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Frank Di Genova, owner of Butcher by Nature on Annette Street at Runnymede Road, looked out the shop's window the afternoon of Tuesday, April 29 to see three men loading his sandwich board sign into the back of a pick-up truck.

He thought thieves were making off with it when the owner of the hardware store next door popped his head in and said, "They're taking your sign."

When he confronted the men, wearing orange vests and driving City of Toronto vehicles, he learned his sidewalk sign is not allowed.

"I said, 'Maybe a little courtesy would be nice. You could have come and told me 'your sign's illegal,'" Di Genova told The Villager last week. "'There are no second chances,' the guy said. He was pretty rude."

Di Genova tried to take back his sign, but the city workers wouldn't let him.

"They had no identification and gave us no notice that they were taking our sign," he said.

Di Genova called the municipal licensing office and was informed the cost of retrieving his sign would be a $100 fine, plus a $15 per day storage fee. When he asked where his sign had been taken, he was told to a storage facility in North York.

The A-frame sign, he said, cost $400 plus an additional $200 to have it painted. It's burgundy with a steel frame and a chalk board.

Cindy Abel, owner of Lou's Coffee Bar, just two stores east of Butcher by Nature, also lost a sign to the city's clean-up efforts.

"I just bought the business last May. I didn't know there was a problem with my sign," she said.

"I'm a one-woman business. I don't always have time to look out the window," Abel said and mentioned that the shop owner next door alerted her that her sign too, was being taken.

The workers offered no identification, she said.

"(One) said, 'Your sign's gone.' That's it. He was very rude. Don't we get a warning?" Abel wondered.

Had she not been alerted to the fact that her sign was being confiscated, she would have assumed it was stolen.

Chip Au, supervisor of municipal licensing and standards, Etobicoke York District, confirmed bylaw enforcers do not have to provide notice, citing section 26 chapter 693 of the Toronto Municipal Code. Removing illegal signs is part of the mayor's spring cleanup, he said.

"Removal of waste, graffiti, garbage and illegal signs," Au said.

Illegal signs were removed throughout Etobicoke, he said.

The city should be working with the business community, Abel said.

"It's a sad situation," she said.