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Where in the GTA?

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I made another visit to a 905 downtown earlier this week. It’s fairly accessible by transit and not too hard to find by car. The small downtown is quite lovely and pleasant, with your typical banks and real estate offices but also restaurants and pubs, an organic food store. This little downtown isn’t fully enveloped by sprawl, but the tell-tale signs are appearing – heavier traffic, new big-box stores on the periphery, and empty farmhouses next to fields occupied by backhoes, not tractors.

Unlike many old Ontario towns, this one is quite linear – there’s no main intersection that defines it, where all the banks locate, or where the town hall looms.

Can you guess this one? We’ll hold on to your comments until 5:00, when we’ll reveal the answer and I’ll give some further thoughts and news about this neck of the woods.

UPDATE: Most of you got it, it is indeed Stouffville (I didn’t know the Fickle Pickle was such a well-known landmark! Or did you just Google it?).

One of the things that I think makes this little downtown great is that the GO Station is right there on the main street, with parking behind the station building or across the tracks, not the typical sea of asphalt that usually accompanies GO stations. Some of the stores and pubs are nearby the station, and I observed commuters stopping in for a quick shopping or a drink and dinner. The downtown really was nice.

Compared to most towns its size, transit access is quite good. GO Transit doesn’t even provide the same level of Union Station service to Brampton, closer to Toronto and 15 times its size. The limited York Region bus to Markham is a relatively new service as well.

The ride on the GO Train is interesting on the way up. After leaving Markham, the train winds its way through a mostly agricultural area and into the Oak Ridges Moraine. Just before entering Stouffville, the crops and grass turn to muddy fields, bulldozers and sales offices. To the east are the frozen Pickering Airport lands, and to the west towards Highway 48, Main Street peters out with fast food restaurants, strip plazas, car dealers and sprawling industry. This is where Whitchurch-Stouffville’s municipal offices are located, in a simple low-rise office building.

And right on the southern end of Whitchurch-Stouffville, well removed from anything else (and where the undeveloped parts of Markham begin) is a brand new big-box centre anchored by a Wal-Mart Supercentre, surrounded by yet-to-be developed lands and well back from Highway 48 itself, which was almost surreal.

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19 comments

  1. It’s Stouffville. The Fickle Pickle gave it away.

  6. I admit that I cheated by looking up the name “Fickle Pickle” (hee hee) in Google. I’ll also admit that Stoufville looks quite nice!

  8. This is Stouffville, a place that is very rarley in the news. It has one of the longest main drags I have ever seen in a small town. The West end has become much developed with dealerships, large stores, and chains like East Side Marios. The East end still retains that small town feeling because there are no main roads that intersect the main street. For those who grew up in the area like me, Stouffville’s original “box store” was the Stouffville Sales Barn, still there but I think it has a different name now. This town, like Uxbridge and Port Perry, are under a lot of development pressure these days.

  9. The following is a paraphrased transcript of something overheard somewhere in the GTA…

    “I just…wanted…you …to… know! I called the …pest removal guy!…There’s this thing!…In our…garage!”

    “How come you’re out of breath?”

    “I’m running around in circles! Anyway, this ‘thing’ has got to go! The pest control guy will be here any moment!”

    “Is the thing like a bug or what??”

    “OH NO NO and NO! Thing is a big fuzzy gray thing! Big! Very big!’

    “Can you stop talking in exclamations?”

    “No! It’s very big! Way up high, in the rafters, where it can drop on me! So I’m never going in there again!”

    “Is it like a—”

    “Probably a possum! Or a raccoon! Or a mutant possum/raccoon hybrid! I asked him if it was rabid and he laughed at me! I think that means no!”

    “Okay, honey? I’m sure it’s fine.”

    “He said it was 173!”

    “What’s a 173?”

    “No, $173.00!”

    “Oh, I thought that was like a code. Like, we got a 173 up here! We got a 648 situation in the garage. Like that! Ha ha!”

    (silence.)

    “Honey?”

    “I never wanted to live here on the south side of Main Street in Stouffville. I hate nature.”

    “I think it was your decision…actually.”

    “He’s going to set a trap. That means we have to call back when the trap is filled. It’s going to be in the trap. I’m never going near the trap. Never never never ever.”

    “No one said you had to.”

    “I’m going back outside to get my stuff. If the raccoon eats me, you’ll have to marry again. Our son needs a mom.”

    “I think I’ll marry the raccoon. Then there will always be a little bit of you around.”

  12. Looks like Stouffville to me. Last time I was there (a year or two ago?) I had the same impressions as Sean, although I would say that “fairly accessible by transit” is pushing it quite a bit (a single YRT route and the end of the GO Stouffville line, neither of which run much more often than once or twice an hour).

  14. no problem- stouffville/whitechurch..I wasn’t sure after the first pic, but the fickle pickle is a dead giveaway!

  18. Looks like Unionville to me (Main St.) but I could be wrong.