The temperature was dropping as we set out from our modest three-bedroom, semi-detached house on one of Toronto’s main arteries. We quickly passed through the little square of patio stones that serves as our backyard, hopped into our car and turned into thick, bumper-to-bumper traffic. Still, we made it to the lake shore in less than 20 minutes.
The cool breeze off the lake had us second-guessing our late-evening swimming plans at Sunnyside’s free pool, so it was just as well that we had the hours mixed up and the pool was closing when we got there. I quickly ducked into the public washroom in the historic Sunnyside Pavilion while Ed and the kids went off to skip rocks.
Next up was climbing the two painted concrete dinosaurs and letting the kids ride their bikes around the empty wading pool while I planted my pregnant self on a bench, watching the sun set over the lake.
Across the wading pool from us was a family celebrating a birthday in the park. They asked Ed for a light for the candles as soon as the sun went down and then insisted that we join them for cake. My kids happily sat up at the picnic table with very generous slices (never mind that they’d already had dessert) and I talked to the mother of four about the baby we’re expecting and how nice it is to be able to celebrate birthdays in a public park for free.
We drove back home that night feeling utterly at peace with nature and our city and especially her citizens.
Contrast that with the picture painted in Philip Preville’s cover story of the current issue of Toronto Life. It’s a profile of a handful of elite, privileged families who trade in their city homes for exquisite mansions on sprawling properties in small towns outside the GTA. They are dubbed “The New Suburbanites” and it’s just a matter of time, so the article argues, before there is a great exodus of young families fleeing Toronto’s cold, crowded and over-priced neighbourhoods.
First, let’s remember that towns like Uxbridge and Creemore and Dundas are not, in fact, suburbs at all. They are independent communities and most of the people featured in the article don’t even make a daily commute into Toronto. (Or if they do it’s a $30 per day VIA rail trip replete with after work wine tastings.) Preville even takes a pot shot at the actual suburbs, describing them as, “the cookie-cutter, aluminum-clad, cul-de-sacky, Mississaugish, soulless wasteland of the downtown imagination.” Never mind that for most working families looking to gain some square footage and a bigger backyard, those actual suburban municipalities are their only feasible choice.
But what about those bigger backyards? What’s so bad about raising kids in the city anyway? One mother quoted in Preville’s article describes the seemingly next-to-impossible chore of packing “diapers, bottles, snacks, changes of clothes, all that stuff,” only to have to rush back home from the park for lunch. Huh? I have never packed more than a water bottle and some sunscreen (and even then only on very hot days) for a short 30 to 60 minute trip to the park. If you are going to bother taking all that other crap, then of course you pack some lunch, too. I can even walk to half a dozen different parks in under 20 minutes and pick up dinner on the way home.
So sure you get more floor space for your buck outside the city, but good luck popping out for some decent Indian take-out — or Thai or Chinese or Greek or Italian or Mexican or late-night burgers with greasy onion rings. Good luck going out to see a show, indulging in a couple cocktails, flagging a cab on the street and making it home within half an hour. Or aren’t parents supposed to do that sort of thing? Are we just supposed to head home from work and never go anywhere (save the odd Tupperware party) ever again?
As for the community you’re supposed to get in smaller towns compared to the cold anonymity of the city, I think you pretty much get what you put in no matter where you are. I frequent many of the businesses in my neighbourhood and always have warm exchanges with the shop owners and staff. I am positive that any number of them would and do keep an eye out for the neighbourhood children. I’m also likely to know two or three parents at my closest park at any given time that I can count on for support. My neighbours on either side have given us food and we’ve invited them into our home. Our kids play together and when they are out in our little backyard I know there are extra sets of eyes on them at all times.
There’s a safety fallacy when it comes to the suburbs and small towns. Sure, there’s less traffic on most streets, but contrast that with more SUVs backing over small children in driveways. You are just as likely to fall victim to a freak child abduction in a small community as you are a large one. In fact, when my children are old enough to venture out a little on their own, they will know that the businesses that line the streets of our neighbourhood are their refuge. If you get lost or scared you can always go into a store to ask for help. And they’ll be less likely to get lost in the woods or fall into a ravine, too.
I won’t even get into the benefits of walking versus having to drive everywhere for everything. I’ll barely mention the freedom that being able to walk or take the TTC will afford my kids when they get a little older (and the time that will save me). Let’s not talk about culture and the rich alternatives to drinking and drugs and teenaged sex that are available to city kids every single day. (Even if they don’t always choose them.) Ultimately, though, where Preville claims that, “space is, in fact, the best thing money can buy,” I will always choose time. Those countless hours on our soul-sucking highways would just kill me.
But to each his own. I know I’m a pretty hard-core city girl and not everyone is going to agree with me on all counts. (Nor should they.) I grew up in Toronto for the most part (save for one year in Halifax and one in the Bronx) and went to high school right downtown. When Ed and I decided to start shopping around for our house, we didn’t have anywhere near the budget most homes in our neighbourhood were going for. So we bought a run-down semi on a major street and continue to sink untold hours and bucket-loads of cash into it. For us, it’s worth every penny and every drop of sweat to be where we want to be. Of course, I also know several families who have traded their homes for the promise of greater, greener and less urban meadows — and a few who have managed to move back.
Here in the Junction there are two brand new condo towers that are filled with families of four or five living in small two and a half bedroom units. These families are only too happy to claim a few hundred square feet of Toronto real estate for themselves. They have everything they need right here: parks, schools, libraries, recreation centres, shops, restaurants, you name it. One mother of two told me she was on the fence about going for baby number three. I asked if there would be room for a third in her condo and she shrugged, “In Poland, you would have two generations in a space that size.”
So, yes, we live in more cramped quarters and have to take our birthday parties to the park. But maybe we’re the better for it. Of course, those who do leave are pretty invested in convincing us (and themselves) otherwise. As Preville says, “Once you move out of the city, it becomes almost impossible to move back. Just as everyone who leaves Toronto makes a nice killing on the real estate transaction, everyone who returns gets killed. Once they’re gone, they’re gone.”
Note: It has come to my attention that my husband has also written a rebuttal to this same Toronto Life article. He even leads with the same anecdote. His platform is much bigger than mine and his response has already been making the rounds. Here is the link: http://www.thegridto.com/city/opinion/a-suburb-by-any-other-name/ I’m about to go read it now, but rest assured that any similarities are purely coincidental. And also maybe the product of our co-habitation and incessant talking about the piece over the weekend.
Spacing also put out a response yesterday that I haven’t yet read. But you can go right ahead: http://spacingtoronto.ca/2011/08/15/toronto-life-screws-jane-jacobs/