she looked a lot like andrea horwath, during one of her between-elections fat phases:
the woman that called the police on me for "harassing" her when she ignored me when i asked her to smoke away from my window, however, was black. i was blaring loud music out my window whenever she sat outside (it was merzbow.) and otherwise making her smoking experience uncomfortable as a disincentive for her to smoke there, so she called me in for bothering her. i don't think i had an obligation to sit there and breathe in her filth, and am not sorry for making her life unpleasant, as she was polluting my living space and refused to adjust to requests not to.
when the cops arrived, i argued that my behaviour was justified by her insistence on smoking near my window and told them point blank that i was trying to chase her off, and i wasn't going to stop. i was willing to take the fight to court; if she didn't like what i was doing, she should smoke somewhere else. i also suggested that they file charges against her for causing a nuisance, which is defined in canadian law as follows:
Common nuisance
180 (1) Every person is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than two years or is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction who commits a common nuisance and by doing so
(a) endangers the lives, safety or health of the public, or
(b) causes physical injury to any person.
(2) For the purposes of this section, every one commits a common nuisance who does an unlawful act or fails to discharge a legal duty and thereby
(a) endangers the lives, safety, health, property or comfort of the public; or
(b) obstructs the public in the exercise or enjoyment of any right that is common to all the subjects of Her Majesty in Canada.
i don't know who, in 2020, can argue with a straight face that second-hand smoke is not endangering the health of the public. however, i was unable to convince any of the officers to file charges against her.
as she continued to smoke in a way that bothered me, i did threaten to take the issue directly to the justice of the peace if she didn't smoke somewhere else, but this was after she called the cops on me for trying to chase her off with the merzbow. in the end, my threats do seem to have been effective in coercing her to smoke elsewhere. for the last several weeks of my tenancy in the unit, she smoked in the front of the house, away from my window.
so, i did a lot of things to piss this woman off, and i also attempted to get bylaw involved under anti-smoking regulations, but i did not call the police to deal with the smoke complaint, as i realized they had no actionable cause without clear evidence of intentional harm. and, i had actually decided to bypass the cops (who are useless.) and go directly to the judge. but, i didn't have to, in the end - she realized what she was doing was wrong and modified her behaviour. eventually...
it should not have taken weeks of yelling and screaming to get her to react responsibly, but she did the right thing in the end.
however, if i thought they could have done something, if there was a law around second-hand smoke in residential areas that they could actually enforce, then i might have called them, sure.
my preference was direct action against the smoker, and that's what i did, and, in the end, it did work. she called them on me, not the other way around.
and, while the issue is not cited in the harassment charge against me that was eventually dropped (i was charged with repeatedly applying for housing. i kept applying because i claimed the property owner was discriminating against me. the property owner, who is rich and powerful and therefore a friend of the police, essentially argued that my claims of discrimination were harassment. because she was upper class, she got the cops to go for that very stupid argument, which was instantly laughed at by the court, and eventually retracted by the prosecutor. conversely, my much stronger legal argument for criminal nuisance around secondhand smoke was not accepted by the police, because i'm poor. do you see how class is important, here?), it is clear enough that it had a lot to do with the illegal arrest that eventually happened, as it was the same officers involved. and, i have in fact cited the officer's behaviour, in context, as reasoning for my request that he be charged with harassment, for repeatedly coming to my house and bothering me.
just in case that's unclear.