The Crisis Next Door

By Philip Preville

The air was filled with screams and profanity

There’s no bylaw that tells people to be nice to their neighbours

This is not a level playing field

All the noise, noise, noise!

We need to implement the right kind of controls

They’re out in motorboats from dawn ‘til dusk

It was a couple of summers ago when Bill Paterson finally decided he’d had enough. It was just after dark, and he and his wife had spent the evening out on their dock on Bay Lake, north of Gravenhurst, Ont., where they have lived full-time for the past 15 years. They were heading inside their cottage to settle in for the night when the neighbouring property, occupied by renters, started to whoop it up.

One of the renters, standing on the shore, started setting off fireworks. The rest were out on a boat to get a better vantage point on the pyrotechnics. “Fireworks aren’t permitted in our county,” Bill says. Making matters worse: the region hadn’t seen any rain in weeks, and local authorities had warned against fires of any kind. But the renters either didn’t notice the roadside warnings or didn’t care. The air was filled with laughter and screams and profanity, fizzles and crackles and big bangs.

Bill called out from the end of his dock, “Hey! No fireworks! There’s a fire ban on!” The renters initially laughed at him, but he wasn’t about to negotiate. “I said, ‘Fine, the next voice you’ll hear is a police constable!’ “ With that threat, the noise quickly died down. The last words Bill could make out were whispers saying, “I guess we better quit.”