Suburban Toronto Research Articles

Settlement and Schooling: Unique Circumstances of Refugees and Forced Migrants in Post-War Toronto Suburbs

This paper explores the possibilities of discovering, sharing, and transforming school-community linkages through proactive outreach programs that are of particular relevance to public elementary schools catering to a large refugee and immigrant population. The authors argue that community-school linkages, as currently understood and discussed in the literature, are primarily focused on unidirectional relations, but certainly have the potential of furthering the particular needs of these children and their families in more productive ways. A wealth of untapped opportunities and creative capacities exist in the community that provide the potential for ‘bridging and bonding’ social capital where the response is sensitive to power relations that can arise from hegemonic interactions. School-community linkages are crucial for displaced communities further isolated and stigmatized in underserved and deprived pockets of the city. These are particularly evident in Toronto’s post-war suburbs, such as Scarborough, where the concentration of neighbourhood poverty is well documented, but where the energy and creativity in the production of its social and cultural landscape, and the commitment of its citizens, are less noted. Based on an outreach workshop held in one such school, the potential of a sustainable emancipatory school-community framework is explored. Cet article porte sur les possibilités de découvrir, partager et transformer les liens entre l’école et la communauté par le biais de programmes de communication proactifs qui soient particulièrement pertinents pour les établissements élémentaires publics recevant une large population d’immigrés et de réfugiés. Les auteurs affirment que ces liens, tels qu’ils sont actuellement compris et étudiés dans les publications universitaires, sont avant tout focalisés sur des relations unidimensionnelles, mais qu’ils pourraient certainement servir les besoins particuliers des enfants et de leurs familles de manière plus productive. Dans ces communautés, une abondance d'occasions inexploitées et de capacités créatives sont susceptibles de procurer un capital social «affectif et relationnel», là où il y a une réponse réceptive aux relations de pouvoir qui peuvent naître d'interactions hégémoniques. Les liens école-communauté sont cruciaux pour les populations encore plus isolées et stigmatisées, déplacées dans des secteurs non desservis et défavorisés de la ville. Ceci est particulièrement évident dans les banlieues d’après-guerre de Toronto, telles que Scarborough où la concentration de quartiers pauvres est bien documentée, mais où l’énergie et la créativité dans l’éclosion de son paysage social et culturel et l’engagement des citoyens ne sont pas autant pris en note. Un atelier de communication qui a eu lieu dans une de ces écoles, a permis d’explorer le rôle potentiel d’un cadre école-communauté émancipateur durable.

The Perfect Storm: Stress, Anxiety, and Burnout in the Secondary School Music Classroom

This study investigates teacher stress, anxiety, and burnout through my experience teaching music in a suburban Toronto secondary school between 2002 and 2008. Primary data sources include a rich collection of journal entries I have written over a six-year period, which were retrospectively analyzed in this study. Hence, this study is principally rooted in reflective practice. In addition, this study is informed through autobiographical and phenomenological lenses. These other two lenses have allowed me to incorporate secondary source data (anecdotal notes, emails, text messages, and video footage) that were repurposed for this study. Findings have exposed two principal thematic representations from the data, namely; (a) those that directly or indirectly addressed extracurricular performances, and (b) fear of failure. Reexperiencing my experience has been exceedingly therapeutic and cathartic for me, providing insight and transparency into the demanding nature of music pedagogy at the secondary school level. In addition, findings have helped me to refine and develop my current and future pedagogy as a teacher educator.

Re-evaluating ‘public’ and ‘private’ in local development cultures: converging vocabularies of public good and market success in Toronto's New Urbanism

This article queries the utility of the analytical categories of ‘public’ and ‘private’ in the development and planning processes of two New Urbanist communities in suburban Toronto. Through an analysis of the conditions under which these projects were planned and delivered, it demonstrates the extent to which the distinction between public interests and market forces is often exaggerated and yet reproduced by local development cultures. Drawing on a critical review of hybridity theories, it argues that ‘public’ and ‘private’ should not be reified as intrinsic actor categories, but rather problematised as contingent constructions through which development actors constitute, understand and reflect on their continuing activities and interactions.

