The importance of neighbourhood.

George Sinclair

June 12 2003

Before assuming the reins of this small but mighty organization I wanted to say a few words about our departing chairperson Gloria McGinn McTeer, a woman for whom I have the highest respect and greatest regard.

When Tutis Vilis approached me to join the UL board, there was no mistaking his motivation. The League had at that time just lost Joni Baechler to London City Council and a warm body to occupy the Vice-Chair position was one of Gloria’s conditions for staying on.

When I say Joni left the UL for council, we like to think she’s merely been seconded from here to a place that needed her more, sort of like a Medecins Sans Frontier doctor who’s sent into a conflict zone. And whether she knows it or not, we hope to welcome her back one day. I told Sandy Levin much the same thing last week. Just think of how much more effective this organization might be with them back at the table. It is incidentally, no surprise that both Joni & Sandy are among the two most conscientious and respected members of Council.

So, my tenure here was in part a deliberate calculation designed to keep Gloria on the job as long as possible, and I consider it my proudest accomplishment since it allowed her to remain for 2 years longer than she might have otherwise. 

And of course during all that time she has spent many many hours attending meetings at city hall, reading expensive consultant reports (often with much argument, some truth, and little heart), and the pleas of ordinary citizens, (often with much heart, some truth and little argument), listening and talking to all and sundry who came to the UL for help or advice.

So I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Gloria and her family, and remind them that their temporary loss of her was our gain, and one for which we are grateful. So thank you Gloria for a steadfast job.

Now I am no Gloria to be sure, and any ‘glory’ I can re-direct towards the League will relate to the extent that we can nurture and strengthen the neighbourhood associations and that together make up the League and by extension, the neighbourhoods themselves.

I hope we can do this by encouraging wider participation at our meetings, and supporting neighbourhood initiatives with advice where possible, and with money where necessary. Together with Josh Hurwitz our newly minted Membership Secretary and the entire board, we are going to try to reach out to those groups in the city who are not currently members.

The recent closing of the Valu-Mart grocery store on Egerton Street is a perfect example of what’s missing and what’s needed. One of the reasons we in South London managed to preserve our Valu-Mart a few years ago when it was slated for closing was precisely because we had a viable neighbourhood association that was able to spring into action immediately, and I can’t help but think that the situation in the east part of town might have ended differently had they been in our position.

Additionally, I want to invite a deeper level of participation among current UL member organizations, and really want to challenge members to come back to the table in the fall of this year with an initiative designed specifically to foster their own neighbourhoods. We can discuss them at that time and sponsor the best projects.

The ground the UL has chosen to occupy is located midway between the centre, which is the family itself and the periphery, which is the larger community. It is the neighbourhood; it begins at your property line and extends outward from there, whether it’s one house or a dozen houses. (And quick test of a healthy neighbourhood is to literally count how many neighbours you can recognize, how many you can name and ultimately, how many you know.) Interesting exercize.

Healthy neighbourhoods are vitally important because they are the stage where our earliest interactions with the outside world take place, from that first glimpse through the fence at the people who are next to us but not of us, to the later borrowing of hedge clippers, cups of sugar, and if they’re really good neighbours the odd bottle of Autralian Shiraz. It is the quantity and quality of those interactions that define a neighbourhood.

And because we as an organization value neighbourhoods so highly, we seek to support those things, actions, plans and initiatives that foster healthy neighbourhoods, and resist those things, actions, or changes that threaten them. 

We are sensitive therefore to traffic patterns and road widenings, traffic speed and volume, mindless urban sprawl, the paving of farmland, the felling of the urban forest, in part because of the deleterious effect they have on local neighbourhoods. It seems obvious that if you cannot safely cross the street for the speeding traffic, you can not easily get to know your neighbour.

I come from a great neighbourhood.  Great neighbourhoods are fostered in part by their physical layout and organization, (think of compact forms, front porches where you can interact with your neighbours, keep an eye on children and an eye on the street an so on).

I think many of the changes to the cityscape in the last 50 years are actually antithetical to the growth and health of neighbourhoods and contribute in no small way to the sense of anonymity and isolation that many city dwellers feel about their immediate surroundings.

So while our task may be made more difficult by the form and character of the modern city, I don’t believe it is impossible, because great neighbourhoods are also the result of the tiny, nameless and deliberate acts of neighbourliness by the people who live in them. And if we can’t as an organization encourage less wasteful land use planning, (which we do) at least we can encourage neighbourhood street parties where strangers can get to know one another.

Being a Canadian is great, being from Ontario is pretty nice, and being from London is, quite frankly, depending on how the latest big issue has been handled downtown, can be deniable - but I would argue it is the neigbourhoods we create that bring the most satisfaction on a daily basis to life in the big city.

I hope and believe that we can advance the cause of neighbourhoods a little bit in the coming year. I thank all current members for their loyalty to the organization and to the idea of neighbourhoods, and ask for your continued support of the Urban League.

Thank you very much.