wasss

I am relocating from the UK and Toronto is expensive so I was thinking of living in one of these other places to rent and work and then go to Toronto for events, the social life on the weekend, theatre etc, is it worth it or is the difference in rent and transport not that different? Would it be better to just live in Toronto?

Kentonmag

There are plenty of places outside Toronto for events and concerts. I'm going to see Green Day in Hamilton tonight at Copps coliseum, there are many other shows on there such as Disney on Ice and other well known musical acts. Niagara on the Lake has 4 theatres and there is the 2 casinos in Niagara Falls which are 30 miles from Hamilton.
Personally I don't enjoy being in Toronto to long and find the prices in the entertainment district absolutely crazy especially eating and drinking out.
If you are a big game sports fan then all the major teams play in Toronto but getting tickets for some of those games is difficult anyway, whether you live in Toronto or not.
I've lived in Canada for 26 years now and one of the things I have noticed is a big upswing in crime and murders in the Brampton area, they couldn't pay me enough to move there, it is starting to resemble Scarborough on the East side of the City.
Hamilton has the Go-Train into Toronto which makes commuting much better than driving however getting to the train station might be the problem as Hamilton cover a large area.
Depending on your skills there maybe many opportunities for working outside of Toronto and I would much rather do that and occasionally go into Toronto and book into a hotel or Airbnb for the weekend.

dbd33

Oh. Perhaps I should pay more attention but I don't lock my car in Scarborough, nor in Brampton.

The problem I see with Hamilton, Mississauga, Brampton, and so on, is that the one place in Ontario with a decent selection of cheese is the St. Lawrence Market. One is always going to have to go there to shop so, unless one has many children or animals, one may as well live near it.

Kentonmag

Make sure you inform your car insurance Company about that?

The last time I stayed at a hotel in Scarborough 6 vehicles had their wing mirrors snapped off in the hotel carpark, including 2 vehicles belonging to people from our Company.

dbd33

I don't know that insurance companies have expectations about locks. We don't lock the house either. That's rather the point of emigrating.

Siouxie

Starsky's
Hamilton Farmers Market
Georgetown Cheese shop



As to the OP's question, there are plenty of concerts on at Hamilton Place and Copps, Dixie Chicks are here next month for one example. There's several nightclubs and more and more up-market pubs (rather than just sports bars), tons of restaurants etc., and as someone upthread mentioned, it's an easy commute for a night out in Toronto by Go Bus or Train. Hess Village and Augusta Street are very popular pub areas, the former with the 'younger' set, the latter with the 25 and older.

Housing is far cheaper in the Hamilton area as well, something to consider. Rents are very expensive in the GTA,

What kind of work are you looking for?

dbd33

Well, alright, I accept that it is possible to make cheese on toast without going to the market, if you're not fussed over the cheese used. Perhaps those shops also offer pickled onions to divert the tastebuds.

Mississauga is in two halves; south of the QEW is no cheaper than Toronto and north of the QEW is a suburban wasteland. One might be glad to live in Mississauga, notQEW, if one had recently arrived from a place with war or famine. Otherwise, no, there's no there, there. Brampton looks like Mississauga and has a largely Indian population, one might liken Brampton to Slough.

Hamilton had a reputation for being rough and ready. My neighbour in Toronto was from there and said of it "you don't get beggars there like there are on every corner in Toronto. Ask someone for money in Hamilton and they'll punch you in the face". I understand that it has been somewhat gentrified and a colleague just bought an unremarkable three bedroomed house there for a million two. It still looks awful from the highway, like Pittsburgh or Sheffield, but I'd give it a go and ahead of Mississauga or Brampton if I didn't have to commute from there to anywhere else. One thing it has in spades over any of the other places mentioned on this thread is attractive buildings, loads of them, Toronto also has some, the structures in the other places are best seen on a foggy night.

geoff52

Consider Oakville or Burlington near the train stations the two places have great trains links to Toronto.

dbd33

They are, however, expensive suburbs so unless you have 2.4 children, a dog, a Range Rover and are done with hoping for adventure, they may not be quite the thing. An important point there though is that it's only the Lakeshore GO train line that offers reasonable service.

Siouxie

I'm sure even your refined taste buds could find one of Starsky's 600 cheeses reasonable... and I was at one of the 5 cheese shops in the farmers market on Saturday, a rather nice 15 year old chedder was on offer...

Hamilton is gentrifying a lot of areas and it's certainly worth considering, as you say, it has some wonderful archtecture especially in the downtown core.

geoff52

They are quite family towns, but the train service is excellent I worked in downtown Toronto commuting from Burlington for many years.

DandNHill

I fear that at some stage I will be seen as the member who keeps repeating herself BUT check out car insurance if you're driving. Brampton insurance is apparently the highest in the country according to Johnsons. Our total monthly premium is a bit like another mortgage. If we were 4km up the road it would be half what we pay!!!

dbd33

From the Central African Republic or Ethiopia? That seems sensible.

Ebonhawke

I don't lock my car either - I don't keep anything of value in the car at all, so keeping it unlocked means that I don't have to pay for damage to the car that people cause when trying to break in. Most of the time, it's just people looking for something to quickly sell/pawn, rather than actually interested in stealing the car - if they have the know-how to defeat the electronic theft deterrents on most modern vehicles, then a car door lock isn't really an obstacle.

dbd33

When I parked in the Monoxide Towers (Church and Esplanade Toronto), most nights, I had a sign like in New York "No Radio Doors Unlocked Please Don't Break Glass". Someone kept breaking the glass anyway. One day I caught him, it was long enough ago that, when I hit him with my mobile phone he went down and my arm ached from the effort of heaving it.