Councillor Brian Ashton leaves post after 24 years, 10 candidates seek seat

Ward 36 is a little-changed corner of Scarborough that doesn’t switch politicians too frequently.

Brian Ashton has been the local councillor for 24 years. Now that he’s retiring, 10 candidates contend for his chair, amongst them an artist, a private eye, a realtor and the owner of a “very eccentric basset hound.”

There’s also Tony Ashdown, a retired liquor control board director and Rob Ford supporter whose website proclaims: “It is better to make a difference than to be right!” Ashdown explained making a difference “means something changes. Winning an argument just means you out-talked the other fellow.”

Promising to “be a one-term wonder” if elected, he added the city has gotten off track in the way it provides services, such as outdoor swimming pools it fails to keep open Labour Day weekend.

Robert Spencer, the basset hound owner, would open an “action centre” on Kingston Road, the waterfront ward’s main thoroughfare, and have two of his staff work there on local issues.

Like others vying for the post, he has a plan to foil the decades-old scheme to put condominium towers on the former Birch Cliff Quarry Lands, still the subject of talks between Ashton and a developer.

Unlike most of his opponents, Spencer welcomes testing for a possible wind farm a few kilometres off the Scarborough Bluffs. A former chairperson of the Toronto Board of Education, he said he would prefer wind farms to a new nuclear plant and its toxic waste.

But Spencer said he would first put solar panels on roofs of local schools.

“From the 10th year on, you’re making enough money to pay the caretaker.”

The area is primed for development and needs some, said Gary Crawford, who besides being the ward’s public school trustee is a locally noted painter. Acknowledging some residents want no change, Crawford would like to see families move in and more restaurants open.

With land values higher, owners of motels and other such businesses on the road will eventually sell, said Crawford, who wants community festivals so people of the area can “celebrate the gem that it is.”

Street prostitution, drug abuse and related crime move in cycles along Kingston Road.

Sean Gladney, the private eye, said lately he’s seen “more and more crackheads walking down the streets” and added his response to the problem is to get police “involved a little more than they are.”

A member of the unofficial Toronto Party, Gladney said the ward has good real estate, including the bluffs, but nobody has properly promoted it. Events at the bluffs may be part of the answer, he said.

Robert McDermott, the realtor, said a wind farm would be an eye sore and “just destroy the whole area.”

If elected, he said, he’d meet with local business owners to see what type of development they want and would propose the city should only hire new employees who live in Toronto.

The ward, despite many vacancies in its Cliffside and Birch Cliff commercial zones, has largely escaped trends driving down personal incomes in most of Scarborough since the 1970s. Gentrified areas in its west end around Fallingbrook Road are looked on as extensions of the Beach.

An exception is Scarborough Village, a crowded little community at the ward’s easternmost reaches named as one of Toronto’s priority neighbourhoods.

At his Cliffside wine store, Spirits in the Bluffs, Gordon Gresko looks out at Kingston where, he said, drivers are moving so fast it’s hard for them to read his signs.

Many of his customers are older and need to park close, but Gresko said when he calls police for parking enforcement, they arrive hours too late.

“Part of the problem is it’s a car neighbourhood,” he said. “It’s not attractive here for walking.”

Other candidates say they’re sorry to see Ashton leave, but Roman Danilov is glad the veteran councillor is gone. An environmental professional who said he is fluent in 10 languages, Danilov said small business owners complain of a lack of customers and that “they didn’t feel welcome here.”

Danilov wants green spaces south of the local CN rail line preserved as a public park. “I’m not afraid to attack anyone as long as I’m backed up by the community,” he added.

Also running, Diane Hogan, co-ordinator of a housing co-operative, said it’s difficult to get homeless people off the streets.

“You try to encourage them to take the help that’s there, because it is there,” she said.

Hogan said the city’s Strong Neighbourhoods approach has worked for Scarborough Village and she would stand up for it, but does not want new light rail lines “clogging up all of our Scarborough streets.”

Another candidate, Vicki Breen, a business analyst, sees the need to clean up Kingston Road — which she said presents a “shoddy” image to visitors — by forming Business Improvement Areas and youth councils.

Keep local youth involved and they will “take more ownership of their community,” and “be less likely to trash it out of boredom,” Breen said.

Marvin Macaraig, a University of Toronto Scarborough instructor, is running too and said “a big vision” for Kingston Road is long overdue and something people “really ache for.”

Residents feel disconnected from city hall “in both real and imagined ways,” said Macaraig, adding Scarborough “has received the short end of the stick when it comes to certain services,” such as transit.

Eddy Gasparotto, the last candidate to register, is a court officer who ran against Ashton in 2006, but said some people in the ward can’t name a burning issue and that reflects well on Ashton.

As councillor, Gasparotto said he’d want part of the city’s operating budget handed to Scarborough’s community council “so we could control it” and use it to deal with local matters.

Candidates debate at Cedar Drive Public School, 21 Gatesview Ave. at 7 p.m. next Thursday, Oct. 14.

- Mike Adler

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