Neighbourliness

"The forms of noise pollution that have been found by the courts to violate Section 14 of the EPA almost always come from industry, like metal stamping factories...  I think it would be unlikely for a court to find that teenagers playing basketball in a residential neighbourhood constitutes noise pollution within the meaning of Section 14 of the EPA." Stepan Wood, York University Osgoode law school

When does a neighbourly complaint become a vendetta?  Obviously when each party is convinced that the other is wrong; on the one hand to have lodged the complaint, on the other not to have taken it seriously.  And when children at play in the great out-of-doors, and safely close to home is concerned there's a recipe for some to become offended and others to insist that it is their child's right and heritage to be allowed to play in public without some nit-picker finding fault.

In lovely Peterborough, Ontario, a woman who works from home as a writer, has rented a house on a street where such houses are packed closely together.  Driveways too are close together.  And it has become quite common in the last five years and more to see basketball hoops attached to great ungainly weighted contrivances sitting on or beside peoples' driveways.  Basketball hoops are also often and less intrusively affixed to the tops of garages.

And children love the challenge of trying to score.  It's great good competitive fun.  The repetitive smashing of the ball on a drive, on the side of a house, on a garage door, can cause a surprising amount of sound.  Depending on where your neighbour lives it can be distracting, intrusive and even abusive.  But, like children playing road hockey in the winter months, stationing their nets on the road and causing traffic slow-downs, this is a common phenomenon.

Most people overlook the inconvenience, the need to be vigilant while driving on the street - they are residential streets, after all - and the irritating sound pollution.  Some, however, take full umbrage and feel their rights are being abridged.  They will relay their complaint to a neighbour whose child is involved in this intrusion into their well-being, and more often than not the child's parents will be taken aback, confounded by the expression of unneighbourliness.

And from there things escalate as the parents expostulate with the complainer, explain how important it is for their child to have wholesome exercise and engage in sports activities because of the obvious health dividends.  And the complainer will reiterate his/her unease with the fact that his/her own health is being deleteriously impacted by the thoughtless permissiveness of the annoying child's parents.

"It's killing us.  I think we're getting ill from it.  Ninety percent of people support us.  And yet she's still taking us down this road and we're still just trying to live our lives", complained the Peterborough mother of the teenage boy whom her neighbour has lodged a complaint against.  That neighbour has gone as far as asking the Ontario environmental commissioner to investigate.

"Everybody has a right to enjoy property, of course.  The houses are very close together, we all have to be mindful of the impact we have on our neighbours", explained the complainant, Anne Langdon.  Her complaint, which she first took to the landlord, then her city councillor and city staff, then the fire department and police, all of whom did that mental shrug, hoping she would go away, has ended up with the Ministry of the Environment.

Ms. Langdon has become so extremely popular in her neighbourhood that another neighbour who lives across the street, a few doors away from the two neighbours has invited supporters of the boy and his right to enjoy and play on his parents' property, to sign a petition of support.  It took one hour to obtain 163 signatures, and the list has expanded to 500.

"It's for people to show support for the Elliott family and your children's right to play", said Dayle Finlay.  Children in the neighbourhood have got the message; they are avoiding playing in front of Ms. Langdon's house.  "I'm against the environmental commissioner being called in for such a frivolous complaint that our taxpayers dollars are being used to fund."

"It's also to the city [to say] that we do not want the bylaws changed so that children do not have a right to play on their own property."

Most rational people would make an effort to see things from that vantage.  There is the issue of homeowners being able to use their property without others taking offence.  In fact, the parents of the basketball-playing teen went out of their way to accommodate the complainant, even to having a carpenter build a wooden panel to attempt to solve the problem by shielding sound and the potential of window breakage.

There is a simple enough solution.  Given the obvious fact that Anne Langdon is not a popular figure on a street of young families with plentiful children whose activities she objects to, she should simply find herself alternative rental accommodation elsewhere.