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No Cars Go?
In one of the more surreal moments from Streets are for People’s Tuesday visit to Queen’s Park, Rosario Marchese, the NDP MPP for Trinity-Spadina, donned Captain Planet–style superhero digs, made with a few go-get-’em words about public transit, and took flight into the Legislative Assembly’s inner chamber to save the known universe.
Except he didn’t, but the cape is fact. Sort of.
Marchese—who was, at least, asked to wear a cape by organizers—presented a petition with over three thousand signatures to the provincial legislature, much of it scrawled on the ghostly old sedan left in the parking lot. “Our friend Jon divorced his car,” writes Michael Louis Johnston, one of the petition’s authors, “and we made it into a petition that has been delivered to our provincial government to let them know how Ontarians feel about our tax dollars supporting the very thing that is killing us.”
The petition car’s presence at Queen’s Park on Earth Day (accompanied by both organizers as well as activists like Dave Meslin, founder of the Toronto Cyclists Union, pictured below in the blue helmet) was a testament to the group’s stated “straight-up” position that “CARS SUCK.” “We the undersigned,” its windshield reads, “do hereby demand that not one more dollar go to promote, support, or perpetuate car culture. We want bike lanes, public transit and a train system. We want our public space back.” The copy in Marchese’s super-hands called for the provincial government to reallocate funds earmarked for the automotive industry, investing in pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, public transit, and an inter-city train system.
Despite their conviction and optimism, activists left the Legislative chambers with deflated spirits, describing the Assembly’s dismissive response as “childish.” While organizers hoped for a cool four thousand signatures, the final numbers fell a bit short: by three o’clock, the thirty or so demonstrators had the support of 3,030 faithful.
Like its predecessor, the “petition car” was returned to the Market to be resurrected as a garden with axles, continuing the mission of Streets are for People to produce collaborative creative efforts, furthering the “agenda of a livable city and a sustainable future.” By day’s end, the car’s trunk was already stuffed with potting soil and plants, well on its way to accompanying the first garden car on Augusta Avenue as the city’s newest installation piece.
“The petition car has done its job,” Johnston writes. “Now we can turn it into something beautiful.”
All photos by David Topping.