The fight to poster
by Todd Harrison
with files from Dale Duncan

I made my first poster when I was eight years old. It was the day of the block-wide yard sale. All of my neighbours turned their storage spaces inside-out, and the small-town Saturday bargain hunters busied themselves trying to find two matching plates or lamps to complement the orange floral-print wing-back couches in their rec rooms.

I unfolded a card table in front of my house and set up shop, but the junk-finder parade failed to notice me; the action seemed concentrated at the other end of the street. So I tore a flap off a cardboard box, drew a big arrow on it to show the way and, in woefully uneven block letters, wrote: “YARD SALE! TOYS, BOOKS AND HOUSEHOLD GOODS.” (In a formidable display of ethics, I even crossed off the S in “GOODS” when I realized that the only thing on my table in the latter category was my mom’s old spice rack.) I taped my sign to a pole on what seemed like the hot corner of the neighbourhood sale, biked madly back to my wares, and waited. By the end of the day, I’d made eight dollars. I was rich.

Since then, I’ve postered for everything from school dances to political rallies to rock shows. In April 2002, I read that Toronto City Council planned to place heavy restrictions on its citizens’ ability to put up posters. Some city staff, under continued pressure from Business Improvement Areas (BIAs) and other groups, want the city to look spotless; a half-torn poster is, to them, an unsightly mess. They want to sanitize our streets—and ignore the impact of their social scrub-down.

Right now, all publicly owned utility poles are available for postering. But if the Harmonization of the Sign By-law Concerning Posters on Utility Poles (a wonderful title, to be sure, but let’s just call it the “proposed anti-postering by-law” from here on out) is passed, a handful of poles would be fitted with postering collars, and fines ($60 per poster) would be levied on those who affix anything to a non-collared pole. I couldn’t help but wonder how I would have made eight dollars at my yard sale if I’d lived in Toronto under this by-law and that “hot corner” pole in my neighbourhood had not been deemed “hot” enough to warrant a collar.

Of course, this by-law would impact more than just pre-teen entrepreneurship. How, for example, will a local band be able to announce its latest gig if it has to compete for limited space with posters for everyone else’s shows? And how will a community health clinic raise awareness about its programs and services if no designated poles fall in its target area? And why would someone who lost their cat put up a poster on a major street (where the collared poles would likely be concentrated) when Fifi is probably camping out in a neighbour’s garden shed?

Postering is a localized communication device, innocuous in its method (especially when compared to garish visual pollution like flashing video screens and huge billboards) and vital in its accessibility. Anyone can put up a poster and, at some point, almost everyone will. So why would City Council want to severely limit its citizens’ ability to do so?

While postering has been a vital part of societies for a couple thousand years (see our timeline, page 18), it wasn’t legally protected in Canada until 1993, when independent musician Ken Ramsden took Peterborough’s sign by-law all the way to the Supreme Court on the grounds that it was unconstitutional. The judges ruled definitively that a poster is a “historically and politically significant form of expression.” It is, therefore, protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which “guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”

Ramsden won his case because Peterborough City Council banned postering on “all public property”—and tried to fine Ramsden for putting them up. It was the totality of the Peterborough by-law that proved its final undoing.

But the Supreme Court, in its ruling, also set out recommendations that are now being used as a justification for limiting postering. The judges suggested that, instead of outright bans, city councils enact by-laws “regulating the use of the poles...by specifying or regulating the location, size of posters, the length of time that a poster might remain in any location, the type of substance used to affix posters, and requiring that the posters be removed after a certain specified time.” The court also suggested charging “a reasonable fee” to help with cleanup and administration costs.

These guidelines form the foundation of Toronto’s proposed postering by-law. In addition to the collar concept, there would also be restrictions on proximity (similar posters would have to be kept 100 metres apart—even though related billboards must only be spaced by 60 metres), display time limitations, and a provision suggesting that people include their names and phone numbers on their signs. City Council’s Planning and Transportation Committee (the body overseeing the process) published a review of the Supreme Court’s decision in the Ramsden case as it pertained to the Toronto regulations. “The Court was not asked to consider and did not express an opinion on a minimum allowable level of postering,” says the report. “It did indicate that any by-law restrictions must impair the right to expression as little as is reasonably possible.”

Sounds fair, right? But wait, there’s more: “In a more recent case, the Supreme Court indicated that law-making bodies should not be held to a standard of perfection in enacting laws that impair rights as little as possible. If a law falls within a range of reasonable alternatives, the courts will not strike it down merely because they can conceive of a less restrictive alternative.”

So, since the Supreme Court never specified—and will never specify—what constitutes a minimum postering restriction, it’s up to City Council to determine how many posters should be on Toronto’s streets. . Ideally, this figure would be achieved through consultation with posterers and an assessment of how posters are used. City Council hasn’t tried this, but if they did, fans of the bylaw might realize how vital postering is to Torontonians.

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