Time-resolved measurements of black carbon light absorption enhancement in urban and near-urban locations of southern Ontario, Canada

Abstract. In this study a photoacoustic spectrometer (PA), a laser-induced incandescence instrument system (LII) and an Aerosol Mass Spectrometer were operated in parallel for in-situ measurements of black carbon (BC) light absorption enhancement. Results of a thermodenuder experiment using ambient particles in Toronto are presented first to show that LII measurements of BC are not influenced by the presence of non-refractory material thus providing true atmospheric BC mass concentrations. In contrast, the PA response is enhanced when the non-refractory material is internally mixed with the BC particles. Through concurrent measurements using the LII and PA the specific absorption cross-section (SAC) can be quantified with high time resolution (1 min). Comparisons of ambient PA and LII measurements from four different locations (suburban Toronto; a street canyon with diesel bus traffic in Ottawa; adjacent to a commuter highway in Ottawa and; regional background air in and around Windsor, Ontario), show that different impacts from emission sources and/or atmospheric processes result in different particle light absorption enhancements and hence variations in the SAC. The diversity of measurements obtained, including those with the thermodenuder, demonstrated that it is possible to identify measurements where the presence of externally-mixed non-refractory particles obscures direct observation of the effect of coating material on the SAC, thus allowing this effect to be measured with more confidence. Depending upon the time and location of measurement (urban, rural, close to and within a lake breeze frontal zone), 30 min average SAC varies between 9 ± 2 and 43 ± 4 m2 g−1. Causes of this variation, which were determined through the use of meteorological and gaseous measurements (CO, SO2, O3), include the particle emission source, airmass source region, the degree of atmospheric processing. Observations from this study also show that the active surface area of the BC aggregate, which is measured by the LII as the PPS, is an important parameter for inferring the degree of particle collapse of a BC particle. In addition, PPS could be a useful measurement for indicating the importance of recently emitted BC (e.g. from gasoline or diesel engines) relative to the total measured BC in the atmosphere.

Feasibility of Flex-Route as a Feeder Transit Service to Rail Stations in the Suburbs: Case Study in Toronto

Flex-route transit service is a promising option to serve low-density urban areas. In this paper, we investigate the feasibility and benefits of replacing feeder fixed-route transit routes in a suburban area by flex-route service. Three routes in the City of Oakville (a suburb of Toronto) that connect with the regional commuter rail (GO Transit) were chosen for the analysis. A simulation of the routes under the existing structure and under several flex-route designs was performed. The results show that assigning an appropriate slack time is essential in having an effective flex-route service and that more slack time does not necessarily translate into more ridership. The results also show that improving the performance of the transit service, in terms of passenger per vehicle revenue hours, will occur only if the ratio of the increase in ridership relative to the added slack time is more than the ratio of the existing ridership relative to the scheduled running time of the original fixed-route service.

