Files on burned-down boat club sealed by city hall until 2027
· Toronto Sun
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If Toronto City Hall has any secrets about a boat club destroyed in an apparent arson, it is keeping them sealed until well after October’s municipal election.
In mid-March, the Toronto Sun requested any documents related to the lease at 101 Humber Valley Rd. That was the address of the Toronto Humber Yacht Club, which saw its clubhouse destroyed in a three-alarm fire in late April.
While a written response was required within 30 days under provincial law, city hall did not fulfil the request or update the Sun on its status until this month.
City hall says it will not fulfil the request until Jan. 4, 2027. “The request is for a large number of records and necessitates a search through a large number of records, and meeting the time limit would unreasonably interfere with the operations of the institution,” a letter from the city clerk’s office says.
The Sun has appealed the decision.
Wilson DaSilva, the vice-commodore of the yacht club, told the Sun recently that the group is “more of a social club” at this point.
DaSilva couldn’t find a good fit with any of Toronto’s other boating clubs and he spent this summer on dry land. He’s in the process of selling his boat.
Innocent delay? ‘Doesn’t look like it’
In the meantime, DaSilva is waiting for his own freedom-of-information request, which he filed around the same time the Sun did. It’s due next month, but he expects a delay.
A PR firm the club works with filed a request of its own, he added, and that’s also in a long delay.
“It might be innocent, but it sure doesn’t look like it,” he said.
He also hasn’t heard lately from Toronto Police, who were investigating the catastrophic early morning blaze as an arson. The Sun asked the police for an update on the investigation, but has yet to get a response.
The fire is settled from an insurance standpoint, DaSilva said. Accelerants weren’t found during the insurer’s investigation, he added.
Early this year, city council voted to terminate the club’s lease, booting DaSilva and his fellow boaters from the property. While the clubhouse was theirs, city hall owned the land under it.
The club served city hall with notice of a legal action the day before the fire, seeking an emergency decision that would allow it to remain on the property.
The club, which launched its boats on the Humber River south of Bloor St. W, near Old Mill station, had operated for some 70 years.
Its end wasn’t without controversy.
City hall’s own people got an earful at a committee meeting in March, when the local councillor, Amber Morley, insisted the issue was with violations of the lease, but an official report described nothing of the sort, just environmental concerns.
Councillor Michael Thompson, who sat on the committee, said the communications mess was “ absolutely ridiculous .” His colleague Stephen Holyday, whose grandfather was a club member, called the rationale for axing the lease “as thin as the edge of this paper.”
‘Amber was a star’
Just a few weeks before the fire, Jason Sills, who started an online petition to call for the club’s closure, told the Sun he didn’t care “ what excuse ” city hall was using to shut down the “trailer park trash heap” on the Humber River.
Today, Sills’ petition has more than 2,800 signatures. In an update this month , he urged supporters to vote for Morley, who is seeking re-election in Etobicoke-Lakeshore ward. (Morley didn’t respond to a request for comment.)
“Amber was a star in navigating the behind-the-scenes political moves by council members who do not represent our riding to undo all the work the community did to end the club’s lease,” Sills wrote, “and in very dramatic form at the last hour managed to see the community’s wishes were followed.”
DaSilva sees that last part differently.
“This isn’t a community thing,” he told the Sun . “There’s 98,000 people in this ward, so 2,000 to 2,500 people said OK, they were for this. A lot of people didn’t even care or thought it was a stupid idea.
“The only person who wanted the THYC out of this area was Amber Morley, and that’s it, and I will put that on the record. That’s my belief. That’s where all the evidence points to.”
He said the club’s last real hope for a “path forward” is that an advocate wins either October’s election for ward councillor or mayor. (Ted Opitz, a former Conservative MP who is running against Morley, also didn’t reply to a request for comment.)
“A lot of this is anger and a lot of this is disappointment,” DaSilva said, “but I believe in my heart – I have no evidence, no proof, just conduct and how people treated us, and how we were singled out – there is an alternative motive there. I don’t know what it is, can’t prove it, but eventually time will show it.”