(copy of a letter emailed to the Ottawa Citizen this morning)
Under normal circumstances I am typically not a “take the bull by the horns” kind of gal. I usually let the bull trot by, and if my toes get stepped on I tell myself that’s just the way things are and chalk it up to progress.
But here I am, writing a letter to the editor.
Word on the street has it that a beautiful old building in my neighborhood is going to be torn down to make way for more posh homesteads.
The Maison Jeanne D’Arc at Kenwood and Edison in Westboro has been a fixture in this neighborhood for years. My family and I were greatly saddened to hear about its planned demise.
How can we protect this building (and others) from the greedy and rampant development that has infected this neighborhood?
There is likely another side to this story but I haven’t seen anything about it in the media. The building used to be a school and now functions as a convent. Why are they selling and where are they moving? And why doesn’t the convent and the space around it have some kind of special protection?
More importantly, how much of our space is going to be used for this kind of housing? What is it doing to the integrity of our neighborhood? I’m tired of seeing small homes with big lawns razed in favour of million-dollar homes that push all the boundaries. It has become increasingly obvious that every extra inch of space in this neighborhood is being coveted by money hungry developers and architects.
Where will it end? Well, I say we’ve gone far enough.
Some people would call the development of this site and filling in its extra greenspace “progress,” but I certainly would not.
Sincerely ….
