Cabbagetown

A few years ago (2001) Deb­by and I were in Toron­to, Cana­da. One of the things we did there was walk through Cab­bage­town, a his­toric neigh­bor­hood. A few days lat­er, when a local heard that we had been in Toron­to and had vis­it­ed Cab­bage­town his response was “You came to Toron­to and vis­it­ed our slum!”

My response to him was that if Cab­bage­town con­sti­tut­ed a Cana­di­an slum, then Cana­da was in very good shape indeed. Yes, the neigh­bor­hood did not seem par­tic­u­lar­ly high end, but a slum it was not.

This evening on HGTV’s Prop­er­ty Vir­gin pro­gram was a young man look­ing for his first house in Toron­to. Two of the hous­es he looked at were in Cab­bage­town. They were both priced over $550,000.

Geez, $550,000. In the “slum”. I guess I could nev­er afford shel­ter in Toron­to (or maybe Cab­bage­town isn’t a slum…)

2 thoughts on “Cabbagetown”

  1. Not a slum. The area used to be des­per­ate­ly poor but has been flour­ish­ing more and more since the 1970s. A huge pub­lic hous­ing area just south of us is being flat­tened and rebuilt and that should add even more vital­i­ty to the neighbourhood.
    Now it’s a des­ig­nat­ed her­itage dis­trict so that our Vic­to­ri­an lega­cy can be prop­er­ly cared for.
    Come back soon — see for yourself.

  2. Sor­ry. Cab­bage­town is not a slum. The per­son prob­a­bly just does­n’t like it due to its his­to­ry or pri­or unfavourable occur­rences in the area. Hav­ing lived in sev­er­al parts of the coun­try, I will give you a run-down of our run-down areas now.

    Our ver­sion of a slum (in Toron­to) would be the Jane-Finch area (now labeled “Uni­ver­si­ty Heights”). Exter­nal to the city that nev­er cares we have Van­cou­ver City with its shan­ty-town area. If we go to the East, Hal­i­fax had some pret­ty run-down slum­my areas and a few shan­ty areas. But, the worst I’ve with­nessed is prob­a­bly in back of Kentville, NS. There are old car bod­ies, rust­ing and rot­ting away behind the quaint town of Kentville. Peo­ple live in them.

    Here are some links to web­sites with more info:

    http://www.oldcabbagetown.com/
    http://www.jane-finch.com/
    http://www.kentville.ca/

    There is a short doc­u­men­tary about gang crime on the Jane-Finch site. I used to live in that neighbourhood.

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