Dead Malls: Suburban Activism, Local Spaces, Global Logistics

Abstract An entire category of urban space, albeit hardly recognized as such, is disappearing across North America. As retail logistics globalizes and big-box power centres replace enclosed shopping malls from the postwar era, a distinct form of social infrastructure vanishes as well. ‘Dead malls’ are now a staple of North American (sub)urban landscapes, and have provoked local activism in many places. But despite popular concern for the demise of mall space, critical urban scholarship has largely sidelined the phenomenon. Much of the disjuncture between popular outcry and academic silence relates to conceptions of ‘public’ space, and specifically the gap between formal ownership and everyday spatial practice. Spatial practice often exceeds the conceptions of designers and managers, transforming malls into community space. This is particularly true in declining inner suburbs, where poor and racialized communities depend more heavily on malls for social reproduction as well as recreation and consumption. In this article we investigate the revolution in logistics that has provoked the phenomenon of ‘dead malls’ and the creative activism emerging that aims to protect mall space as ‘community space’. Taking the case of the Morningside Mall in an old suburb of Toronto, we investigate the informal claims made on mall space through everyday spatial practice and the explicit claims for community space that arise when that space is threatened. We argue that many malls have effectively become community space, and activism to prevent its loss can be understood as a form of anti-globalization practice, even if it never employs that language. Résumé Toute une catégorie de l'espace urbain (rarement reconnue comme telle) est en voie de disparition en Amérique du Nord. Tandis que la logistique du commerce de détail se mondialise et que les méga-zones commerciales remplacent les centres commerciaux de l'après-guerre, une forme particulière d'infrastructure sociale s'éteint. Les sites abandonnés des Dead malls marquent désormais les paysages (sub)urbains nord-américains, suscitant des actions de défense locales. Pourtant, malgré l'inquiétude des habitants pour ces espaces commerciaux, les critiques en sciences urbaines ont généralement marginalisé le phénomène. En grande partie, le contraste entre le tollé des populations et le silence des intellectuels tient au concept d'espace ‘public’, plus précisément au décalage entre la propriété officielle et la pratique spatiale quotidienne. Cette dernière dépasse souvent les idées des concepteurs et gérants, le lieu devenant un espace communautaire. C'est notamment le cas dans les quartiers périphériques du centre qui dépérissent et où des communautés pauvres et racialisées dépendent davantage des malls, tant en matière de reproduction sociale que de détente et de consommation. L'article décrit la révolution logistique à l'origine du phénomène des Dead malls, ainsi que les actions de défense créatives qui visent à préserver l'espace commercial en tant qu'espace communautaire. À partir du cas de Morningside Mall situé dans une banlieue ancienne de Toronto, l'étude s'intéresse aux revendications informelles de cet espace manifestées à travers la pratique spatiale quotidienne, et aux revendications explicites d'espace communautaire qui naissent lorsque cet espace est menacé. Il est montré que de nombreux centres commerciaux sont en effet devenus des espaces communautaires, et que les actions menées pour éviter leur disparition peuvent se comprendre comme une forme de pratique antimondialiste, même si elles ne s'expriment pas en ces termes.

Harold, Marg, and the Boys: The Relevance of Class in Canadian History

Class has been a controversial category of historical analysis. Historians and social theorists have often attacked its relevance, but even those who find it a helpful way of understanding the past (and present) have had to deal with challenges from new theoretical perspectives, especially from those sensitive to gender and race. They have also had to recognize that there is no direct link between the material situation of members of a social class and their consciousness of their social situation. Diverse discourses emerge to give meaning to social experience, and are adopted, adapted, or rejected to varying degrees. This paper suggests that, after three decades of debate, we should now consider class formation as a fluid, dynamic process of social differentiation through which people’s lives are shaped by the pressures, constraints, and opportunities of their situation in relation to the means of production, the divisions of labour within patriarchy, and the racial distinctions in particular societies; but also one in which people negotiate their own understandings of the world and act on them. To illustrate this process at work, the paper discusses the lives of one working-class family in suburban Toronto from the 1940s to the 1970s and their engagement with new postwar social developments. They not only shaped distinctively working-class forms of gender, suburbanism, religion, ethnicity, citizenship, popular culture, meritocracy, and consumerism; but also wove all of those into a distinctively working-class identity.

‘More Toronto, naturally’ but ‘too strange for Orangeville’: De-universalizing New Urbanism in Greater Toronto

Utilizing the empirical study of four ‘New Urbanist’ housing schemes, this paper seeks to unpack the emergence, legitimisation, contestation and subsequent hybridisation of New Urbanism in urban and suburban Toronto. Conceptually, the paper builds on the observation that in order to understand the circulation of New Urbanism as a global movement, it is necessary to first de-universalize the processes; to view it as a globally circulated idea that crucially is co-constituted by the practices of situated interpretative communities of development and planning actors. The situated complexities of New Urbanist production in Greater Toronto are used as a critical lens to understand the constrained dynamism of the regional development and building culture which is relationally assembled through regulatory, industry and ideological practices. New Urbanism is re-positioned as a localized and politicized housing response to suburban growth management and urban intensification agendas that is unevenly supported in terms of market acceptance, historical precedence, technocratic planning and product design flexibility.

