Traffic Lights Win for Glen Andrew

Another win for the Glen Andrew Community 

by Lorne Ross,

For the Glen Andrew Community Association


If you have been out and around during this long period of ‘stay at home’ you may have seen the crews working away from where Grangeway comes down and meets Ellesmere, just east of the Blue Danube seniors’ building.

They are putting up the traffic signals. When they’re turned on we will have a safe way to turn left and head north.

We will have three ways to get back to McCowan via Grangeway-Consilium Place:
1. at Bushby,
2. at Progress,
3. and north of Corporate Drive.

We’ll have a safe way to get to the 401 eastbound. All without getting stuck in the backed-up left turn lane at McCowan-Ellesmere. Our friends in the North Bendale community east of McCowan can safely turn left at night to get back home from their travels.

Below are just some of the ways this street takes the load off McCowan-Ellesmere.

It’s been a long time coming. The city knew McCowan-Ellesmere would be overloaded a long time ago. Bit by bit the developers like Blue Danube, the Freshco-Shoppers plaza and Consilium further north handed over the land and built or paid for their part of the new street. The final section was built in 2002 with land and cash from the developer of the Freshco-Shoppers Drug Mart plaza.

Without traffic signals, it was getting more and more difficult to wait for a gap in the westbound traffic on Ellesmere to make that turn into Grangeway. It was really dangerous for our friends living east of McCowan to make a left turn from southbound Grangeway to eastbound Ellesmere.

We began asking our Councillor Glenn DeBaeremaeker to get the traffic lights approved in 2017. Our professional staff resisted once again. We helped Glen make the case that this street and its signals were important to all sorts of people living south of Ellesmere and the businesses on the north side too. He persuaded City Council to approve the signals.
Our professional staff then moaned and groaned they didn’t have the money to put up the signals.

We worked with Councillor Ainslie who was pretty new representing people east of McCowan. We wrote to him and Councillor Thompson and they pushed through the funding.

Long time coming but another victory for Glen Andrew Community Association.

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Some people wonder why you should ever join a community group like Glen Andrew?

To me, the answer is pretty clear: If you cherish your home and your community and if you want to protect what we have and work to make it better, join your neighbours! 

Help us stay on top of what is happening at City Hall. Listen and read and learn. 

Put forward your ideas about what Glen Andrew wants/needs. Ask questions. 
Volunteer and contribute your time by organizing meetings, writing about issues in our blog, help to hand out flyers to your neighbours. Join your neighbours when we speak to the city staff and our Councillors.

We don’t win everything we set out to get. But we try and we win enough to make a difference in our community to create a better place to live and raise our families.

Recent successes and ongoing projects include: 

• Saving the destruction of the Frank Faubert Woodlot from the TTC. A natural green space in our community. 
• Saving homes on Stanwell Drive and local businesses in the St. Andrew’s Fish ‘n Chip plaza from the TTC.
• Our annual ‘Clean Up’ day that gets hundreds of people of all ages out collecting litter from our parks each year.
• Looks like we will get a subway station at our hospital on Lawrence. We worked long and hard against really stubborn people at the TTC and City Planning to get that station.
• We are helping the people who are trying again to get a Farmers’ Market in our Scarborough Centre. Ideas about parking, signs, local food companies that might want to sell in the new market.
• We helped the community think about and speak on the question of a new traffic signal where Packard comes up to Ellesmere. Breaking the median so people and cars could cross safely.
• Looks like we have been successful keeping our major roads open where they cross the GO tracks between Midland and Kennedy Road. We worked with other community associations over the past 4 years against some pretty stubborn experts at GO Transit and City Planning. Metrolinx recently announced they will build either bridges over or tunnels under their tracks at Progress, Huntingwood, McNicoll and Danforth Roads.

Our meetings three times a year in St. Andrew’s Church give you a chance to meet, listen
to and ask questions of all sorts of people:

• developers who want to build in our area
• the people who run Scarborough General Hospital
• City Staff
• our City Councillor Michael Thompson
• our MPP Christina Mitas.

Things we haven’t won yet but are committed too: 

• Our City Planners want to tear down the bridge that carries Progress Avenue up and over McCowan Road. They would give us another traffic signal on McCowan instead.
• Metrolinx wants to take out the two centre lanes of Ellesmere from McCowan all the way east past Morningside and use it for only express buses.
• We’re trying to make sure Scarborough gets its fair share of the money the city collects to buy and build new parks and recreation centres, fix up the ones we have.
• The never-ending battle to repair potholes and keep our roads and sidewalks operating safely.

We think these issues have been worth fighting for. We hope you do too!
But I have to tell you… your Executive is getting on in years. 

We are going to need new people to keep things going. 

To keep Glen Andrew a great place to live and raise a family.

It’s not scary. It’s not full time. Everybody is a volunteer. We do not endorse any politician or political party. There are lots of roles to play. You don’t have to be a brilliant public speaker. You don’t have to be a technical wizard beyond email. 

You just have to care about your community! Please come out to our regular and special meetings. 

Please contact our President, Iain McLeod at

Phone: (416) 431 - 0097
Email: execulife@bell.net

…to see how you can help get involved.