Search Results for: oskenonton lane toronto
Tired of living where lanes have no name
Downtown neighbourhood residents say naming laneways will speed up emergency response times
Tamara Baluja – Toronto Star
They often start suddenly and stop abruptly. They twist and turn. They come to a dead end. And most of the city’s 3,600 laneways don’t have names. Not even Google can find them.
Should they be named?
“It’s a question of public safety,” said Rory Sinclair, former chair of a local residents’ association that hopes to name 46 neighbourhood laneways in Harbord Village, in the College St.-Spadina Ave. area.
Naming laneways means faster response times in emergencies, he says.
Area resident Jeannie Hastie’s Victorian house burned to the ground in 2005 in a massive blaze that destroyed five other homes. Firefighters battled that fire from the main road and the laneway behind her house.
“In that 2005 fire, the flames were shooting high above the roof line, so the firefighters knew where to go,” Hastie said. “But if it’s not visible and if laneways don’t have names or numbers, how are you supposed to tell anyone where to find it on a map?”
But firefighters and police aren’t entirely convinced naming laneways will speed up response times.
“I don’t know if naming them will be all that helpful, but numbering certainly would,” said Police Supt. Ruth White.
Police often can’t locate houses on lanes because people tend not to post house numbers there, she said.
“All our officers have to memorize the names and locations of all the streets. Giving them more names to learn will just make that process harder. Plus, the residents know how to tell us where to go,” White said.
Laneways are found primarily in the pre-amalgamation City of Toronto, said Brigitte Shim, a professor of architecture at the University of Toronto.
Originally used in Victorian times as passages to deliver coal and groceries, they continued to be built into the 1930s.
So far, the city has named only 194 back lanes, and only when houses have front entrances on a laneway, or by special request.
One such request came from Cabbagetown resident Douglas McTaggart, who wanted the laneway behind his home named Oskenonton Lane, after a First Nations entertainer from the early 1900s.
Since it was named, McTaggart said, garbage in the laneway has been cleared more regularly and it has become a safer place.
He disagreed with the assessment of police and fire officials.
“I have seen at least three separate cases where emergency services have used the name of the laneway,” he said.
Chair of the Cabbagetown Preservation Association Laneway Naming and Signing Initiative, McTaggart has led a project to name 55 laneways.
Desmond Christopher, the city’s supervisor for survey and mapping services, said he’s praying this isn’t indicative of a city-wide desire to name all 3,400 such lanes.
It costs $300 to put a single sign on a pre-existing pole; $400 if a pole is needed, he said.
Naming every laneway could cost $1 million to $1.3 million, the city estimates.
“Can you imagine the time and money it would take all to name all those laneways?” he said.
“We would have to come up with 3,400 new names for each of the laneways, because obviously you can’t have repetition, and the names need to fit with the character of the neighbourhood.”
Sinclair said that his neighbourhood residents’ association will conduct community surveys to come up with names for its 46 laneways.
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Contact the Jeffrey Team for more information - 416−388−1960
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Cabbagetown cultivates lanes
Lane-naming a tribute to ‘hidden gems’, noteworthy Torontonians
Laura Blenkinsop, National Post
City works crews arrived last week amid the Victorian row houses and cottages of Cabbagetown, halting their trucks at eight narrow laneways. Residents watched as they erected street signs with names like Woodward Evans Lane, after the two Torontonians who first invented the light bulb and then sold the patent to Thomas Edison; Drovers Lane, after the occupation of some early City of Toronto residents who drove herds of livestock to market; and Hagan Lane after award-winning artist Frederick Hagan, known for setting up his easel to paint in Cabbagetown’s laneways.
It is the first lane-naming project of this scale in Toronto; before they are done, 44 more lanes will get names.
They are a tribute to the persistence of Douglas Mc-Taggart, who has spent three years pushing to name all the back alleys in Cabbagetown.
“There’s a beauty to the laneways now, and I think it’s really trying to accentuate the positives,” said Mr. McTaggart, chairman of the Cabbagetown Preservation Association Laneway Naming and Signing Initiative.
“They’re part of the Victorian plan so they are historic. I think there is so much potential for them.”
Cabbagetown is the largest continuous area of preserved Victorian housing in North America
Cabbagetown, named for the flood of impoverished Irish immigrants who used their front lawns for vegetable gardens filled with cabbages, is shedding its slum past, although not quickly enough for some residents.
The signs erected this week are all in the neighbourhood’s more troubled western edge.
Mr. McTaggart’s inspiration to name lanes came as a way to deal with the problems he faced in the alley behind the Seaton Street home he moved into in January, 2002.
A Toronto Community Housing Corporation building is across the alley from his home and with all the residents, he said over time garbage was piled five to six feet high and 20-feet long. He found used syringes and broken glass when children in their bare feet were playing nearby.
After a drug deal gone wrong, a person was thrown to their death off a balcony into the alley, he said.
“I believe it’s a liability to have an unnamed thoroughfare in Toronto in this day and age,” said Mr. McTaggart. “It’s really life and property that are at risk.”
His complaints to the city proved fruitless, he said, so in 2004 he decided to submit an application to get the troubled lane a name.
In December, 2005, his back alley was officially named Oskenonton Lane, after a First Nations entertainer from the early 1900s.
Since the lane’s naming, Mr. McTaggart said he’s noticed a reduction in crime.
The TCHC building’s garbage is collected three times instead of once each week and new lighting has been installed.
“It really was a tangle of issues of urban decay,” Mr. McTaggart said. “Naming and signing the lane was a step that really vaulted us forward.”
He decided nearby lanes should also be named so they could be cleaned up, to speed up emergency response times and increase traffic safety.
So the human resources consultant and historical preservation enthusiast bought property data maps and spent three winter weeks canvassing the area and noting down the locations, problems and historical icons of every lane.
He also created the laneways initiative, which submitted the application to name 52 lanes on March 22, 2006. Desmond Christopher, the city’s supervisor for Street and Parcel Mapping, said that is a lot of lanes.
“Normally we don’t name lanes unless we are required for emergency purposes,” he said.
The city also names lanes if a new building’s front entrance looks onto an alley instead of a street, or if city councillors and residents want to honour someone who has died.
For the signage for the first eight lanes, the city has spent about $2,500 in labour and materials.
Mr. McTaggart intends to continue his activism for the laneways, pushing for road surface, sewage and greening improvements until Cabbagetown’s lanes are “hidden gems.”
He said he’s been humbled by thank you e-mails he’s received from neighbours for the signs that have already been installed.
“I don’t think anybody should undervalue the signage that’s in place,” he said. “Signage brings great benefits.”
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Contact the Jeffrey Team for more information - 416−388−1960
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