The way ahead

On 19 September 2009, I attended the Region 7, IEEE Canada Student Conference held in suburbs of Toronto, Ontario. This conference, attended by Student Branch leaders from various universities in Canada (ranging from University of British Columbia in the west to Memorial University of Newfoundland in the east) was a day-and-a-half of talks, discussions, an ethics competition, and branch leadership training. IEEE student leaders attending this conference learned about the IEEE organization worldwide, heard from the vice president of the Member and Geographic Activities, discussed SPAC/SPAA event organizations, and had some fun.

Customer Satisfaction Management with “Counting Opinion” Surveys

This article tracks how Ajax Library Services, located in suburban Toronto, followed up on its designation as the only ISO‐certified library in North America by its adoption of the computer‐based, computer‐survey tools of Counting Opinions. Use of the online survey tool helped to inspire reforms in customer service, collection development and many other library policies. And, with before and after data reports, library administration could see how the library's users reacted to the changes. This intermixing of quantitative and qualitative data represents a level of customer‐opinion‐and‐data analysis seldom seen in public libraries. Collecting Opinions has expanded its public library analytical utilities to include access to data on additional public libraries so that customers can do statistical rankings to rank their own service levels to other libraries who serve communities with similar demographics.

Access Walking Distance, Transit Use, and Transit-Oriented Development in North York City Center, Toronto, Canada

This study had two main objectives: to examine how variations in walking distance to rapid transit are related to mode choice as well as to auto ownership and use and to investigate whether temporal changes in the built environment associated transit-oriented development in close proximity to rapid transit (subway) service encourage residents to use transit. The city of Toronto, Canada, and one of the fastest-growing suburban centers of Toronto–-the North York City Center located near the northern edge of Toronto on the Yonge subway line–-were selected as case studies. With the 2001 Transportation Tomorrow Survey (TTS) data, a quantitative analysis was employed; it that focused on home-based trips by using the city's subway network to demonstrate how walk-access distances to rapid transit are related to subway mode share, auto ownership, and auto use. Further analysis was undertaken to examine the temporal changes in land use and related travel behavior over a 15-year period by comparing TTS data for 1986 and 2001. The results of the analyses illustrate quantitatively the strong association between convenient walk access, lifestyle, and transit use, not only during peak hours but also throughout the day. The results show how the promotion of focused development within a convenient walking distance of rapid transit service in a relatively low-density suburb of Toronto has, over 15 years, been accompanied by a substantial shift in residents’ travel behavior toward increased transit use.

Successful Kids from Immigrant Families: An Investigation of the Complex Multilingual Worlds of 10-year-old Gifted Writers in Suburban Toronto

Successful Kids from Immigrant Families: An Investigation of the Complex Multilingual Worlds of 10-year-old Gifted Writers in Suburban Toronto

Successful Kids from Immigrant Families: An Investigation of the Complex Multilingual Worlds of 10-year-old Gifted Writers in Suburban Toronto

This paper discusses a case study of a small cluster of 10- and 11-year-old multilingual children, all first- or second-generation Canadians living in suburban Toronto, who collaboratively wrote an elaborate adventure book in English as a Grade 5 enrichment activity. We explore the language worlds of these gifted young writers to trace their patterns of multiple language acquisition, affiliation and use, and the influences on their strong literacy achievement in English. The study qualitatively analyses interviews with the children's teachers, their families and the children themselves in search of convergences in policy, practices, interests and attitudes that provide an interpretive filter for the children's outstanding creative writing in English. Environmental commonalities in socialisation emerge, but so do conflicting attitudes to languages in home–school relations, and within and between families. Larger questions about the nature of language maintenance required to support selective literacy achievement are posed against a backdrop of the linguistic portraits of these scholastically successful children of recent immigrants.

A Comforting Past: Skirting Conflict and Complexity at Montgomery’s Inn

This essay explores the history of Montgomery’s Inn, a nineteenth-century tavern redeveloped in the 1960s as a community museum in the Toronto suburb of Etobicoke. The inn becomes an interesting microcosm for the nature of 1960s commemorations: the weakness of the site lies not in its selection of artifacts or historical themes, but rather in its representation of the past as a simpler and more harmonious time, removed from complexity and the forces of change. This tendency to romanticize the past is due in part to forces at work in the period in which the museum was established. The essay compares aspects of the site’s interpretation of the past with the existing historiography on life in mid-nineteenth-century Upper Canada/Canada West. It shows that the “authentic” past at Montgomery’s Inn, as much as we can know it, was far from simple and harmonious.

