Why it's good to have a Cadillac in the event of a garbage strike
Summertime strike in '79 saw residents of Toronto suburb hauling their trash to temporary dump sites
A garbage strike might not be so bad ... if you were driving a Cadillac.
That seemed to be a part of a breezy take on a garbage strike in the Toronto suburb of North York that the CBC's Michael Vaughan covered back in July of 1979.
CBC viewers saw footage of Mayor Mel Lastman greeting North York residents as they heaved their trash bags onto the growing heaps at a temporary dump site.
"At least the mayor is in good company at these temporary dumps," Vaughan told viewers of The National on July 19, 1979, about two weeks into the strike by municipal garbage collectors.
"After all, where else does garbage arrive in the backseat of an air-conditioned Caddy?" he added, as the broadcast showed footage of a man in a blue cardigan doing just that.
The Cadillac-driving man supported seeing the municipality stand its ground.
No alternative?
"I think you have no alternative but to hang in," he told the mayor.
Garbage workers in other parts of Toronto had already settled on new contracts, but the ones in North York were holding out for a better deal.
"We're offering you the same wage settlement — please take it, please come back to work," Lastman pleaded, when being interviewed by CBC News.
"Leave me alone! I want to go back to work running a municipality — not meeting out at garbage dumps!" he added.
Four days after the report on The National, the strike ended after the garbage workers agreed to a new contract.
The Toronto Star reported that the contract they agreed to was "substantially the same" as what their peers in other parts of Metro Toronto had received.
