If you lived here you would be home by now.

Clothes and chickens: how to get in trouble in Toronto.

Welcome to Toronto. You can marry whoever you want, wherever you want, however you want. You can run red stop lights, as long as you’re turning right, while chatting on the cellphone (if you’re paying full attention). And you can wear all the seal fur you like, backed up by a hearty nom nom nom from Her Majesty’s representative.

But there are some things that you just can’t do, or at least couldn’t until a few years ago.

Take, for instance, drying clothes outside. For decades here, it was forbidden. A ban on drying your clothes outside is absolute madness in these days of global warming. I mean, there’s all this extra heat – you may as well use it.

Luckily, Phyllis Morris, the mayor of Aurora, a small town about 48km (29 miles) north of Toronto, saw the absurdity of all of this. She suggested that the existing legislation could be bypassed if Ontario reclassified clothes lines as ‘green technology’. A bit of a stretch, really, unless somebody has developed a clothes drying app for the iPhone.

But the suggestion flew. In April 2008, the premier of Ontario finally signed into law this amendment (pdf).

It should have worked, but it doesn’t seem to have increased the number of clotheslines in this city.

Using your old washer/dryer as draining for growing a lovely pot of [Insert flower name here please, subs] is a good idea for some people. But there are quite a lot of others not too happy about this across North America. Guess why? Property prices.

Listening to Richard Monson, the president of the California Association of Homeowners Associations, you would think that homeowners ought to be as worried about clotheslines as about vermin or graffiti…

A clothesline in a neighborhood can lower property values by “15 percent,” Monson is fond of saying. “Modern homeowners don’t like people’s underwear in public. It’s just unsightly.”

And from the New York Times, specifically about Aurora, ON:

“The people who moved here wanted convenience and a suburban paradise – sheets and clothes hanging out symbolized a less affluent time,” Mayor Morris said.

Some homeowners and developers still support the bans. “I can see why people would want to do it for the environment, but the houses here are so close together, you don’t really want to look at your neighbor’s laundry,” said Danielle DeCastro, 28.

The second strange law in Toronto, which so far is still officially in place, concerns these creatures here seen in their natural habitat.

CBC: Backyard chickens? Toronto thinking it over

New York and Chicago already have it — now Toronto is considering joining those cities and allowing residents to raise chickens in their backyards.

Toronto’s park and environment committee is considering a pilot project that would permit people to keep the poultry on their property.

Ian Aley, with the non-profit group FoodShare, says it has plans to rent half an acre at Downsview Park in north Toronto where it will grow vegetables, keep bees and raise chickens.

Now, you can already keep chickens in London, and as the article points out, New York City and Paris. Vancouver, too. And eggs, fresh from the cloaca, are delicious.

But if you have to go all the way to Downsview instead of your back garden to get them why not just go to the supermarket? This isn’t much of a pilot.

Still, baby steps, I suppose, but standing in the way are people like these commenters on the CBC article:

This will make those comming from the third world feel right at home

Toronto turning into a 3rd world country??? With the way Canada is going and multiculturalism I can see this in the years to come… So SAD this Country. What is Next Goats and Cows roaming Yonge St??? Someone at city hall wake up

Great Idea!! Very progressive thinking.Toronto is now almost completely populated by people from countries where livestock is kept right in the living quarters of the homeowner… Newly arrived immigrants can raise livestock thus eliminating the alienation that many feel once they come here and native Toronto residents can go back to the roots and raise chickens just like their forefathers did

That last quote had 61 recommendations.

Now there I think is the source of the problem with both the laundry and the poultry. Despite the law change, I haven’t seen people putting their clothes out to dry in the summer in Toronto [1], and if the city does decide to let chickens into backyards, I don’t think we’ll see any either.

As far as I understand, many housing blocks such as condos and townhouses are owned by cooperatives and have local rules that prevent such things as laundry outside and chickens. I suspect peer pressure may be to blame as well. The truth is, life is comfortable here. Life was less comfortable for people’s ancestors, who kept chickens and hung their clothes out to dry.

And people understandably don’t want to do anything that makes them feel less comfortable, even if it is environmentally or financially sound.

I’m no libertarian, but I do dream of a day where any Torontonian can marry a chicken under a clothes line in their backyard, then drive to the airport for their honeymoon in Nunavut while booking a seal offal platter at a restaurant by cellphone. Come on, you can already 70% do this in London. Sort it out, Toronto.

Related links

The Right To Dry – campaigning for hanging laundry rights across North America, including a line outside the Obama White House
The Clothesline – a functional history of laundry
Laundry List
Omlet UK’s Eglu Cube – a 21st-century way of keeping chickens
My favourite egg fried rice recipe

[1] Putting one’s clothes out to dry in the winter in Toronto is inadvisable, unless you fancy cotton icecream. [back]