This year, the LBNA planted 100 trees to honour Canadian Veterans as part of a program to plant 300 trees to commemorate veterans in Long Branch. The program is known as Long Branch Remembers.
All trees planted are native species and were planted at residences in Long Branch whose owners wished to honour a family member who was a veteran.
Here is a link to an article by Tamara Shephard in the Etobicoke Guardian with more details.
We are holding our Annual General Meeting on Thursday, November 7th at the Royal Canadian Legion Branch 101 on Lakeshore Boulevard West in Long Branch.
This will be an occasion for you join with us in celebrating the many successes of the past year and to meet the current members of the Board of Directors.
It’s also an opportunity for you to ask questions or raise issues that affect our Neighbourhood. When we understand what your concerns are, it provides the Board with better direction to help us set priorities and develop programs to address those issues.
This also is the time when we will hold elections for our Board of Directors.
We are planning to expand the size of the Board from 8 members to 12, so we can work on new programs and bring new skills to our leadership.
There will be a separate notice about a call for nominations and to outline the Board positions that are available. We are especially looking for people with skills in fundraising and communications as well as people with planning or legal backgrounds to support our TLAB appeal activities.
On Saturday, May 25th, we held our second Tree for Me event at Colonel Samuel Smith Park.
In 2018, we gave residents approximately 300 trees. This year, we increased that to 446 trees.
Despite heavy rain during the early hours of the event, we had residents lining up to pick up their free trees, and walking away with big smiles on their faces. For the LBNA Volunteers, it was very rewarding to see those smiles.
Our MP, James Maloney, even took time out from his busy schedule to attend and to see the Bird Festival that was also underway at the Park.
On behalf of the LBNA Board, we’d like to thank both the residents and the volunteers who came out for the event and we expect next year’s Tree for Me event to be even more successful.
We launched our Neighbourwoods© project in Long Branch in the summer of 2018, and hired three students for the summer to be trained by and to work with Dr. Danijela Puric-Mladenovic, a professor in the Faculty of Forestry at the University of Toronto.
In 2019, we decided to expand the project and will have hired six students this summer. They start June 3rd.
Building on the data we gathered last summer, Dr. Puric-Mladenovic is also working on measuring the overall changes in tree canopy to provide us with feedback on whether our tree canopy is declining, increasing or just staying the same.
Our goal is to have trees covering 40% of Long Branch.
Our teams of students will come to your property and ask permission to enter your yard and conduct their inventory. Among other things, they will:
If you are interested in participating in our tree inventory project and having the tree data on your property added to our database, you can just email us with your name, address and phone number so we can arrange for one of our teams of students to come around.
Last year, as part of their commitment in the Six Ideas, the GTAA tested Idea 5: Summer Weekend Runway Alternation Program. This summer, they are moving forward with a trial of the Summer Weekend Runway Alternation Program from May to September on Saturdays and Sundays only.
This program should give residents some relief from aircraft overhead every other weekend. This means that one weekend, communities may see fewer airplanes while the next they will see the same or a few more airplanes than they currently do.
Trial Details:
The East-West runways will alternate to give respite to the east/ west communities except during weather conditions that force North/ South use for safety.
Long Branch residents will be most affected at the downwind leg where they turn over us, and 4 other downwind legs: Don Mills, Vaughan/Richmond Hill, and Georgetown/ Halton Hills, and the surrounding communities.
The LBNA Airport Noise Committee is only one of several community groups that have decided to monitor this summer alternation and have people complain, when their weekend is inundated by airplane noise during those times periods of respite.
HERE’s WHAT YOU CAN DO
Contact the noise complaint office at Toronto Pearson.
The GTAA has an online tool called Webtrak that gives a near-real-time view of the sky above the GTA. Residents can use it to identify the aircraft that affected them and can make a noise complaint directly from the platform.
Submit the complaint so GTAA has the data for our neighbourhood during Summer Weekend Alternation.
Get a decibel meter app for your smartphone so you can actually measure the loudness of the airplanes going overhead. This can add invaluable data to your complaint. Some options are Sound Meter Pro for Android and Decibel X for Android or iOS.
Send emails to our MP, James Maloney, every time – day or night – that you are affected by airplane noise regardless of weather conditions. Mr. Maloney’s office will gather this information to submit to Transport Canada, on our behalf.
Contact our Provincial and Municipal representatives to include them in this process. We are told that by their offices they have no say, but when we asked the GTAA, NAV CDA and Transport Canada, we were told that they are included and informed and our input to the Province and the City is recommended.
Thirdly, ask elected officials to create an Ombudsman, as other countries have, to arbitrate noise complaints. This could be modelled after the Australian Airport Ombudsman
Last, say No to night flights during the hours of at least 12am to 6:30am. As other major airports have done.
Here are links for you to reach noise complaint sites and our elected officials
Noise Complaints
GTAA Noise Complaints https://www.torontopearson.com/en/community/noise-management/noise-management-program/noise-management-office/noise-complaint
Webtrak Reporting Service https://webtrak.emsbk.com/gta
Elected Officials
James Maloney, MP James.Maloney@parl.gc.ca
Christine Hogarth, MPP christine.hogarth@pc.ola.org
Mark Grimes, Councillor, Ward 3 councillor_grimes@toronto.ca
Contact us airport.noise@lbna.ca if you’d like more information.
History was made on April 30th when the 200 year old oak “Big Red” at the corner of Park and Long Branch Avenue became Long Branch’s First officially recognized Heritage Tree. The Ceremony was co-hosted by the Long Branch Neighbourhood Association and Councillor Mark Grimes. In addition to the local residents who attended were Councillor Mark Grimes and his staff; Toni Ellis from Forests Ontario; Wendy Tobin, Branch Manager of the Long Branch TD Canada Trust and her staff and faculty and students from James S. Bell school. Mary Kennedy conveyed a message from James Maloney, MP Etobicoke-Lakeshore who was up in Ottawa and not able to attend.
Hopefully this is just the first of many more Heritage Tree Ceremonies in Long Branch. Heritage Trees bring awareness to the social, cultural, historical and ecological value of trees. For trees to qualify, Heritage Trees have to be associated with a historic person or event, or be growing on land that is historically significant. Candidate Heritage Trees are also assessed for form, shape, beauty, age, colour, size, rarity, genetic constitution or other distinctive features and/or as a prominent community landmark, however its historical or cultural significance is of most importance.
If you know of a tree in Long Branch that should be nominated, please contact us at longbranchnato@gmail.com.
