Astral Media: A Culture of Non-Compliance With the Law (Part Five)
Today is Part Five in our never-ending story of Jacques Parisien’s Astral Media and its undisguised contempt for the laws Toronto City Council has put in place to protect our streetscapes from illegal advertising.
We have looked at 46 Spadina Ave. in the past – recently we reported on Astral’s erection of a new illegal sign on the northerly elevation of the building. Today we report on the southerly elevation, as we just obtained the enforcement file for this property.
On January 8, 2007, Officer Frank D’Amico attended 46 Spadina and took these photographs of Astral’s illegal sign on the southerly elevation:
(The Easy Clip sign is on a CBS billboard.) Two weeks later, on January 23, 2007, Officer D’Amico issued this Notice of Violation, ordering Astral’s illegal sign removed within 14 days:
By February 15, 2007, the sign was removed. IllegalSigns.ca took this photo on that day:
Astral removed the vinyl but not the sign structure. We drove down Spadina with Chris Bilton of Eye Weekly on the afternoon of March 13, 2007 and noticed the sign was still removed. (Chris later wrote this neat profile of us).
Astral re-erected the illegal sign that night. The next day we took this photograph:
Meanwhile, Mr. Parisien, who, quite sadly for the profession, is a lawyer, has been up to his old tricks again at 276 King Street West. On February 26, 2007 we noted in this blog post that Astral had not complied with this order to remove their illegal sign on the easterly elevation of this Mirvish property. The sign was finally removed a few weeks after that post. We took this photograph on March 15, 2007:
It was down for about a month and the sign was re-erected a few days ago. We took this photograph on April 20, 2007:
276 King Street West is a listed heritage property.
See, not only is Mr. Parisien’s company habitually violating the law, it doesn’t care that everyone knows that it is habitually violating the law. So what does that tell you about Astral Media?
Our previous reports on Astral:
Astral Media: A Culture of Non-Compliance With the Law (Part One)
Astral Media: A Culture of Non-Compliance With the Law (Part Two)
Astral Media: A Culture of Non-Compliance With the Law (Part Three)
Astral Media: A Culture of Non-Compliance With the Law (Part Four)
Have we proven our point yet?
Marketing Magazine has published an article about IllegalSigns.ca and it’s pretty balanced for the ad-industry’s bible. They also published a small piece on anti-billboard activists across North America. We will have more to say about the article later but since you can’t view it online without a subscription, you should pick up a copy at the newsstand where you can enjoy John Hryniuk’s very cool photograph of the IllegalSigns.ca coordinator.