Residential Experiences and the Culture of Suburbanization: A Case Study of Portuguese Homebuyers in Mississauga

This paper examines the housing experiences of immigrants to Canada through a survey of first-generation Portuguese homebuyers in Mississauga, a suburb of Toronto. The survey focused on the push/pull factors leading to their decision to live in the suburbs, their housing search strategies, and their use of services in Mississauga and in the initial area of Portuguese immigrant settlement in downtown Toronto. This study uses data from a questionnaire administered to 110 Portuguese homebuyers in 1990, shortly after their first move to suburban Mississauga; a sample of those respondents were re-interviewed in 2003. The evidence indicates that these immigrants were ‘pulled’ into relocating to Mississauga because of their desire to live in a single-family dwelling in a good neighbourhood. Their housing search relied extensively on ethnic sources of information, particularly Portuguese real estate agents. In general, this group of immigrants expressed satisfaction with their move. The Portuguese community in Mississauga is characterized by a form of voluntary segregation, which seems to be partly a result of their reliance on their own ethnic community for information, language barriers to participating in non-Portuguese activities, and a cultural preference for living near people of the same ethnic background. One consequence of this re-segregation process, by which Portuguese people recreate a Portuguese ‘homeland’ in the suburbs, has been the limitation of their social contacts with members of other ethnic communities that have also settled in suburban Mississauga.

Walkable Neighborhoods Spotlight Diverse Cultures

Walkable Neighborhoods Spotlight Diverse Cultures

Review of Partnerships for Prevention: The Story of the Highfield Community Enrichment Project.

GEOFFREY NELSON, S. MARK PANCER, KAREN HAYWARD, and RAY DEV. PETERS Partnerships for Prevention: The Story of the Highfield Community Enrichment Project Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2005, 290 pages (ISBN 0-8020-8019-7, C$65 Cloth) Reviewed by BRIAN T. WYMBS and DANIEL A. WASCHBUSCH The authors of this text set out to tell the story of the Highfield Community Enrichment Project, which was one of eight sites for a universal, community-wide initiative in primary prevention and health promotion (Better Beginnings, Better Futures) for young children and their families living in a low-income suburb of Toronto, Ontario. This text provides the reader with a thorough and impressive evidence-base for the project as well as rich qualitative detail regarding the development, implementation, and outcome of the program. Central to the content of this work is the attention the interventions gave to involving community residents in all aspects of prevention programing, from inception through delivery. By discussing at great lengths the positive impact of the ideas and efforts of community residents within this community-wide prevention program, this text has the potential to reinforce the relations between researchers, practitioners, and community members towards similar partnerships in the future. Taken together, this text should undoubtedly serve as a road map for others interested in devising and establishing effective community-wide prevention programs focusing on enhancing the quality of life for children and families residing in low-income areas. The text opens with chapters revealing the background and significance of the Highfield Community Enrichment Project. The authors do a superb job of simplifying terms and techniques associated with prevention past and present, and provide an expansive foundation for the analytical design chosen for this project. Of note, tables included within the chapter discussing the research process behind the Highfield project succinctly summarize and provide useful detail regarding outcome measures and assessment time points. The authors also provide an expansive evidence-base for including qualitative measurement and economic analyses within the Highfield project. Further, a thorough description of the low-income Highfield community well prepares readers for the authors' case for seeking and successfully utilizing a partnership among researchers, service providers, and residents to work towards a collective goal of building a healthy community. It is quite clear that without the strength of the partnership, especially between residents and service providers, the quality of the development, implementation, and outcome of the Highfield Community Enrichment Project would have suffered. Particularly interesting was the sense of realism sprinkled throughout the section on program development. Specifically, the authors openly discussed the initial aversion teachers and other school staff members had to the program proposal as well as other issues that arose during other planning stages (e.g., overwhelming deference and lack of participation of parents during planning of school-based behaviour management program with teachers) and implementation (e.g., poor relations between first community development coordinator and residents). By going out of their way to appropriately balance the success of their program with multiple tales of hardship and failure, the audience is better able to understand common obstacles to achieving success with prevention programing. Readers will also significantly benefit from the qualitative information provided about how the service provider-researcher partnership worked together to initially plan and continually improve the program model over time. Again, tables help to summarize the overall program model as well as to elaborate on specific components of the family, school, and community-specific programs. Other highlights include chapters discussing the approach used by program coordinators to manage staff working on the project and the methods they used to sustain working partnerships with service providers and community residents throughout the life of the project. …

