Hey, Oscar, thanks for chiming in. I'm new to the blog -- so I don't know if you're a regular contributor or not. Anyway, I lived in the Beaches from 1969 until 2002 and used to spend every weekend on the Islands with friends during the '70s. Some friends' ancestral homes were moved - floated over from Hanlan's Point - to Algonquin Island to make way for the airport when it was built in the late '30s. So there were dwellings and dwellers there long before there was an airport. In the '70s

I was active in the fight against allowing jets to land at the island airport because of its proximity to downtown and the residential districts between it and Scarborough - including The Beaches - as the area was known before yuppies changed it. In 2002 we left our big old Beaches "empty nest" to live in a townhouse condo right across from the airport. It was a fantastic break to find a place right on the lake, close to downtown where our view wasn't just the house across the street but the horizon and blue water -- sail boats crossing in front of our windows, kids and dogs in the park out front -- even the small planes occasionally taking off.

For years we watched the reclamation of gritty industrial waste land being transformed into vital, alive recreation/tourist/residential communities. It was exciting to live downtown, on the lake and be part of a growing urban entertainment/cultural centre. Then plans were announced to add a "bus station" component to that mix -- to ramp up activity at the airport by drastically increasing the "sleepy little airport" that had existed for too long as an over-time extension of the wartime duty it was built for.

Now our tourist/cultural waterfront destination is cloaked in fuel fumes, black grit comes in through windows and it's impossible to carry on business or social conversations with windows open in summer. The roaring of plane maintenance jolts sleepers (in homes and hotels)awake at all hours.

Frequent flights pose the spectre of crashes into the harbour, possibly onto loaded island ferries or boat races. It's too much for an area so close to office towers, schools, community centrea, major entertainment venues, playing fields. What is still zoned "green space" for recreation is being abused by unorthodox use.

Community AIR is made up of regular Toronto and GTA residents who want air line business to be carried out in an area designed for high volume air traffic -- not on the only island green space within the downtown core. Tourists from all over the world visit us there. We owe them - and ourselves-something better than a noisy, stinky airport.

I love planes, by the way, and have worked on several movies about them. Dad used to drive us kids out to our hometown airport to watch planes. My family comes from a long line of fliers in two world wars. Friends flew in Viet Nam and Korea. The Island Airport is just in the wrong place.

Ane Christensen