It went up on Monday and had been mostly dismantled by Wednesday afternoon, but a 100-plus-foot-tall tower has created a rift between neighbours in Hamilton's rural north.
The baffling ordeal serves as a cautionary tale for landowners and service providers looking to enhance cellphone and internet service across Ontario.
Sam Klimov, 46, and Olga Klimova, 45, live on a 37-acre lot in Flamborough, on Middletown Road, a bucolic playground amid the bustle and urban sprawl of the more developed areas of southern Ontario.
'It was the worst day of my life'
But their dream came under threat on Monday when, under a veil of fog, a 10-or-so-storey telecommunications tower popped up in the yard of their next-door neighbours, Rob and Lisa Hummel.
A worker climbs the unfinished wireless tower Wednesday morning, before it was taken down. (Cory Ruf/CBC)
"[Workers] came in the morning," said Klimov, a home renovator. "By noontime, in the mist, it was like thieves working. I only hear 'Bang' and then I see a tall crane up there. And I see a tower. It was the worst day in my life, I would say."
His shock was compounded by the fact that Klimov and a number of his neighbours had expressed their opposition to the project when Rob Hummel floated the idea a year ago. The Klimovs said Hummel, with whom they had a friendly relationship, wanted to install the wireless tower and offer neighbours free internet service. The couple told him they would never support a wireless tower so close to their property, citing concerns about health and property values. Hummel, they said, appeared to back off.
"It sounded like he was OK not to do it. He got the message that we didn't want it," said Klimova, a business consultant. "And we didn't talk about it for the last half year."
The situation prompted Klimov to make a series of calls to service providers and Industry Canada, to find out what recourse, if any, he had to get the structure taken down.
By Wednesday afternoon, it appeared to have paid off.
New rules on wireless tower construction
For two days, the tower loomed more than eight stories above the rolling hills and tree-dotted fields of northern Flamborough. On Wednesday morning, a man was climbing the steel construction, apparently performing work.
In a short phone conversation with CBC Hamilton on Wednesday, Hummel said the tower was coming down that morning. But he wouldn't explain why or comment further on the situation. "I'm really just not in the mood to talk with anybody about it," he said.
A company that provides wireless service to customers in rural communities around Hamilton and Brantford confirmed that they were contracted to install a receiver on the tower, but said no further relationship was planned.
Calls to the city and a search on Industry Canada's website confirmed what Klimov had suspected: businesses and individuals aren't allowed to build telecommunications towers without conversations with neighbours and the approval of Industry Canada.
Brought into force earlier this year, new Industry Canada regulations stipulate that parties looking to build telecommunications towers of any height must conduct formal community consultation and notify the municipality.
City staff didn't receive any notification about the owners' intention to build a tower, said Ann Lamanes, a spokeswoman for the city's department of planning and economic development, on Wednesday.
Opposition in other rural communities
Increasingly common as Canada becomes more dependent on wireless communication, the installation of cell towers in rural communities has at times raised the ire of residents across the country.
Last month, a Thunder Bay asked their municipal council to nix a plan to construct a 50-metre cell tower on land belonging to a neighbour. Like the Klimovs, they worried about the possible negative health effects associated with constant exposure to electromagnetic waves.
On its website, Industry Canada said wireless towers don't pose a serious threat to human health so long as they operate in accordance with government standards. However, in the spring, a team of scientists led by Paul Demers, Cancer Care Ontario's lead epidemiologist, called on Health Canada to conduct more research on the matter.
As for Klimov, he said he's relieved to see the structure come down. But he said he's not confident that the issue is a dead one.
"It's making me feel better, but not 100 per cent when the neighbour doesn't send you any word."
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