On a recent Sunday with nothing better to do but drive a car around the GTA we found this perfect land of small town quaintness. Quaint is not a word to use lightly. This place is so perfect that we felt inherently imperfect. A strange restored, preserved and movies-set-like strip of old fashioned Ontario townscape that immediately becomes standard GTA suburban within 50 meters in each direction.
We’ll withhold the answer until later this Good Friday afternoon, where we’ll reveal the location from remote Windsor, a hometown with the highest unemployment in Canada, but the only place to go for Easter. These “Where in the GTA” posts will be infrequent — not because they aren’t fun, but because we don’t go for long Sunday drives through the hinterland as much as we poke through archival photos of Toronto.
Update 7:21PM — Sorry for the delay, the trip down the 401 had some nice detours. Then there was dinner with mom, the excited family dog, and then peanut butter cookies.
Most people got this one: Main Street in Unionville. I had heard of “downtown” Markham for a long time, but could never find it. I wanted to find it on my own without asking someobody or checking a map first, but unless you see the “Main Street” sign, it’s hidden in, as somebody said in the comments below, York Region suburbia. Following the usual signs for a centre — big buildings — will not lead you here. You’ll end up going back and forth on Highway 7, which might be downtown Houston, but not Unionville.
36 comments
is that Unionville ?
Oh Unionville…….
What an awful awful place.
My guess is Kleinberg.
downtown Unionville!
Looks like unionville in Markham. There are a few of these quaint little streets around the GTA.
That’s Unionville Main Street. The firehall-ish building on th right of the first photo is (or at least was in the early 90s) Old Firehall Sports. We always went up there once a year for ski equipment when I was little.
Looks kleinburg-y
Unionville?
Oh, that’s an easy one. Unionville.
That’s got to be Unionville, a pedestrian-friendly oasis in the middle of the suburban hell of York Region.
“Historic” Unionville?
I’m pretty sure thats it, and it’s a really nice place to go after skating on Toogood pond
Main Street Unionville.
Many of those shops are the original (early 18th C) houses of the Berczy settlers.
No other part of the town looks anything like this.
unionville!
Somewhere in Aurora.
Yonge Street in Aurora, I should say. I think?
Main Street Unionville. It’s much livelier on summer weekends (but still in quaint kind of way).
It’s Markham village or whatever they call it.
Main St. Unionville. First one’s looking south, second one’s looking north.
Pretty easy – Unionville (technically in Markham). Right?
Looks like Main Street Unionville to me…
Can’t be anywhere but Unionville.
How about a “Where in Windsor?” for Saturday & Sunday?
Main Street, Schomberg?
Unionville?
I think it’s just as significant relative to the site (or maybe it’s just–in part–a Good Friday thing) that nobody’s saw fit to offer a post, a guess, yet, and it’s already late afternoon…
Main St. Unionville.
Adam> We hold all the answers, so a bunch of people had voted by that point.
Malcolm> That would be neat, but perhaps would only appeal to a select group of Windsorphiles (though there are many in Toronto). Check this blog for lots of great windsor pictures and content:
http://internationalmetropolis.com/
Re my guess: such is the consequence when you normally come across this game at the end of the workday (i.e. by the time the answer’s out), but it hits you mid-game on Good Friday.
I was wondering about all those “stupid, didn’t you read the previous one?” guesses in the past…now I know why it was so…
Not downtown Markham!
Downtown Unionville, in Markham.
The historic Markham downtown, is on, surprise, Markham Road.
The current, or rather future downtown Markham, is at Warden and Highway 7.
^
“Glorious downtown Markham: where our two bus lines… meet!“
James> You’re hardcore, and I acquiesce to your downtown Markham, and will only refer to mainstreet as Unionville.
Though it sounds like Warden and 7 is quite a centre (to be) — perhaps Sobara should start planning a subway extension there too.
Shawn, please don’t even joke about a subway extension.
“Downtown Markham” is also the brand name for a large, European-styled new development south of Highway 7, between Warden and the Unionville GO station. As of last summer, the main road was built and had Viva buses running on it, surrounded by nothing but empty fields and a sales centre. Very odd.
Unsurprisingly, Old Markham is your standard modest small-town-Ontario urban centre, more akin to workaday Stouffville or Streetsville than Unionville. And attempts at self-gentrification seem to have met with mixed success–I noticed one Yorkvillesque PoMo infill mini-mall which looked near-moribund, like the small-town-Ontario version of a failed Eaton Centre affair…
Matt L> I also saw a medium sized Shoppers Drug Mart in a plaza with about 5 other stores, somewhere around Stouffville. That counts as a centre in Spadina Extension terms. So i’ll expect a Sobera-Subway there soon too.
Between Stouffville and Markham is the new Wal-Mart Supercentre. Big trip generator. Needs a subway (after all, we like building subways to IKEAs).
See, political momentum is already building.
Shawn,
The pioneer settler’s houses on John Street, between Yonge & Henderson in “Old” Thornhill would make a good future historic GTA photo quiz.
UNIONVILLE!
i live there
its amazing i know
be jealous
ITS NOT AURORA OR THORNHILL OR STOUFFVILLE