Yes, Joe, you guessed right: we do live on Stadium Rd. at South Beach Marina Townhomes in a fantastic condo facing the lake. We moved from The Beaches where a bus travelled up our street many times a day. That noise/roar/thump of manhole cover was annoying but we got used to it.

Though we anticipated having to tolerate some airport noise when we moved to Stadium Rd. we were pleasantly surpirsed to find that the area was quieter than our old Beach street. The migratory ducks residing here in the summer were a joy to hear. Now, however, with airport activity ramped up considerably, the ducks' congenial cackling is drowned out. The commotion issuing from the airport constantly makes us pine for the bus traffic.

In the late '70s I worked with a group to prohibit jets from ever using the Island Airport. We were certainly aware that we were moving to within 400 yards of TCCA runways but we thought the area was protected from excessive air craft use by the fight we won back in the early '80s. Soon we discovered that a bridge was planned, then, that defeated, we learned that Porter was to take over the airport and move up to 9000,000 passengers a year! So, the view ovewr the airport to the lake became not so idillic and the peace of the quay was shattered along with our intent to spend our last years on a lake in the city beside a bit of urban island wild habitat.

Units at South Beach are certainly up for sale. Many, many are rented, owners having vacated for fresher, quieter places. The unit next to us just sold again for the second time in two years. We're praying that we will find a purchaser for ours -- people or a corporation wishing to locate or own residential space near the airport for travel or work reasons.

We're just not keen to ingest and inhale aircraft fumes any more; to keep dusting and sweeping to rid our home of the black grit that wafts in through open windows; to be blasted out of bed at 3:50am by maintenance run ups; to go into the bathroom and shut the door in order to have an audible phone conversation while planes land and take of outside our windows; to spend weekends in the summer being petrie dish subjects for tourists flying low over our deck in rented helicopters. We regret that Toronto chose to take this step away from humanizing the waterfront completely, allowing the expansion of an agressivly industrial remnant of the wasteland it used to be before recent revitalization initiatives.

Thanks for your participation in this blog, Joe. I'm glad for your generosity and patience in providing an educational component to the discussions here. My husband and I do not hate planes but we do believe they do not belong in the heart of our downtown parkland.

Cheers, Ane