There were no sounds of kids playing and no signs of parents on a beautiful Sunday of the summer’s last long weekend in a park in a secluded corner of west Parkdale.
Three city workers sat idle beside an unused splash pad in Albert Crosland Park.
The playground beside it was also completely empty.
There was the requisite port-a-potty to make the squatters feel right at home.
It was clear that like other parks with encampments, the tents in this one had driven the families away.
One homeless man sat on a bench shirtless and another woman wandered around the park with a collection of shopping bags.
A young man who appeared to be a dealer sat in the corner of the park busy on his Smartphone, his expensive e-bike parked beside him.
The park is located at the end of a dead-end street called Saunders Ave. where many of the semi-detached homes — in what is called Parkdale meets Roncesvalles North — appear to be newly renovated.
One four-bedroom home just sold for $ 1.6 million.
I travelled down by e-bike after getting a tip that this off-the-beaten-track park had been infiltrated with tents and the tent dwellers had harassed the residents of this dead-end street.
Police had not been able to remove them because of the ideology adopted by Mayor Olivia Chow and her cabal of leftists back in May.
The Interdivisional Protocol for Encampments in Toronto uses a “human rights approach” that endeavours to understand the needs of those living in encampments.
Enforcement has taken a back seat to hugging and stroking the squatters.
One of the protocol’s principles, according to the 17-page city document, is to “treat people living in encampments with the same dignity, respect, kindness and compassion” as all city residents.
Enforcement is determined by a phalanx of city bureaucrats in the recently created Encampment Office, who decide when it is time to clear out the squatters based on a long list of criteria.
Why do I get the feeling they don’t want to clear them out?
Let’s be frank here.
By allowing these squatters to take over a neighbourhood park, the Chow regime is actually treating them with more respect and dignity than tax-paying parents and their children in this inner city neighbourhood, and so many others in Toronto.
The encampment is not huge but neither is the park.
I’m willing to bet that as soon as neighbouring families saw the tents and the drug dealer they crossed that park off their list.
I saw it for myself.
A few blocks north on Lansdowne Ave. McGregor Playground was full of kids. The difference was that it had no tents.
It’s not just the fact that this leftist ideology is giving squatters and addicts full rein, or that council really couldn’t give a damn about law-abiding families.
But it’s yet another step in the steady decline of the quality of life in our once-quiet neighbourhoods.
Drug dealers infiltrate wherever they smell opportunity.
Safety, or lack thereof, becomes an issue. Crime increases, as it already has in this pocket of the city.
And decent families who fear the fallout, vote with their feet, selling their homes and moving elsewhere, often out of Toronto.
Our politicians never consider the impact of their misguided ideologies.
I suspect they just don’t care.
