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One summer evening in the mid-to-late 1990s, around perhaps 9 p.m., I and three friends were playing euchre on the backyard patio of the Selley homestead in midtown Toronto. There was mild banter, an occasional clinking of glasses. Excellent music wafted out from the family room at low volume. It was shaping up as an enjoyable but thoroughly forgettable evening. But then twin flashlight beams pierced the garden gate. It was two of Toronto’s finest, investigating a complaint from an unidentified neighbour about a bacchanalian party underway at number 132, the likes of which Moore Park had never seen.

The officers surveyed the scene with a look that said, “this is even more ridiculous than usual.” We bade each other good evening and they were on their way.

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I remember asking at the time: Why wouldn’t this unknown neighbour just pick up the phone and ask us to be even quieter? We were one of two Selleys in the Toronto phone book, if memory serves, and certainly the only one on our street. The answer, we surmised, was because this person had no legitimate complaint to make. Getting the cops out, hopefully ruining our night, was the point of the exercise. Some neighbourhood busybodies might be experts on the letter of the law, but their goal is making people’s lives miserable.