The Very Strong Case For Moving the Hell Out of Toronto
Credit to Author: Tiffy Thompson| Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2019 16:10:54 +0000
If you’re not living with perpetual roommates or pulling in six figures, grinding away to barely pay rent in Toronto or Vancouver is likely your new normal. With the average cost of a one bedroom in TO hitting $2,260 last year according to rental site Padmapper, income can be quickly swallowed up by housing costs—and saving money or planning for the future becomes impossible. Sure, you can take on a side hustle (or two), sell off your sneaker collection—or get the hell out of the city altogether. With real estate prices climbing all over southern Ontario, some young people are looking up north. Houses are cheap (the average single family home in Sault Ste. Marie is well under $200,000), the pace is slower, and the scenery ain’t bad, either—the Sault was one of only two Canadian cities to make the New York Times 52 Places To Go list this year.
“I got a good close look at urban living in Vancouver and I just couldn’t stand it,” says Robbie Adamson, who now lives in Leeburn, ON, in a century-old church complete with original wood ceiling and stained glass windows (that he bought for $30,000). “I didn’t have much patience for the pace or the traffic jams or my growing household of friends that liked to do nothing but smoke joints and play video games.”
Since moving back to northern Ontario, he has fitted out his ‘church’ with a heating system of his own invention (allowing him to heat the place using discarded veggie oil from nearby restaurants), built a loft and bar inside, and uses the space to host everything from weddings to art exhibitions to punk festivals. He has perfected his methods so he never has to work a ‘real job’ again.
Robin Sutherland lives on a 160 acre property on a dead end road near Desbarats, ON. “Our closest neighbors are Mennonites, so we see a lot of horse and buggys,” she says. After a decade of living in Toronto and abroad (and earning her MSc in Health, Community and Development program at the London School of Economics as well as a Graduate Diploma in Social Innovation from the University of Waterloo), Sutherland moved up north and started Thinking Rock Community Arts.
For a region that has long struggled with youth out-migration and ‘brain drain’, the influx of young entrepreneurs (who now have the option of telecommuting), artists and organizers like Sutherland is a boon. “I found a lot of allies in this community—other young people that were getting stuff started. We became good friends with the guys from Outspoken Brewery and lived above Shabby Motley when they were starting up. It felt like we were all doing the same community building work together, coming up against the status quo.”
Though Sutherland misses the access to arts, as well as the sense of anonymity the city offers, she favors the slow rhythm of the country. “We farm hops, have two big vegetable gardens—so a lot of our time is spent interacting with the land; growing stuff, harvesting. My husband deer hunts on the land, we do maple syrup. Our life revolves around the seasons and what’s happening with the earth,” she says.
“There’s the misconception that there’s a total lack of culture here, or everyone is a redneck. Which isn’t totally untrue, but there are a lot of really amazing people who choose to live up here. They are educated and skilled and could be living in Toronto, but they love the lifestyle,” she says.
“I went to visit my friend who lives at Ossington and College. She was like; we rented a car and drove two hours to go to a farm, and pick, like, five vegetables and it was awesome. The whole parking lot was full of people who were going to pick vegetables and there was a car jam. I thought oh my God. There’s these people who want to live sustainably and naturally, but they wouldn’t actually move somewhere where that would be possible. Or maybe they don’t actually value what it is like to live up here.”
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