Why Toronto Reminds Me So Much Of Saint John
Mark Leger is the editor and part-owner of Huddle. This is a weekly column that features opinion, analysis and reflections on Huddle stories, podcasts and business news in the region.
When I lived in downtown Toronto 25 years ago, I used to go to a bookstore near the corner of Bloor and Yonge. On a display table near the front of the store, there was a book of photography called Saint John, by Rob Roy. The cover photo of red-brick homes and apartments on Germain Street uptown always made me feel nostalgic and a little homesick.
But then again, my Toronto neighbourhood, Little Italy in the College Street area, made me feel much the same way. My place on Euclid Avenue was part of an interconnected series of two- or three-story red-brick buildings. Kensington Market was close by, as were little cafes, restaurants and bars where I would read, do work or meet up with friends.
Amidst a city of several million, my little corner was neighbourly; it had an urban intimacy that I had grown accustomed to as a university student and young journalist in Halifax when I left home after high school in the mid-eighties.
When I came home to Saint John from Toronto in 1996 to take a job with the Telegraph-Journal, I initially moved back in with my parents in Rothesay. My father told my mother I wouldn’t last a month with them; that I would move into the city centre as soon as I could. And he was right. I went straight into the world framed by Rob Roy in that cover photo.
Here’s a twist, though: I missed my Toronto neighbourhood terribly, but the Saint John city centre, which revolves around the Germain Street area, gives me the same feeling of warmth and intimacy, with the City Market, the bars and cafes and densely packed neighbourhoods. I’m still here 25 years later, raising a family on a side street off Germain.
This is not meant to be a negative reflection on suburban or small-town life. The best urban areas mimic the intimate, lively qualities of the most walkable towns and suburban neighbourhoods. And the proximity of urban and suburban and rural places is one of the great things about living here. I just got thinking about what I love most about living in uptown Saint John (and downtown Halifax and Toronto) during my conversation with Jess and Jordan Owens on the latest “Home Office” podcast.
Podcast: The Owens Family Moves To The Maritimes
Jess and Jordan moved with their daughter Irie from Toronto to Saint John late last fall. Jordan says they loved Toronto but they were living in a basement apartment that cost $1,500 and he had a long commute to work. They bought a house here with a yard in a residential neighbourhood for under $100,000, which is close to the city centre, the Bay of Fundy and area parks. They renovated the top floor to use as office space; they both have jobs that can be done remotely.
In just five months, they’ve settled into the community, meeting people in their neighbourhood despite the challenges of isolation during the pandemic. Jordan, a former professional hockey player, even got recruited to play on a local men’s team.
Even though they moved here as winter settled in and Covid-19 kept people mostly at home, they know they moved into a neighbourhood that has the best of both worlds – a yard and nearby parks to take Irie and their dog and an urban centre with many big-city amenities and features.
“We got lucky with this house, it’s five minutes from uptown…People rave about uptown,” says Jordan. “They say, don’t worry, you’re still going to get [that feeling of Toronto here].”
“The uptown is lively and there is lots going on,” says Jess. “There are coffee shops and restaurants, and you can walk around down there and feel like there’s an energy.”
They’ve also become ambassadors for Saint John and the Maritimes as a whole, pitching outsiders on the life they can build here through a regular series of YouTube videos called, A Tribe Called Owens.
There’s been a lot of discussion about people like the Owens moving to the east coast because of the rising housing costs and fast-paced life in the bigger cities in central and western Canada. Both PCMag and Maclean’s featured many Atlantic Canadian communities as the best places to live because of things like housing affordability and the ability to work remotely.
The New Brunswick government has also created and helped fund pilot programs to encourage remote workers to move to the province and do their jobs from here. It’s part of an ongoing effort to boost the region’s population with newcomers from across the country and around the world that also includes recruiting people to work with companies located here.
In the latest “Insights” podcast, Don Mills and David Campbell say population growth is necessary to grow the economy. There are over 300,000 people expected to retire in the next decade, they say, and not nearly enough young people to take their place in the workforce, which will leave local companies struggling to grow their operations.
“You see the politicians all across this region interested in population growth because they have business owners calling them up on a Thursday night saying they can’t find workers,” says David. “Now that it’s reached that level of criticality around the region you start to get a political drive to grow the population across the region.”
Podcast: The Case For Population Growth
On a personal level, we all just want good-paying, rewarding jobs and a great quality of life. We can have that as easily in downtown Toronto as uptown Saint John. We do have an advantage here in the region right now, though, if housing costs don’t rise too rapidly.
Part of me would still love to be living in that Toronto neighbourhood. But I paid $300 a month to share a place back then. My friends bought a house around that time in the same area for $300,000. I did a quick scan and the median rate for apartments in that neighbourhood is now $2,000 for a one-bedroom place; the price of single-family homes around $1.5-million and up.
I’d be living far out of town at those prices, a long way from my College Street coffee shops and Kensington Market. The prices of the places in the Rob Roy photograph are still way more affordable and right down the street from the City Market.
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Banner photo: Germain Street, Saint John. Mark Leger/Huddle.