Jill Kouri was in her kitchen peering into her backyard in March when she saw something unusual attached to the back fence.
A thick, black cable running horizontally for about 10 metres, bolted firmly with brackets just below the wooden lattice.
“We were very surprised,” explained her husband, Stephen, who had similarly never seen the cable before.
“They’ve screwed it into the fence. It’s highly visible,” Kouri said, describing a frustrating process of finding out where the cable came from.
The cable ran from Kouri’s North Toronto yard through the adjacent four properties terminating at a utility pole.
After several phone calls to Rogers and Bell Canada, it was determined that cable was installed by contractors working for Bell.
But the Kouris and their neighbours are not customers of Bell.
“Somebody’s trespassed on our property, drilled holes in our fence, we want action,” he said.
For two months, the neighbours have been trying to get an explanation from Bell about why it installed the cable without their permission. The company, they say, was unwilling to explain.
When Global News contacted Bell, a spokesperson explained that installing the cable was necessary during the winter.
“Bell received reports of a service outage in the neighbourhood… after a buried cable was damaged by residential construction work. As a temporary solution to restore service to a significant number of customers, a contractor installed cable lines along Mr. Kouri’s fence,” said Nathan Gibson, senior media relations manager for Bell in an email.
“We are working towards a permanent solution and attaining agreements from area residents to complete the necessary work. We will replace the fence and have been in touch with Mr. Kouri about it,” Gibson wrote.
The Kouris were away on vacation in March when the installation took place.
Asked whether anyone attempted to obtain permission in advance, Gibson said they did.
“Our field services team and contractors made several attempts to contact Mr. Kouri at his residence. This was an urgent situation as dozens of customers in the area were without 911 landline service,” he added.
But none of the other four neighbours were asked for permission either.
“No one is happy about this situation,” said Kouri.
“Nobody had permission to come onto the property.”
Kouri acknowledged that in an emergency, public utility companies can ask for access to someone’s property to make repairs.
But he and his wife don’t understand why Bell would enter anyone’s backyard, when they are not Bell customers, to attach cables to fences.
He said it is disappointing that Bell has been uncommunicative about what it did.
Bell didn’t explain to Global News why it didn’t leave a note to the homeowners after the fact explaining where the cable came from or why it was installed.