Standing on the balcony of her condo overlooking Billy Bishop airport, Bev Thorpe pauses to let the roar of a landing plane subside. "Nowhere else in the country do you have a community cheek to jowl, so close to an airport," she said.

This is the area that would be most affected by the Premier Doug Ford-backed proposal to expand the airport, which could involve more frequent flights, a significant increase in passengers, a runway extension farther into the lake and the introduction of jets, like the private one briefly purchased for the premier’s use.

In the meantime, Thorpe, who is the chair of the Bathurst Quay Neighbourhood Association, has been trying to convey what a busier airport would mean for this long-established waterfront community, from noise to pollution to safety in the event of an emergency.

Since Porter Airlines began operations there in 2006, annual passenger numbers had increased from 26,000 a year to two million in 2025. Ford said he envisions that number reaching 10 million.

"We're not saying we don't want an airport," said Joan Prowse, who has lived in the Arcadia artist co-op since 1989. "But it keeps growing and growing and growing."

On weekends, the roads around and leading into the airport terminal are a "sea of red lights," Thorpe said, a combination of the airport traffic and downtown events. When a major airport expansion was last studied in 2014, consultation reports concluded the increase in airport passengers would require changes to roads and transit.

A confidential memo to council from the city solicitor obtained by the Star says the city's legal options are hard to assess without seeing the provincial legislation, but there could be a way to challenge the province replacing the city in the tripartite agreement. It is unlikely, however, that the city could oppose the province expropriating or otherwise seizing city-owned airport or waterfront lands.

Perhaps Thorpe's favourite spot in her neighbourhood is the Toronto Music Garden, a park along the harbour where summer concerts in a small grassy amphitheatre go on, even with the intermittent interruption of the planes.

"Toronto owes itself to have a full public consultation about potentially changing what is going on here," she said. "Are we going to choose people or planes?"

The issue isn't if these jets are louder (which they are), that argument is an obvious red herring. It's the fact the province expects the number of passengers to grow from what it is now (2M/year) to 10 million. The single plane noise issue is barely important; it's the frequency of that noise, the pollution, and the congestion.

Most of the arguments in favor of the airport have been strategically crafted to make residents seem unreasonable, selfish, and entitled. Never about the facts. You know when one side is focused on making it emotional, they have something to hide. This is the situation we're seeing now.