The Fight to Poster conintued

Ed Lui of the Chinese Canadian National Council says his organization values the medium’s populism and accessibility. “Postering is a cheap and reliable way to communicate in other languages to communities whose native tongue is not English,” he says. “You’d be amazed how quickly someone whose first language is not English will be drawn to their native script.” Colin Geddes of Ultra 8 (presenter of the popular Kung-Fu Fridays film series at the Royal Cinema on College Street), relies on posters for the vitality of his project. “Postering provides an easy opportunity to reach out to a broad number of people,” he says. “I don’t have the budget to advertise in NOW or The Toronto Star. I don’t do what I do for profit.”

Geddes, Lui and thousands of other people poster on the 160,000 utility poles of Metropolitan Toronto. Mostly, though, citizens focus their postering energy on the neighbourhoods with the greatest concentration of people who would be interested in what their poster’s promoting. While no exact figures have been set by City Council, staff reports and drafts of the by-law suggest that around 2,000 to 4,000 poles be fitted with collars. This would mean that more than ninety-nine percent of Toronto’s currently legal postering space would be rendered off-limits. Lui is gravely concerned with the ramifications of this possibility. “If the city permits postering in select neighbourhoods only,” he says, “who decides which neighbourhood?” That’s a good question. Here’s another: If every neighbourhood in town gets a few collared poles, how many minutes will a poster at Queen and Spadina stay visible before its covered by another? The quagmires raised by the proposed by-law have left many posterers feeling as though their form of expression is under attack by City Council.

The truth, though, is that the by-law is merely a red tape–cutting measure, designed to create one set of poster regulations for the amalgamated City of Toronto. As it currently stands, there are different postering rules for Toronto, Etobicoke, North York, East York, York and Scarborough (the latter already has 500 collared utility poles). Of course, this “harmonization” makes as much sense as amalgamation did in the first place; Toronto and, say, North York are very different places, and the propensity of each borough’s citizens to put up posters is no exception. So, while postering is a right that everyone requires—and is entitled to by order of the Supreme Court of Canada—what works for Steeles and Keele will not necessarily work for Queen and Spadina.

Despite this and other problems, a draft version of the by-law was presented to the public at a Planning and Transportation Committee meeting on March 25, 2002. And even after denouncements from postering advocates, it appeared on the April agenda of city council. In response, the Toronto Public Space Committee organized a rally on Nathan Phillips Square, featuring pro-poster speeches by the likes of Avi Lewis, Jian Ghomeshi and Billy Bragg. But when the meeting time expired before postering could be addressed, debate on the by-law was pushed ahead to the May council meeting.

In May 2002, Councillor Olivia Chow led a motion to send the postering by-law back to the Planning and Transportation Committee for more public consultation. A municipal workers’ strike extended the process even further, and a forum was not held until October 9. Gino Vescio, the city staffer who chaired this meeting, is supposed to deliver a set of recommendations based on the concerns of those present to the Planning and Transportation Committee. This report has yet to appear, and will likely not materialize until the spring of 2004 [editor's note: As of Dec. 31, 2004 a report has still not been presented to a city committee].

This is a lesson the city should have learned the last time it tried to restrict postering. In 1997, a similar set of collar-and-fine regulations reared its head, but public outcry forced the city to abandon the idea. “We were surprised by the numbers [of poster supporters],” said then–director of by-law administration and enforcement Lesley Watson in The Varsity. “The committee determined that they wanted a by-law that was more permissive, so we have been sent away to redraft.” That “redraft” is the City of Toronto’s postering by-law as it currently stands (you can read for yourself by visiting www.interlog.com/~esmith/poster-bylaw.html).

Then, as now, the most strident supporters of postering restrictions are the various Business Improvement Areas (BIAs) across the city. In a letter to city council dated March 8, 2002, Robert Saunderson of the Bloor-Yorkville BIA stated that “as much as we would like to see the right to postering eliminated altogether, our BIA is strongly in favour of the new by-law that will provide a limited number of collared poles for postering throughout the city.” The Bloor-Yorkville BIA, like others in the city, looks out for the interests of its member businesses, and they don’t want posters affixed to walls, decorative lampposts and other private property. The problem, however, is that sticking things to these surfaces is already illegal, so a by-law that allows for fewer legal postering opportunities will only make a fresh, clean lamppost more attractive to posterers.

The stupidest part about this whole debate, though, is that there are very simple things that City Council could do to deal with the concerns from BIAs and, simultaneously, help posterers. First, why not firmly establish and publicly display poster removal days? This is what universities and colleges do with the bulletin boards in their halls. If more people knew when posters were going to be removed in any given area, they could put up their notices at ideal times and not have to re-poster over and over again or worry about how long their messages would remain visible—which is the main reason why posters go up anywhere and everywhere there’s space, including on private property. And how could the city raise public awareness of removal days? Through posters, of course.

Second, the money currently earmarked to purchase postering collars could be put to much better use by installing poster kiosks throughout the city. Places like Paris and San Francisco have had public art and poster kiosks for years; they’re cultural beacons, simple and effective ways for citizens to express themselves and communicate with one another. They’re also much easier to poster on than a round pole, which is why gluing paper to a wall is such an attractive way to put up a notice.

Third, City Council should enforce the current by-law and deal with postering that is already illegal. Most illegal postering is also blatantly commercial in nature—ads for Hollywood movies and major-label records plastered on top of a “Post No Bills” stencil on construction scaffolding is the most obvious example—and it’s these kinds of posters that seem to drive people nuts. At the October 2002 public forum about the by-law, several concerned citizens came to voice their support for postering restrictions. The offending posters they cited as problematic examples were, overwhelmingly, commercial advertising affixed—and, in come cases, plastered a dozen times over—to surfaces that are already off-limits (see page 15 for the Spacing perspective on community and commerical postering).

Before any of these recommendations can be considered, however, City Council must realize that many of its citizens feel that the proposed postering by-law represents far more than the “reasonable limit” on their free expression guaranteed them by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The by-law, like everything that emerges from cash-strapped City Hall, is based on minimizing bureaucracy (and, by extension, cost), which means that the actual needs of posterers have not been properly considered. Ironically, this oversight will result in more administrative headaches for City Hall, since many people will ignore the by-law, poster wherever they feel like it, and fight any fines in court.

Is there common ground to be found between posterers, city councillors and the BIAs? Maybe, but we won’t know until postering advocates are able to stop fighting restrictive, knee-jerk by-laws and start participating in a true dialogue on the immense cultural importance of their chosen form of expression.

Todd Harrison is a Toronto-based writer.
photos by Kevin Steele