The Truth About the Toronto Anti-smoking Bylaw

            Late on Friday night a road crew started ripping up Queen Street from Dunn Avenue and moving west, so I went to bed to the sound of Rocky Rockpecker and the gang playing their jackhammers all night long. I don’t know if they kept me awake or if I just couldn’t sleep very well. I drifted in and out and dreamed things I can’t remember. As the early morning progressed the noise moved further west and got more muffled.

            Later that morning I was listening to one of the rare Serge Gainsbourg songs for which the lyrics are not posted online, and trying to concentrate and listen in order to make out the French lyrics, when the jackhammers returned to machine gun the concrete near my place. Needless to say it made listening to the nuances of a language that I haven’t yet mastered in quiet times, a lot more difficult.

            At about 8:45 I rode west beside the gutted streetcar tracks that had narrowed the street. I crawled behind one of those horrible busses that are replacing the Queen Streetcars for the next three months until it moved ahead after Lansdowne. Then I went to get into the food bank line-up.

It was the first time I’d been there in two weeks, since the Saturday before that I’d had a performance for which to prepare. The line-up was a lot quieter than usual since Bart wasn’t there shouting at invisible people.

There seemed to be more people smoking though, but there wasn’t much that I could do besides move away. After the last time that I was at the food bank I called up the city of Toronto’s bylaw enforcement office to complain about the smoking within nine meters of the two doors at 1499 Queen West, one of which is the PARC entrance and the other the food bank entrance. They said they would investigate and asked if I wanted them to follow up with me. I gave them my number and at the end of that week I received a call from a very nice tobacco inspector. She informed me that she’d gone to 1499 Queen Street West to investigate but the problem is that the bylaw that seems to state that “In Toronto it is against the law to smoke within 9 meters of an entrance or exit of any building that is used by the public” does not apply to city sidewalks. It can only be enforced if the area outside of the door has the same owner as the door. That means that it would have applied to the back door of the Parkdale Food Bank’s previous location because the driveway was private property but not to the current location.

I pointed out to her that the wording of the public statements about the bylaw doesn’t offer those specifications. She explained that city hall wanted to make it sound better than it is. She complained that the way that they present it now just makes her job more difficult because she constantly has to look into where the property lines extend in order to know if a violation of the bylaw has occurred. She also has to often deal with a lot of negativity because of the feeling that many smokers have of being oppressed. That happened when she went to investigate at PARC. She told me that there is not much that can be done about smoking on the sidewalk. If the nine meter rule were to be applied to the sidewalk smokers would have to step out onto the street to be far enough away from a door in order to smoke and stepping up or down the sidewalk wouldn’t work because there’s always another door less than nine meters away from the door that one is moving away from.

On this day there were some women sitting and smoking on the steps of the apartment building next to the food bank. From what the officer told me I guess the bylaw could be applied to the steps, in which case the landlord of 1501 Queen West could be fined. But that would just cause animosity towards the food bank line-up and it wouldn’t solve the smoking problem.

Pretty much everyone in line this time were food bank regulars. The cart belonging to the guy ahead of me had “Robbie” written on it. Robbie is a large, soft man who smokes and who also seems like his mind may be wrapped in the gauze of prescription medications. There is a short and stout, white haired woman with whom he seems close. I had previously assumed that they were a couple but that is probably not the case since on this day they were not together in line. At one point he was talking with her and then she got behind him and lifted up the back of his t-shirt to squeeze something. Then she showed him her finger and went downstairs to wash her hands.

One thing good about the new location is that there are two public washrooms down stairs. Before the move from Cowan and King, the nearest toilet was at Nick’s Bar, around the corner on King Street.

My Guyanese friend was further back in line. He claimed that he wasn’t there for himself this time but for a friend who was too drunk to walk. He recounted a story he’d heard about a father of five who’d gone to another food bank in town and needed help to get the food to his car. The manager helped him but when he saw that the man drove a BMW he took everything back. That seemed odd to me. Why couldn’t a person have had a quality car before falling on bad times? With five kids to cart around one wouldn’t expect the father would be forced to sell his car to buy food.

Looking this up later though I saw that before Ontario Works was introduced a social assistance recipient was allowed to own a car worth up to $10,000. Now however the limit is $5,000 and if the car is worth more than $5,000 the recipient is only allowed to keep it for six months while looking for a job. If employment is not found after that time the recipient must sell the car. I think that’s a bit extreme.

My Guyanese friend insisted that it’s quite common for immigrants to get provisions at the food bank and then to ship them back to their country of origin. I guess anything is possible but I doubt very much if that’s a common practice. With the cost of shipping it would probably make more sense to just send the money to family members in other countries so they could buy food for themselves.

