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.
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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