are a courageous politician as well as a savvy one.

Today P. Poilievre came out in favour of jets at Billy Bishop. If anything tells us it’s a hideous idea, it’s the support of both Premier Ford and PP.

Perhaps you’ve been ordered to keep quiet on this issue. Perhaps P.M. Carney is going to bend to the will of the wealthy business people of Toronto and the noisy premier of this province. Certainly he’s busy with other things. Perhaps he just doesn’t care.

We care.

This city has myriad problems and is already almost uninhabitable with gridlock, construction, a forest of high-rises blocking the lake. I had an op-ed in the Toronto Star last Sunday about our abysmal transit and lack of green space, as opposed to Paris, which is inspiringly forward-looking.

We have far too few places in this city where citizens can be in nature and tranquillity. Ford is doing his best to gut what’s already here, at Ontario Place and now elsewhere on the waterfront and the islands. Once we lose those spaces, we will never get them back.

I urge you, I beg you, to use your voice to support the citizens of Toronto and block this retrograde provincial government from further destruction of what little green space there is. Start with blocking noisy, polluting, invasive jets at our small island airport.

We are in desperate need of a federal champion. Please be that person.

Thank you.

best

Beth Kaplan