What’s in a Name (change)?
The Toronto Port Authority has invested a lot of time and money in changing the name of the Toronto Island Airport - twice.
The TPA’s choice of a hero to improve their image by association is ironic.
When
they changed the name to the Toronto City Centre Airport in 1994, they
wanted to try and deflect the anger of Torontonians from the fact that
they were sitting on one-quarter of one of the most beautiful and heavily-used parks in the city. If
they truly wanted a City Centre Airport then, they should have put it in
Rosedale, close to the geographic centre of City of Toronto.
People have refused to call it anything but the Toronto Island Airport.
The
new board, encountering even stiffer resistance,
has decided to wrap the airport in
the flag of patriotism and glorification of war. So
they named it after the World War One fighter pilot Billy Bishop. Even
though there was already a Billy Bishop airport in Ontario! They did not
ask, they did not negotiate, they just did it; and the people of Owen
Sound (see below) found out about the appropriation of the name in the press.
The TPA’s choice of a hero to improve their image by association is ironic.
One of the defining aspects of World War I, the war that Mr.Bishop fought in, was the use of poison gas.
My
own personal hero of World War One was Mr. William Potter. I was ten
when my parents hired Mr. Potter in 1956 to be our gardener. He had
been gassed at the second battle of Ypres; the first use of gas during
WWI. The Canadians were the only troops that did not abandon their
positions. They discovered that by urinating into a cloth and breathing
through that, they could neutralize the worst effects of the gas. Mr
Potter’s lungs were severely damaged. He could not work at anything
strenuous and his “War Pension” did not come any where near providing
for his needs. He was hired by my parents because he was living in
poverty. My parents had me, as a ten- and eleven-year-old, doing the
heavy lifting and hauling for Mr Potter because he could not do it.
I
think that both Billy Bishop and Bill Potter would be rolling in their
graves to find out that the Toronto Port Authority is engaged in the
long term polluting of the waterfront in the name of Billy
Bishop.
The following gases are products of the combustion of jet fuel in Q-400s:Carbon Monoxide, 1,3-Butadiene, Formaldehyde, Nitrogen Monoxide, Nitrogen Dioxide, Nitrogen
Trioxide, Acetaldehyde, Hydrocarbon particulate matter, PM 2.5. All are
compounds that can cause cancer, asthma, congestive pulmonary disease,
arteriosclerosis, and other diseases.
The
long term effects of this pollution on the lungs of some of the
children, seniors and susceptible people on the waterfront will be the
same as the effects on Bill Potter’s lungs. The proponents of the Island airport like to argue: "You live beside the Gardiner, so what's a little more pollution?"
Would Billy Bishop have approved?
Just to remind you who the members on the Board of the Toronto
Port Authority are: The short answer is mostly Mike Harris-era Tories,
appointed by Harris-ite federal Transport Minister John Baird and his
predecessor Lawrence Cannon.
Stephen Harper’s government has appointed these loyal Tories:
Sean
Morley, a lawyer at Bay Street law firm Fasken Martineau and a former
Senior Policy Advisor to cabinet minister s in the Mike Harris
government, appointed December 23, 2008 by Transport Minister Baird.
Craig
Rix, whose appointment to the TPA was made by Transport Minister
Lawrence Cannon in February 2008, was an aide to Finance minister Jim
Flaherty when he was a member of the Mike Harris government in Ontario.
Jeremy
Adams, a former political aide in the Harris government, and director
of government relations for a tobacco company appointed January, 2009
by Transport Minister John Baird.
Mark
McQueen, who worked as an executive assistant and advisor in
Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s office, appointed September 25, 2007 by
the Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon is Chair of the Board
Robert Poirier - appointed September 2009 by Minister Baird, has been a Conservative Party fundraiser since 2005.
In
addition, they appointed Colin Watson, a former CEO of Rogers
Cablesystems, who sits on the board of Spar Aerospace and Vector
Aerospace with Porter CEO Robert Deluce, and is an admitted friend of
Deluce. Appointed in August 2006 by Minister Cannon.
A
majority of directors are required to be representative of port user
groups, selected through a process laid out in the TPA Letter Patent.
None of the directors was appointed as a result of that process, save
perhaps Watson, who may well be considered to be Porter’s voice on the
TPA board.
The real name for this destructive carbuncle on the waterfront should be The Baird Conservative Airport
Barry Lipton
Barry Lipton
From: The Markdale Standard:
Officials
in Owen Sound say they were blindsided by a move to rename the Toronto
Island Airport after hometown hero Billy Bishop, whose name has graced
the Georgian Bay community’s airport for 18 years.
The Toronto Port Authority is expected to announce today the new name for its island airport.
“The
airport authority should have done more than send us a non-urgent
fact-gathering letter before they sprang this,” said Owen Sound Coun.
Bill Twaddle.
“Bishop’s
from Owen Sound. His home here is a national historic site. The
airport’s had that name for a long time. This just seems to be a
typically Toronto-centric decision, where nothing exists above Highway
7.” Twaddle
said the Toronto Port Authority sent only a letter to Owen Sound Mayor
Ruth Lovell Stanners to notify the city that the Billy Bishop name was
being considered for the island airport. The mayor had been on a
two-week vacation in Scotland.
“I
took exception to the manner in which it was done. There was no prior
consultation,” Twaddle said. “The only communication we received was
that they were thinking about doing it.”
Bishop,
a First World War flying ace, was born in Owen Sound and buried in the
city in 1956. His childhood home has been turned into a museum.
Billy
Bishop regional airport manager Barry Lewin said the renaming proposal
is a “compliment” to the Bishop family. However, the name is already
taken, he said.
“It’s
a bit of a slap in the face because Billy Bishop is our local hometown
hero. There’s a number of things we do to promote the name in the city
without any help or support from Toronto and here they just take it
upon themselves to use their name, without thinking about how it will
infringe on a small community.”
Many
speculate renaming the Toronto Island Airport after a Victoria Cross
war hero is a red herring in the fight to keep the controversial
facility open.
Lewin
said having two airports with an identical name could confuse pilots,
although four-letter call letters are the main identifiers of Canadian
airports.
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