CELPIP Reading Part 4 Practice Test: Alcohol in Greenholm’s Parks Debate

A glass of wine on a picnic blanket has long been illegal in Greenholm, though bottles in paper bags rarely attract attention. Council is contemplating a two-summer pilot permitting adults to drink in six parks between 11 a.m. and 9 p.m. Overlooking an offence, detractors counter, differs from licensing it. Two additional bylaw officers, according to a staff report, would cost approximately $120,000 annually.

Councillor Shanelle Prescott, the plan’s chief sponsor, treats the question as one of fairness. “If you have a backyard, you can enjoy a beer outdoors whenever you like. If you live in an apartment, you’re breaking the law.” Enforcement, she adds, is haphazard, falling chiefly on young people of modest means. She accepts that certain parks may prove unsuitable, and promises their removal should complaints accumulate after the first summer.

Dr. Ingrid Solheim, the region’s medical officer of health, stops short of outright opposition. “Easier access to alcohol generally correlates with greater harm,” she notes, yet research on park drinking remains scant and the cities experimenting with it report little serious trouble. What preoccupies her is teenagers absorbing the notion that alcohol belongs to any ordinary outing. “I can live with a trial, provided it is a real one,” she remarks, by which she means emergency visits and police calls tallied beforehand and afterward, with the results published.

Tom Wieczorek, chair of the Riverbend neighbourhood association, harbours no grudge against couples sharing wine over a sandwich. “My complaint is 9:30 p.m., after families depart: the noise, the broken glass, the people relieving themselves behind residential fences.” Doubting that two officers could patrol six parks, he would confine the experiment to one downtown park, remote from houses.

Lucia Ferrante, proprietor of a Main Street patio restaurant, might be expected to dread the competition, and partly does: her overhead includes a liquor licence, insurance and staff training, while a park drinker buys only the bottle. Still, she doubts quiet picnickers will inconvenience anyone, and livelier evenings generally benefit her business. Her resentment is reserved for helping to underwrite the scheme. “Let its beneficiaries fund the officers, through a modest permit fee for groups,” she suggests.

After nineteen years renting downtown without a yard, I have little patience for the idea that my glass of wine turns dangerous once carried outside. Yet Councillor Prescott’s case goes beyond backyards: today’s rule also singles out 6. Choose…the young and poorpeople without a yardteenagers on a day outcouples sharing a sandwich.

Nor do I dismiss Mr. Wieczorek. Living across from a busy park, I would dread 7. Choose…the bill for extra staffthe loss of patio tradethe sight of youngsters imitating adultsa lively evening’s aftermath too. Still, apartment dwellers across Greenholm would be poorly served by 8. Choose…a count of police callsa single downtown venuea permit for every groupan earlier curfew.

I am less moved by the restaurateur’s grievance that 9. Choose…picnickers will trouble her customersevening crowds will drain salesher overhead handicaps herthe town should hire more officers, which sounds to me like special pleading; nobody I know would abandon a dinner out for a warm can on a bench. So I would attach the one condition that turns an argument into evidence: 10. Choose…keep score before and afterdrop any park that draws complaintsconfine it to a single parkcharge groups a modest fee.