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Some Annexites are in a lather about a planned eight-storey condominium development, the rear of which would look out impudently over Admiral Road’s backyards. In a letter, supermarket magnate Galen Weston and his wife Alexandra complained the building would “change the neighbourhood in such a negative capacity (that it) will devalue all of the assets we currently love about living here.”

“It will no longer be the ideal place for our young family to grow up,” the couple moaned.

Photo by Peter J. Thompson/National Post

Cleophee Eaton, another retail scion, and her husband Scott McFarland complained of privacy violations and demanded that any rear-facing balconies be “Juliette-styled.” (You may gaze briefly upon our magnificence, but not while barbecuing.) Graeme Gibson, Atwood’s novelist husband, alleged the plans “hover close to a brutal and arrogant assault on a community that has been here since the 19th century.” The Westons one-upped that, calling it “an environmental assault on our neighbourhood.”

Atwood’s intervention, by comparison, was relatively subdued. Still, she wrote, “I join my neighbours in their concerns.”

For Toronto progressives, this is apostasy: in their view (and mine), population densification is the only way forward. The city is booming. Gazillions of people want to live here. There’s nowhere left to put them. Sixty- and 70- and 80-storey residential towers have been sprouting like weeds, and people stand in line to buy the units. And there are inevitably complaints about them, not least from ensconced owners of single-family homes protecting their investments.