You can't keep chickens in Toronto and that's just another reason why we're better than they are

Posted Feb 2, 2012 By Craig Bakay

EMC Editorial The Toronto Star reported last week that the city is preparing to "go after" 14 families that have been raising chickens in their backyards.

Keeping chickens in your backyard in Toronto contravenes a bylaw.

This, of course, is just one more strike against big cities, to go along with pollution, crime, urban sprawl, traffic woes and far too many fast-food restaurants and clothing stores.

And yes, it's one more reason for us rural folks to feel smug and superior towards our urban cousins because we even have bylaws protecting the right of residents to keep backyard chickens for eggs, providing we live on plots of land an acre or bigger.

Now, it's quite unlikely that there are many properties in Toronto anywhere near an acre in size, and the few that there are probably aren't owned by someone who would want to keep chickens, but the point is moot anyways since it seems that backyard chickens are doing fine in Kingston, a city exponentially smaller than Toronto but a city nonetheless.

However, I am reminded of the time, in the very early '80s, when I lived on Jones Avenue, in Toronto's east end, just south of the Danforth and east of Pape.

Along with two human roommates and a large cat named Sadie, we shared a 'semi-detached house with a family who had come to Toronto from the Azores. They were a nice family who didn't seem to mind the constant stream of rock music coming from their neighbours.

Well, maybe they did mind but other than one Saturday night where things did get out of hand, they never complained about living next to three young bucks in their mid-20s.

Part of this was because we never complained about them either.

And we could have.

You see, these folks kept pigeons. These weren't your regular, crap-all-over-Nathan-Phillips-Square pigeons mind you. Nor were they the sleek racing pigeons so popular in England. No, these were funny looking creatures with long feathers on their feet and a rather prodigious capacity for egg laying.

I can't remember the nieghbour's name but Jorge seems right. I do remember him proudly showing off his coop (which was well-maintained and much cleaner than most of the chicken coups I remember as a kid growing up in Hastings County) and recounting the pedigree for several of his prize birds.

He was also very proud of his complex pattern of chicken wire deterrents that kept the local cats (including one very frustrated Sadie) at bay.

And I remember the odd treat of pickled pigeon eggs and even a squab once.

I'd like to say we never knew the pigeons were there in his postage stamp of a backyard but the fact is that pigeons coo and being that my studio was at the back of the house, I heard them all the time (usually with Sadie in the window looking out trying to come up with a plan to overcome that chicken wire protecting the birds).

But a few pigeons cooing were a small price to pay for the piece of mind knowing that we weren't likely to have police officers breaking down the door because our music was too loud.

The point is just this: whatever your neighbours are doing, chances are there's something you do that annoys them just as much as what they do annoys you. Work something out and move on.