"Cowardice asks the question...is it safe? Expediency asks the question...is it politic? Vanity asks the question...is it popular? But conscience asks the question...is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because it is right." ~Dr. Martin Luther King

Friday 6 June 2008

Whistle While You.....Sleep?

The following is a letter to the Editor of The Auroran:

To The Editor,

Once again I am the object of revile. I have had the temerity to suggest the cost of an undertaking might influence the answer when people are asked to respond Yes or No to a particular question. I moved the matter be referred back to staff for costs to be determined. The Mayor conscientiously forwarded a copy of the motion to Barbara Best who lobbied four years to have the 2 a.m. train whistle stopped.

Consequently, my name is mud. Four residents including Barbara Best . have taken me to task for miscreant behaviour.

I have engaged in dialogue with a resident who has been fair minded enough to respond to my points of reference without significant castigation.

The report to council shows potential costs of between $74,000 and $120,000 for measures needed to accommodate the cessation of the whistle. The figures are not firm at this time.

Residents who are in favour of silencing the whistle are confident they know everything that needs to be known to accomplish their objective. From my perspective, there are other aspects that need to be determined. Not the least of which is the 2008 budget which was struck with fanfare just a few weeks ago. So far as I am aware, there are no funds allocated for this project.

The idea of a survey to determine public support for the project was not mine. But since the public are being asked it seems sensible to me the ins and outs of the matter should be readily available.

I acknowledge my experience makes me less than eager to leap on any band wagon. I need to be convinced. I enclose my last communication with a resident who favours the 2a.m. train whistle ban.
________________________________________

Good Morning Neighbour,

Thank you for continuing the dialogue. I keep being reminded of the political maxim "The less you say the less likely you will be misunderstood." I wrote that one myself. I don't follow it of course as you have noted this morning in your reference to my tirade and yesterday my diatribe.

I did not tell you of my childhood experience of living in the vicinity of a railway station and then a signalling yard to entertain you or bore you to death so that you will never make the mistake of communicating with me again. I was illustrating a point. My experience is that if you live with excessive noise that becomes the norm. Everyone I have shared notes with on this matter has had the same experience.

Yesterday I spoke to someone closely involved in the question, who told of living in an apartment in Scarborough that backed on to a railway line. When the trains passed the entire building vibrated and windows rattled. The first time it happened, they thought it was an earthquake. After a month they no longer heard it.

When people were exercised about the proposal to put higher voltage power lines in the existing corridor, a man in a crowd of protesters demanded to know the name and address of a hydro official. He needed it he said, for when his ten year old son would be diagnosed with leukemia and he would file suit against that particular official.His neighbours cheered and applauded his comment. But I thought , “My God man! Do you hear what you are saying?”

Yesterday I had an angry email from a woman who said her children are falling asleep at their desks in school because of a lack of sleep at home. She suggested I was rambling and incoherent .
I have to say , if I believed where I lived would be the cause for a child of mine to be diagnosed with cancer, I would not be waiting for the wheels of bureaucracy to take care of the problem. I would be out of that place in a nanosecond. The same principle applies if any or all of my children were getting insufficient sleep in their own beds at night as to cause them to fall asleep in the classroom.

The safety and well-being of my children was always my responsibility. It did not rest with a nameless, faceless train driver who is responsible only for safely operating a train on a railway track.

Where we live is a personal choice we all make

You have nine people at a council table to consider your problem. In turn they each have several thousand people who are interested in how the matter is resolved.. It should not surprise or offend anyone if there is more than one viewpoint expressed at a council table. In fact, if you have several people expressing exactly the same viewpoint, you might rightly suspect their intellectual autonomy.

If I am satisfied the problem is valid and that stopping the train whistle at two o'clock in the morning is a sensible and safe solution; if the cost of the measure is not prohibitive; if there is no question of serious liability to the Town of Aurora or the Region of York for that matter, I will support the measure.

But I have to tell you I am not without experience or prejudice, as I have tried to illustrate. I have knowledge of families devastated by a collision between a car and a train. One such family lived at 24 Murray Drive. \Four children at home still in bed at seven o'clock in the morning; mother father and another person killed instantly on the level crossing on Centre Street, on their way to work.while the children slept. That memory is not an easy one to erase. Those children were classmates of my own.

You have your experience. I have mine. My decision will be based on mine with all the information that can be assembled and the strength of the argument presented. I do not react positively
when someone tells me I am rambling and incoherent. My inclination is to chuck some of that right back .

James Watts was the inventor of the steam engine and the father of the Industrial Revolution Pierre Berton would have known all about him and credited him with John A Macdonald for the reality of Canada. It's for certain ,it could never have happened without trains . The Last Spike came after. I learned about James Watts in elementary school history. Most of the great inventors were Scots you know.

Evelyn Buck

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I cannot beleive how this train horn - it's not a whistle - issue has gone on. I am reminded of the folks living near Pearson Intl. complained about the noise from the planes..... hello, you bought a house near the airport, what do you expect?

So people are upset about a train horn at 2am. The horn sounded as a train approachs a crossing is a valuable safety tool. The long-short-long horn is a traditional warning that a train is approaching the crossing.

I grew up in Canada's "Railway Capital" and heard train horns and bells constantly. I don't recall falling asleep in class. I don't recall people complaining to city council.

Today, I live in the south-west part of Aurora. I can hear train horns. I cannot however tell you where it is coming from. It could be from the crossing west of Bathurst on Bloomington... but do we get King ban that horn because I can hear it? If the people that want it stopped live in the north east part of Aurora, do we petition Newmarket to ban horns in their town too?

I am sorry, this seems like another waste of MY tax dollars to appease a small group that bought a house with full a investigation of their environs.

This council should stop working on issues that are outside of their domain - train horns, lawn chemicals, etc - and deal with Aurora issues.

Anonymous said...

That makes me wonder which came first the people who are complaining or the train tracks. I think the trains were running through Aurora before all the subdivisions went in.

Anonymous said...

Last night my son and a friend were working on a school project until 2am. I was asked if I could give the friend a ride home before I went to sleep. I awoke at 2:11am to the sound of the train. The whistle did not wake me enough to stop me from going back to sleep. It's not like its startling and I am in my bed. Maybe we should stop the sirens on the emergency vehicles that go screeming through our towns during the night or maybe from 8pm until 7am.I do not recall hearing the train at that time of the morning before. I am often awakened by the 6:30 train, it would seem that that is my back-up alarm. However most mornings I do not hear the train horn. I do think that we become accustomed to our surroundings. At the beginning of the week I had to drive around the centre of town to get my son to school because someone had walked in front of the 8am train and just a few weeks ago a young visitor to our country lost his head due to an out of control helicopter and a set of head phones . There are people out and about at 2 am don't they deserve the same safety as the people of the daytime!