At about fifteen minutes past the time the food bank was supposed to open, the woman that I call “the bread lady” came out with a tray of watermelon wedges to pass out. She missed me but I wouldn’t have taken one anyway because I don’t like eating while standing up on the street. She announced though that there would be a longer wait because their computer guy had not yet arrived. Everybody appreciated the watermelon though and the fact that they’d thought of handing it out.

One of my former yoga students at PARC came past me and said hi. For the year or so that I taught her, she depended on a wheelchair to get from place to place. I used to set corridors of chairs for her with the backs turned in for hand support and I got her to walk back and forth a few times before doing actual yoga. I was gratified to see her using a walker as she went by on her way into PARC.

I didn’t stand in the line-up this time because so many people nearby were smoking but I made sure that the woman who’d marked her place behind Robbie knew that I was in front of her. She understood why I wasn’t going to stand in line but whenever the line moved she would look for me and call me over so that I could get in front of her. Suddenly a surge of ten people were being let in but when I was in the lobby and heading for the stairs the doorkeeper stopped myself and the people behind me, saying in an annoyed voice, “I said ten people!” I guess she’d expected us to keep count for her.

The door person was wearing a red t-shirt with a circle in the middle and a yellow lightning strike going diagonally through the circle. On the upper right side of her chest she’d stuck an adhesive nametag with “Barry Allen” written on it. The joke being of course that the t-shirt represented the superhero The Flash and the nametag revealed his secret identity.

She said that they might not be as late getting started next time because she was going to be trained to use the computer later that day.

An older guy behind me that I’ve seen many times at the food bank over the last year or so, asked if the book I was reading was in French. I explained that it has the French on one page and the English translation on the opposite and that there are stories by various well-known French authors. He asked if there were any by Victor Hugo. I checked the index and saw that there wasn’t but that there were stories by Voltaire, Balzac, Flaubert, Baudelaire and Camus. He wasn’t familiar with Camus so I told him that Camus’s most famous book was “The Outsider” which is about a man in Algeria who gets into a fight with an Arab on the beach in Algiers, kills him and then goes on trial for murder. His face brightened when I told him that and he declared, “I’d like to read that!” I was worried that he was excited about the killing of an Arab but he told me that he’d spent some time in Algeria. I didn’t ask but I’m curious as to what circumstances took him there. He guessed that the man in the story got off in his murder trial but I told him that wasn’t the case.

When I was finally let inside I got a number in the low 30s. Angie was sitting and eating a sandwich behind her dairy counter when I approached. She told me, “I’m a on a coffee break. Come back in twenty minutes! Just kidding!” She gave me a half litre of 2% milk then told me to take another one from her. I also got from her a bag of five eggs, a package of frozen halal chicken wieners and a bag containing three cups of shredded cheese. Not much meat, but more dairy than usual.

To the vegetable lady I said, “Hi Sylvia! Your name is Sylvia isn’t it?” “Yes, how did you know?” I heard Angie calling you Sylvia. I pay attention!” “Do you pay attention in school?” “I try to!” “I didn’t pay attention in school!” Sylvia handed me four potatoes, a pack of organic sage, a fairly firm tomato and one honey mango that turned out to have gone past its eating stage and was already deep in training for a future as compost. So there were very few vegetables this time and no fruit.

My helper at the shelves was the woman who usually manages the bread section. I took a jar of tomato basil bruschetta, a bag of salt and vinegar Crispers and a package of mint Oreos. She offered me a bag of liquorice or a bag of marshmallows from one side of the bottom of a shelf but I told her I’d prefer the health bars on the other side. She gave me five oats and chocolate bars, one fruit, nut and chocolate bar and a handful of little restaurant servings of honey. She grabbed seven Brookside dark chocolate cranberry almond blood orange bars and put them in my bag, saying that she hears they are very good. I assume from that statement that she is prevented from eating the bars for health reasons. Since she is Native Canadian the most likely reason would be that she is diabetic.

I selected a box of multigrain Cheerios and a can of chickpeas. There was no tuna this week. I asked for a can of tomato sauce but she handed me one of tomato paste so I corrected her. She confessed that she’d made that mistake with someone else earlier. I picked a can of curried cauliflower lentil soup and she gave me an extra one.

She said I could help myself to the bread but they had an unusually slim selection this time around. With the tongs I fished from the bottom of a bin of stale looking white loaves the only multi-grain loaf and one cheese bun.

A few times she put things in my bag that I hadn’t selected or asked for, such as a container of Mongolian barbecue stir fry sauce, a can of tomato soup and a can of beans. She suggested that I could have the beans with my eggs. I didn’t know that was a thing.