Exits and Entrances - A Journey Through Many Landscapes by Dave Jaffe. Chapter 11 - Part Three.

     Chapter 11 - Part Three.


      In the 21st century, problems started to loom head at Eight Oaks Co-operative too.
      I had now lived in this place since its opening in August 1982. It was starting to run down just like me. Built at a time when many co-ops were going up, it had like many other co-ops been poorly built. Although not officially classed as so-called "leaky co-op" as many other co-ops were,the building's outside was starting to rot away. Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation that ran the housing co-op program, insisted that Eight Oaks be renovated.
     A struggle broke out in the co-op as some board and rank-and-file members rebelled against CMHC's orders. Other members sought a compromise. A veteran now of past struggles in the co-op, I stayed out of this conflict. Still, I was saddened to see some members of the board of directors leave the co-op. "Democracy can sometimes be a messy business," one political scientist  told me years ago. As some board members and others moved out, I realized the truth of her statement. In the end the repairs went ahead. CMHC won the day.
     The repairs started in September 2005 and ended in the spring of 2006. Huge metal pipes soon encased our building. Green sheets covered the building's grey walls. Burly construction workers hammered, drilled and carved on the co-op site from dawn to dusk five days a week. The noise flooded our ears every day.
    "It was too much for me this morning," Cindy Weeds, a 20 something member of our co-op said in the fall of 2005. "Two construction workers showed up on my balcony at seven o'clock in the morning and just started drilling." Cindy's experience happened to others in our co-op. We also had a tense meeting one night with the head of the construction team who told us that they couldn't fix some of the new problems they'd discovered while fixing up the other problems they knew about.
     At last in May of 2006 the renovations were finished. Yet now a new building project reared its noisy head and right close to the co-op. It was another mega project from premier Gordon Campbell's Liberal government. And it too disrupted my life and other people's lives too.