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Malignant neglect
?Mary Delaney is probably best known in Uxbridge as an actress, justly applauded for her star turn in such vehicles as Steel Magnolias and The Importance of Being Earnest. But down in her chosen home of Brougham (about 15 minutes south of Uxbridge on Brock Road), she is better known for her impassioned leadership of Land Over Landings, a group dedicated to the ultimate scrapping of the Pickering Airport project, which has tied up hundreds of acres of property, and dozens of habitable dwellings, for decades now, in Pickering, Ajax and neighbouring municipalities, including Uxbridge. We fumed in this space a few weeks ago about the need for Ottawa to finally give itself a deadline on the project, to either go full steam ahead or drop the idea altogether.
What has Ms. Delaney hopping mad these days is the decision of Transport Canada to go ahead this fall with the demolition of many of these buildings, including eight in Uxbridge (see our cover story). It’s not that she disagrees that many of the houses need to come down, including the Uxbridge ones (although she disputes the inclusion of several on the Pickering list). But, she says, it didn’t need to come to this.
“Most of these places were only built 40 or 50 years ago,” she says. “They were designed to be good, solid homes for much longer than this. But it’s malignant neglect. They rented them to people who didn’t maintain them, and when those people left, they continued to allow them to fall into disrepair. They would do things like shut off the power, but not the water, so the pipes would burst in winter and render the homes inhabitable without a lot of repairs they weren’t prepared to do. So over the years they just got worse and worse, and now of course they have to come down.”
“It’s criminal,” she growls. “In the GTA, we need housing at a reasonable cost, housing which these buildings could have provided. Now they’re gone forever; it’s unconscionable.”
What’s ironic is that these ruined buildings are often surrounded by nicely manicured lawns (“so they can justify their maintenance budget,” says Mary Delaney). It is often also common to see a totally derelict structure next to a beautifully-kept one. They both have the same landlord - the federal government - but the difference is that in the latter case, someone cared to maintain the property. The government won’t bother.
Another irony is the most beautiful building in Brougham, a heritage building on the southwest corner of Brock Road and Highway 7. You can’t miss it on your way to the 407. A few years back, the Greater Toronto Airport Authority (GTAA) spent a lot of time, and a lot of money, restoring it to its former glory, and then occupied it as its primary office building. Then, suddenly last summer, the agency vacated the building, probably because the Pickering Airport is not a high priority with this government.
There are two things that get your head to shaking about this situation. First is that this beautifully-restored building, if precedent is any indicator, will now fall back into neglect. The second is that the hundreds of thousands of dollars dedicated to its restoration could have gone a long way toward maintaining the houses and other structures now under threat from the wrecker’s ball. So it’s money doubly wasted. That’s what gives government a bad name.
