Books and hopscotch

Sorry, I’m late with this posting but I’m discovering that it’s not easy trying to sell a book and do my job as a city councillor. This weekend I had the great hopscotch crisis in the Glebe, as well as many plant exchanges, community gardening events and a terrific show in support of a local day care by a group of students called ‘Off Beat’ who prove that ‘white guys and girls’ also have rhythm. At the same time I had to sandwich in half a dozen ‘book’ interviews, speeches - when Monday morning came it was almost a relief.

The hopscotch crisis culminated in a national news story with the reporter tracking me down at an Energy and Transportation show at Lansdowne Park to interview me about the delinquent children who had been chalking up the sidewalks  with hopscotch patterns.  (They were going for a Guinness world record.) The children, supervised by their parents, had done an entire block before the city graffiti police arrived to power wash their chalk marks off the sidewalk after a complaint.

It was all good, as the kids say, in the sense that it gave me a focus for something I’ve championed for a long time, the streets belong to the community first. The streets are the city’s largest single asset, they are the greatest single play area for children. Children have skipped on them and chalked the sidewalks up with hopscotch patterns since children have been children and cities have been cities. You would think that these things would be a given, that they are just part of life, but no, it’s not so.

Life in the modern city is nothing if not complex.. Graffitti has become a great source of irritation for many people. The ugly ‘tagging’ especially is akin to a visual version of a dog marking off his territory except unlike urine it doesn’t dissipate but remains for months and sometimes years. So after much lobbying from the business community, the city has just approved a two million dollar program to get rid of all graffiti on city property within 72 hours. Good news, right? Well in comes the complaint of ‘graffitti’ on the sidewalk and out roll the city swat team to clean up the sidewalk. I have some sympathy for the city workers in that they were just doing their job promptly, which no doubt someone would have complained about if they hadn’t.

I don’t have much sympathy though for anyone who says kids shouldn’t play hopscotch on the sidewalk or ball hockey in the streets. The streets belong to children as well as adults. It falls to the adult driving his or her car to watch out for children when they are driving on residential streets. Having the right of way, obliges the children to clear the way for the driver to pass a game of street hockey, it doesn’t give the driver the right to knock over a child because he’s in the right of way. The responsibility falls to the adult to care for the child, not the child to care for the adult.

Long live hopscotch! Long live street hockey!

Amities,

Clive

Comments

[Randal Leavitt]

I don't think hopscotch counts as "graffiti". Graffiti is a crime, intended to annoy people in the community. Hopscotch is a game, intended to please people. I am very opposed to graffiti. Children need some place to play. The best place is right in front of the house where mother can see and hear them. Yes, we need to use the streets for play.