Re-Examining Suburban Dispersal: Evidence from Suburban Toronto

:In recent studies, arguments have been made attesting to the growing spatial dispersion of Canadian agglomerations. Using the patterns of office development, this article presents an analysis of suburban Toronto during the last two decades. The suburban domain, like the metropolitan region as a whole, is stratified into concentrated and dispersed spheres. A part of the development is scattered; however, for the most part, it is contained within large and discrete clusters. This pattern has evolved sequentially following key corridors of metropolitan growth. As growth moved farther from the central city, older clusters depreciated and newer clusters became hubs of development. Dispersion has indeed been on the rise, but it has been principally associated with the development of single-family homes and shopping areas. Regarding office development, the suburban realm of Canada’s largest urban region is still rather clustered.

In Place and At Home in the City: Connecting privilege, safety and belonging for women in Toronto

In this article I theorize the connections between privileged social identities and women's sense of safety and belonging in a diverse urban environment, Toronto. Based on qualitative research with a small group of women who grew up in the suburbs of Toronto, and later chose to live in the city, this article is a preliminary investigation into the factors that make it possible for some women to feel ‘in place’ in the city. I suggest that confidence, a sense of belonging, and the ability to distance oneself from violence are all related to privileges such as whiteness and middle-classness. In the Canadian context, these identities function as the invisible norm, allowing women to feel at home in an ethnically and economically diverse city. Moreover, the ability to move into and through urban space may function in a reciprocal manner to reinforce privileged identities. I argue that it is important to examine interlocking systems of privilege and oppression in terms of both women's affective experiences of urban space, and the gendered constitution of urban spaces. This approach serves to problematize and complicate the concept of appropriation of urban space through an examination of the salience of privilege. I conclude by suggesting that this article may serve to open dialogue about the relationship of privileged identities to marginalized identities in the city, in order to add complexity to feminist research on women's everyday lives in the city. Women are not merely objects in space where they experience restrictions and obligations; they also actively produce, define and reclaim space. (Koskela, 1997, p. 305)

Suburban citizenship? The rise of targeting and the eclipse of social rights in Toronto

The decline of ‘universal’, welfarist forms of social citizenship and the rise of selective or targeted social policy is generally considered to be a recent phenomenon, and a constituent element of neo-liberal citizenship and state forms (Brodie 1997), or ‘advanced liberal’ technologies of government (Rose 2000). This paper documents how targeted policies were in fact being defined at the height of Keynesian welfarism, in the newly consolidating post-war suburbs of Toronto. I suggest an alternative account of the genesis of these practices, which sees the spatiality of the post-war metropolis as key. The analysis considers how the mutual consolidation of these social and material spaces, and of hegemonic suburban political practices enabled the articulation of a suburban style of citizenship, which was both intensely familial and entrepreneurial in form. Through a case study in recreation policy in the Toronto region, this paper demonstrates how selective, targeted and residual approaches to service delivery evolved in suburban municipalities in the immediate post-war period, and were only generalized across the city more recently through the restructuring of a municipal amalgamation. It documents how these approaches have relied on radically different assumptions about citizenship that were dependent on the articulation of suburban life, literally built around the private family in private space. Thus this paper also documents ways in which these approaches to social policy, increasingly dominant across a range of policy areas and at a variety of spatial scales, construct gendered and racialized identities and problematize non-nuclear family forms.