To The Suburbs & Back

Ever since I was little, I'd been one of those city people who loved big cities and everything they offered, and had never been able to understand why people chose to live in the suburbs. I pictured row upon row of identical houses (with identical swimming pools to match), boring strip malls, being so far away from the action and the interesting restaurants/streets/houses/buildings/cafes/museums/etc in the actual city, and wondered - where is the appeal in that? Living in midtown/north Toronto my whole life, when leaving my house, 9 times out of 10 I headed south (towards downtown and the lake), except if I was going to A.'s house, or to the grocery store. But all that changed last September, when I started working in the far northeast corner of the city, and even more so this past January, when I started working in Markham - a quintessential suburb of Toronto.

I first drove out to the Markham campus of the school I work at a few days before classes started - to both make sure I could find it, and to get a lay of the land. Despite being from Toronto, I could only remember having gone to Markham once before, on the last day of school of grade 11. A girl in the grade above lived in Markham and her family was moving, so she had a party in a house without furniture. Although, there were so many people there, I almost didn't notice the lack of it. Everyone sat on the floor, signing yearbooks, talking, drinking beer. I sat next to my boyfriend at the time, who was a year ahead and was graduating, and listened to him and his friends celebrate the fact that they were done. Around midnight we went for a walk down the street, him so happy he was done high school and going to university, me sad for the same reasons. After a few blocks there wasn't much more to say, and I became aware of how quiet it was - a suburban quiet I thought at the time, one I was sure didn't exist anywhere in Toronto.

Now I go to Markham twice a week; I'm the opposite of the norm, as unlike the thousands of people who live in the suburbs and work in the city, I work in the suburbs and live in the city. I have to admit I like it. It's true I don't see a lot of it. My work is right off the highway, so my perception of Markham is somewhat limited. But my building has great views (albeit mostly of the highway and cars but you can see a lot of sky too) and is convenient to get to. Since I'm going against the normal traffic flow, it doesn't take long to get to and from work. In fact, the longest part of my drive is after I get off the highway back in Toronto and have to navigate city streets to get to my house.

Old habits die hard though. Despite having made this drive many times now, and accepting that I work in Markham, whenever I pass the big Toronto sign (see picture below) on highway 404 as I drive home from work, I always feel mildly glad and relieved to be back in the city. One Monday in February there was a big snowstorm which caused horrible traffic going both directions on the 404 and I was half an hour late for my writing class downtown. At the break I explained to everyone that I was late because I work in Markham, but then quickly added "I don't live there though!" Afterwards I was really embarrassed I'd placed such emphasis on not having lived there, like I thought it was somehow a bad thing. I realized that if I've learned anything in my time working in Markham, it's that the people who work and go to school there are really great, and do not at all fit the silly stereotypes I had of people who live in the suburbs. In fact, I'm really glad I've had the opportunity to have a lot of my stereotypes debunked. And while I suspect there will always be a part of me that wants to make it very clear to other people that I do not live in the suburbs, I think that from now on I'll be able to do a better job keeping it in check.