HOARDINGS IN CANADA

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 19 August 1933, Page 11

HOARDINGS IN CANADA

MORE THAN 10,009 REMOVED IN THREE YEARS Energetic steps are being taken by provinces and municipalities in Canada and more particularly in Ontario and Quebec, to eliminate objectionable advertising signs from the highways and rigidly to control the erection of signs in the future. In Ontario more •than 10,000 signs have been removed in the last three years, and in Quebec a new law orders removal by Ist December, 1934, of all posters erected before the present regulations came into effect. This interval is given for the expiration of billboard contracts. The principle actuating this new campaign is that public property must not be exploited for private advantage, and that private property rights do not include the right to put up a sign which blots out a fine bit of scenery or endangers traffic at a railroad crossing, road intersection, or sharp turn. Both Ontario and Quebec say that billboards may not be closer than 1000 feet to one another, and this rule eliminates the old lows of huge signs standing shoulder to shoulder and substituting for the scenery behind the admonitions concerning soap and motor-ears. Signs must be from 100 to 300 feet from the highway, according to their size, and tlie largest permitted are 25 by 50 feet. To persons who carry on business in premises frontting on the highway one sign is permitted, of limited size, to be erected on private property. Ontario’s road system is known by legislative act as “The King’s Highway,” and in the matter of billboards the provincial Department of Highways lias jurisdiction over a quartermile strip on either side.