Living On The Edge (Of Town)

Every word I write takes me further from the city bustle. I’m on a York Region Transit VIVA Blue bus heading north on Yonge Street, formerly the longest street in the world (until it officially broke into two, Yonge and Highway 11). I’m not going to the end of the line—nowhere close—although it sometimes seems like it. I’ve always lived on the city’s outskirts. But I never imagined I’d live as far away as I do now.

Richmond Hill, officially. Unofficially, the ’burbs. The boonies. The sticks. The other day my fiancée and I were driving south on Leslie Street, north of Elgin Mills. In the distance rose a silhouetted metropolis. That’s probably the highrises at Steeles and Yonge, I said. No, Praveena said. Don’t you see the CN Tower? It’s downtown Toronto! Indeed it was, thirty kilometres to the south. I could visualize that iconic, somewhat stereotypical sci-fi image of the mushroom cloud rising over a doomed downtown core. (Seriously, though, my feelings on the burbs are nowhere near apocalyptic.)

In many ways, Richmond Hill isn’t so different from the big city. It’s certainly home to some odd ducks. On a VIVA Blue bus the other day, I saw a guy drinking a beer. This in itself isn’t so strange—I’ve seen people drinking beer on VIVA buses, as I’ve seen people drinking beer on Toronto Transit Commission vehicles. The weird thing was that this was at 6:30 in the morning on a Tuesday. Rather than coming home from an all-night bender, the drinker looked to be on his way to work. He wore green scrubs; I figure he worked in some capacity in the health-care industry. Just one seedy story from among the satellite city’s 185,000 citizens.

No, my adopted city is not sparsely populated. In particular, it boasts large Asian and Persian contingents. I get my hair cut by Persians and do much of my grocery shopping at Asian supermarkets. Seeing all the Korean and Chinese signage in these stores, I certainly feel far from the town where I grew up. Then again, coming home to Praveena every evening makes me feel right at home—more so, perhaps, than ever before.

Aesthetically and functionally, much of Richmond Hill resembles any bustling, North American metropolis: concrete and steel, asphalt and pavement, light poles and power lines, traffic and public transit. The place offers many of the same benefits of city living—maybe an American city more than a Canadian one, with its myriad strip malls and shopping centres rising on every other block. But the businesses dotting the Richmond Hill landscape are totally Canadian: Tim Horton’s, No Frills, Kelsey’s, Petro-Canada, Sporting Life. While items like clothing and groceries seem a tad pricier in the ’burbs, at least rent is cheaper.

Richmond Hill doesn’t offer all the same perks, however. In the absence of bike lanes, bicycles are best ridden (illegally, I might add) on the sidewalk, as roads such as Yonge Street function more like highways. They’re busier, with faster traffic; bicycle riding on them can be a life-threatening experience. Though compared to city traffic, suburb traffic isn’t nearly as bumper-to-bumper (although try saying that with a straight face while travelling north on Yonge Street around 6 pm).

Another annoyingly American quality of the ’burbs is how everything seems so far apart. “Next door” is a minimum five-minute trek. Even the roads are wider than what I’m used to. (Fortunately, my library’s but a seven-minute saunter from home.) Since no two points are very close together, an outing becomes “an outing,” and a trip to the city is most definitely a “trip to the city.” Consequently I spend lots of time travelling down to the city to work, to visit family and friends. But in taking public transit, I use my travel time wisely, reading and writing—like now, writing this. Alternatively, everything being so far apart is more reason to stay in with Praveena.

Maybe the biggest pleasure of living in Richmond Hill is its proximity to unabridged nature. Go a little north, to Stouffville Road, say, and you’re surrounded by fields, lakes, trails, wildlife, tree-lined horizons. My roots may have sprouted in the city, and no one will ever confuse me with Cartier or Brûlé, but I love exploring, stirring up rural dust.

Every word I write takes me further from the city bustle. Praveena and I may be somewhat isolated up here, separated from friends and family, but that just means we get to experience the joys of relying on each other for support. And we can spend lots of time together.

Bottom line? You forge your own life. It’s not where you’re living, but with whom you live, with whom you create your own experiences, discover your own pleasures, find your own solutions to problems, build your own memories. Make no mistake: living in the ’burbs is still living.