Our Ontario Municipal Election Promise:
We are calling on all Willowdale candidates for elected office to commit unequivocally to force the City of Toronto to relocate its project from the front lawn parklands of Willowdale Manor seniors care home at 175 Cummer Avenue to another suitable location in Toronto that does not involve stripping low income seniors of their cherished front lawn parklands and clear cutting dozens of mature trees in our already green-deprived City.
Our elderly deserve respect and protection from predatory politicians trying to steal the front lawn parklands of low income ethnic seniors. So far, only DANIEL LEE has fought for an entire year to move this project to another location that does not steal from seniors. As a member of the BCNA Bayview Cummer Neighbourhood Association DANIEL LEE has helped raise awareness and file a legal court challenge against the City of Toronto's ugly plan.
Other candidates LILY CHENG and MARKUS O'BRIEN have either flip flopped or have stated they are completely against the seniors keeping their front lawn.
Willowdale residents will need to be very careful when they vote October 24. So we will be calling on all candidates to sign a written pledge to fight to protect the seniors parklands at Willowdale Manor. And to stop all the dirty tactics used by outgoing 30 year Willowdale Councillor John Filion to shame and blame Willowdale residents who stand up for our community members.
On Sunday August 21, Voices of Willowdale again gathered with a wonderful multiethnic group on their doorstep Sunday cooking fresh wood oven pizzas. Showing support for the hundreds of low income seniors of Willowdale Manor in the battle preserve and protect their beautiful front lawn parkland from redevelopment by the uncaring politicians and bureaucrats at City of Toronto. MORE PHOTOS HERE
BACKGROUND FACTS
Toronto Seniors Housing Corporation is responsible for the care and well being of hundreds of elderly residents at Willowdale Manor seniors care home on the northern border of the City of Toronto. The beautiful two acre front lawn parklands of this facility are a cherished amenity for the seniors. It was protected under a 1998 OMB decision which prevented its redevelopment.
Yet last year, using pandemic lockdowns to avoid public consultation and scrutiny, City Councillors John Filion and Ana Bailão together with chief housing bureaucrat Abi Bond, targeted the Willowdale Manor green space for destruction. City officials claimed this was the only site they could find in all of Willowdale to place 60 prefabricated housing containers to house chronically addicted and mental health challenged homeless men. And they refused to disclose the 55 other sites they say they investigated.
They also refused Ontario MPP Stan Cho’s offer to help them find a more suitable site than the protected front lawn of seniors care home.
Instead, the City decided to go to war with the seniors, their families and supporters ( thousands who have signed petitions). They have publicly smeared the supporters of Willowdale Manor’s elderly residents with a disinformation campaign labelling them as “anti-homeless”. They have spent millions and done a press blitz, never once admitting to journalists ( none of whom ever bothered investigating -- with one sole exception - City TV 's Mark McAllister https://lnkd.in/gS8zipAT ) that the seniors even exist, much less that they were ignored, nor that their front lawn was actually a protected amenity being stripped without their consent.
This is the very same City Council and Mayor who protected the upscale residents of Belmont House seniors home in downtown Toronto – refusing a development that would have cast a shadow on those seniors’ outdoor garden space! Yet the ethnic low income seniors at Willowdale Manor, who are in the care of the City’s TSHC itself, are ignored and stripped of their greenspace altogether!