dbd33

When we lived at the spot you describe we only went up near the GO station to get to Duckworths or because a daughter worked on and off at the pool there. It was just easier to get downtown on the tram.

JamesM

I added that because I was fishing for you

I'm not really a pub/bar person so could not possibly comment.

JamesM

I've never caught a train there myself.

I'm not even sure they run all day from there.

But it's worth investigating if the Beaches is an option.

Pizzawheel

The area is noticeable deficiency in terms of Gentleman's Clubs, probably because Caddy's hoovers up all the talent in Scarberia and puts it in one inviting and convenient location.

That's hooVers, not hooTers.


It's kind of handy if you're going to exhibition place, say, for the beer festival. Other 364 days of the year, not so much.

pinzo

Please keep in mind what the commute would be like in the dead of winter.
What is a one hour commute now quickly becomes a two hour commute (or more!) when the snow arrives!
K

MarylandNed

Good point. And also what looks like a 1 hour commute maybe isn't when you consider door to door times. For example, you might get the GO train to Union but then have another commute from there to somewhere else in the city.

the blairs

Even on the Go Train??
My husband wouldn't be driving in.

not2old

Depends on the location of work, if its the downtown core & you live in the suburbs, then likely not. If he works rural & its an easy access commute, then driving may be fine.

Although less frequent schedules, the GO train in rush hour is usually more reliable than the TTC....just saying.

Vehicular traffic is an unknown especially on the main corridor route highways of ... 400, 401, 404, 407, 409, 427 the QEW, Gardiner & Lakeshore. It takes just one fender bender to make the trek time double or a whole half day delay.

Any rain or snow likely the same situation.

The ideal situation is to live where there is GO service, public transit & several back roads from home to work. If one can bike it even better.

Pizzawheel

As long as you understand that the satellite towns- Aurora, Newmarket etc- assuming you cant afford one of the original high street village properties- are soulless, cookie cutter communities which make Milton Keynes look like Berlin on a party night.

Brits are often used to a bit more community.

I say this knowing that I'm at one end of the bell-curve, I have to have amenities in walking distance (and sidewalks to go with them, no sidewalks in an estate is a dealbreaker for me), public transport & some sense of community. Basically I view the car as a necessary evil.

The ex is at the opposite end of that curve, she'd be perfectly happy driving in and out of the ranch every day without interacting with anyone in the area.

not2old

post#30

you can live in centreville Toronto in a condo or a townhouse & never have community spirit, no one speaks to you, one goes about their daily lives to from work, shopping, cafe, pub, theatre etc.

Toronto living can be different than large city UK & maybe the satellite towns offer an overall all round better quality of life?

Maybe in this part of the country the culture & multicultural society has a lot to do with it, or maybe the long hours commute added to the work day, one is just too knackered at the end of the day for anything other than taking care of domestic duties, lazing to the boob tube & bed?

BristolUK

I find 'community' a bit of a mystery. Certainly people are friendly. I know people say it's superficial but it doesn't seem like it.

If you're having a coffee and someone asks you how you are as if they're someone you've not met up with in a while, why would they even bother if they didn't mean it?

What puzzles me is it doesn't seem to extend to near or immediate neighbours. Maybe this is down to the houses being further apart - we're not talking rural or anything like that but there's no fence or wall to natter over.

Or maybe it's because people like to drive - even to the local stores - and don't really pass their neighbours on the way.

So people don't stand and chat in the street as they would have done when I was in the UK. On the other hand when you do pass a stranger here there's a likely a greeting coming your way rather than the just walk on by I was used to.

It all seems a bit inconsistent.

MarylandNed

The GO trains from Newmarket/Aurora take about 1 hour to get to Union Station (some a little over; some a little under). But that's not the entire commute. Your husband still has to get from home to the train and from the train to wherever he works. For some people, that part of the commute can be longer than the train journey. It depends on where you live, how your husband gets to the GO train (bus, car?), where his work is located and how he gets to there from Union station (walk, TTC?). So calculate a door to door time to get a more accurate total commuting time.

SchnookoLoly

Yep, this is exactly what we did, and one of the reasons we settled on Oakville (as opposed to Burlington). My husband's walk-out-the-door to sit-down-at-his-desk time is just a shade under an hour, usually about 55 minutes. So that takes into account the 10ish minutes to drive to the GO station, park up, walk to the train, 35ish minutes on the train, and 10ish minutes walk to his office on the other end. The goal was always to keep the door-to-desk time under 60 minutes; moving into Burlington would have made that more like 1h15m or so since the trains are just that bit further away.

The fact that the Lakeshore line runs all day as well was important for us, since I often go into Toronto for social stuff in the evening after work, and my husband sometimes goes out for drinks after work... so being stuck on the schedules where it's just 3-4 trains in in the morning and 3-4 trains out in the evening wouldn't really work out.

My husband has taken the trains out towards Milton etc a few times in the evening, and he DESPISES it. The trains are always completely rammed full of people, and they aren't express trains at all, so it's lots of stops. He says the Lakeshore lines are significantly more civil - he always gets a seat, if he misses a train it's not a big deal since they are just that much more frequent, and the trains aren't completely packed full.

All food for thought.

dbd33

All depends, dunnit. I found living downtown to be very sociable, easy going. In a few years in Leslieville I never spoke to anyone, in the Beach it was sociable but very competitive; people looked down on me because I'm only an associate member of the yacht club.

Guelph is a satellite town full of hipsters, it's not sociable unless you knit your own yoghurt. Port Credit was friendly enough, I only knew francophones but there seemed to be plenty of them and they drank frequently. I haven't tried living in one of those godforesaken tracts of newer houses; I even refused to take the kids to birthday parties in Oakville or Mississauga (NoftheQEW) for fear of never finding the way out.

Now, deep in the country, sociable waving is the done thing. Speaking is not.

not2old

dbd33 @post# 44

the most pleasant period living in the city was on Woodfield Rd (Coxwell/Gerrard) then to Browning Ave just North of Chester Ave/Danforth, followed by the long period in South Leaside, then with children it was move out to 'fresh air' of suburbia, then a few miles further east of that.

Depends on what the OP is looking for - different strokes for different folks & one major factor is 'what they can afford'