It was less than a month ago that a man in his seventies lost control of his SUV and plowed into a daycare in Richmond Hill, killing a toddler and injuring six others.
And this isn’t the first time this has happened, either.
The man behind the wheel faces one count dangerous operation causing death and three counts of dangerous operation causing bodily harm. The parents of the 17 month-old boy killed, Liam Riazati, face a crushing loss.
Nobody will argue that, when we send our kids to schools, or daycares, they ought to be safe. Yet some of those same people design daycares, or complexes including daycares, and do so in such a manner as to be seemingly oblivious to the potential for this sort of thing happening.
There are a number of daycares in Renfrew, some unlicensed and some formally licensed. I honestly can’t speak to the safety regimes in place for vehicular traffic at any of these sites, save for one, which happens to be along my walking route. That’s the daycare that’s part of the Ma-Te-Way complex, the Child’s Paradise Day Care.
I believe that Child’s Paradise has some affiliation with Renfrew County, since I’m aware that this daycare is itself part of an organization that includes the daycare at Renfrew County Place on O’Brien Road. I’ll limit my observations to the one at Ma-Te-Way because, as I said, it’s along my walking route. And to be clear, I only have to find one to illustrate my point, and the Ma-Te-Way one seems to fit the bill.
Child’s Paradise is on the northwest side of the building across from the tennis courts and beside the BAFN place, or Bonnechere Algonquin First Nation. So before moving any further into this, I want to be clear that none of my concerns regarding traffic flow in this area arise from the folks over at BAFN, mostly because of my belief that there are no folks at the BAFN, the whole thing being a $8 million Potemkim village. So no fingers pointed there.
My main concern regarding traffic involves vehicles heading towards the back lot of Ma-Te-Way where the gyms and physiotherapy offices are. I guess for many drivers it’s just easier to deke into the daycare parking lot and scoot around the building than it is to go around the other way. I think six of one and half dozen of the other to be honest, as the distances appear to be similar to me, but if people perceive themselves as being deft and clever, then there’s no telling them that they’re not.
There are no traffic calming measures along this section of roadway, and by none I mean zero, unless you count that pathetic stick figure SLOW sign in the shape of a kid. But this orange “sign” doesn’t even have the chops to stand its ground, and every time I go by this place, it is, in fact, on the ground, blown down by passing vehicles, a little irony thrown in for taste. I should point out that there are actually two such signs, the other one supposedly covering traffic coming towards the daycare from behind Ma-Te-Way. Initially I couldn’t see it from a difference. That’s because it was on the ground too.
I don’t believe the people inside the daycare are the ones responsible for the traffic flow right past their own front door and passing in front of a couple of their fenced-in play areas. I do believe the little sign probably belongs to the daycare, but it’s almost a hapless effort since the thing can’t even stand up properly, nor does it have the size to catch the attention of retired hockey-playing men as they drive through in their inevitable pick-up trucks to park in this lot, rather than the larger lot out front. Not to mention all the entitled puffballs cruising through in their Audis to hit the gym or get that massage.
I’ve yet to mention the tennis courts across the “street,” or laneway. They’re beautiful and well-used, but during the day that usage comes mostly from a collection of boomers, most of whom know how to behave, but some among them carrying notions of extreme self-importance. A couple weeks back I actually heard one woman complaining about the sound of some child crying in the daycare. I guess it was messing up her pickle ball serve, poor gal. Imagine, child noises from a daycare.
My point about these folks is that they’re at greater risk of having some sort of medical episode behind the wheel of their vehicles. Since a senior citizen in Quebec actually drove into a daycare having exactly such an episode ought to be enough to consider the potential safety impact of pickle-balling boomers, a group I can needle since I’m a boomer myself, just not the pickle-balling type who hates kids. These folks all have their cars parked in the lot directly in front of the daycare.
Perhaps something to think about.
But for the record, no chain link fence ever invented is going to stop some clown from blowing his multi-ton vehicle through it, laws of physics being as they are.
It would seem to me that this laneway, or street, or thoroughfare, is the town’s jurisdiction, so what happens or doesn’t happen there is squarely the responsibility of the Town of Renfrew. So any traffic-calming measures would need to come from them, but honestly I don’t have them even recognizing this as any kind of problem on their radar in the first place.
Would it kill anyone to have three traffic “speed” bumps positioned adjacent to the daycare’s drop off zone? Who is that going to rile up? Ex-Hydro guys spinning through in their pick-ups? Pampered beauty queens zipping through for their spin class and rub down?
Hydro and beauty queens aside, I’d more than settle for the speed bumps because, well, they force you to slow down. The only other means I can think of to effectively slow down traffic, or stop it completely, would be to invite BEI to roll in and work their magic, creating a number of anti-tank ditches and random holes where a town street used to be. Nothing like bottoming out a car to get a driver’s attention.
Before writing this, I took a run out to Ma-Te-Way to get some photos of the laneway in front of that daycare. I was there maybe ten minutes.
In that ten minutes I counted sixteen vehicles going by in both directions mid-afternoon. Most did so with reasonable and cautious speed. A handful were pushing the safety envelope. Two went by far too fast. One male, the other female.
I don’t know how much a speed bump costs, let alone three of them. But honestly, if we can’t identify this as a potential safety issue and apply appropriate measures, then what’s the standard for diligent care?
Three lousy speed bumps in front of a daycare packed with kids?
I think we can do this and all of us will get home for supper okay.
Plus it’ll give some of those pickle-ballers something to really bitch about, and that’s gotta be worth the effort right there.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 