Weston

I lived in Weston for the past several years and have, in the past, described Weston as "Toronto's most long-forgotten neighbourhood." I think that's really the best summary I can give of it, but there are a variety of local groups working hard to change that.

Weston is an area which exists along the border of North York and Etobicoke but is never clearly identified as being a part of either. Described by local historians as simply "three miles long and sixty-six feet wide," it consists of the area enclosed by the 401 to the north, the Humber River to the west, Jane St to the east and Lawrence W Ave to the south (officially, though some people would extend this down to Eglinton, incorporating Mount Dennis).

Demographic statistics are available from the City of Toronto and Toronto Star, but here's a quick rundown:

56% of residents are between 25-64 years of age, with 12% each being 15-24 and 65+ and 20% from 0-14. A majority of the residents live in highrise apartment buildings, with individual detached houses in second place. About half of the population of 114,458 are of a visible minority, and about half of the population owns rather than rents their residence. 13.4% are university educated, and the area is the bottom-rank poorest riding in the province of Ontario.

Founded around 1796 as a saw mill which grew to be incorporated as a village in 1881, Weston is one of Toronto's most historic neighbourhoods still living today. Walking around the area, it is not at all uncommon to see buildings marked with dates reaching back to the early 1800s.

A scattered history of Weston is available from the Weston Historical Society (along with fictionalized letters, why historical societies do that sort of thing I can never understand).

Rail tracks, traditionally central to the area's character, cut across Weston Rd as it curves towards the 401 and then travel down the east side of the street, passing the Weston GO Station train platform and heading through the Junction towards Union... and if there's any word that accurately describes the modern-day Weston train station experience, it's "passing."

Though rail traffic through the area is pretty heavy, few trains stop in Weston, even typical commuter trains. "Blue22," a proposed air-rail link that would run high-speed trains from Union to Pearson and back, has been an active issue in the area for several years now.

The original plans intended to close off roads that crossed the tracks and connected Weston's commercial section from its residential area in order to send frequently-running trains through that had no intention of ever stopping at the Weston platform. Many people in the area have spoken up against this, both home and business owners, saying that they feel it would essentially herald the final demise of Weston Village.

This is just my prediction, but personally I think the most likely outcome of that particular scenario would be a small segment of the mostly middle-class neighbourhood residents - the same people with anti-Blue22 stickers on their bumpers, windows and lawns - would make a concerted effort to get around to the businesses they've frequented for years along Weston Rd.

The rest of the people in the residential area would probably just do what was easiest, although what's easiest in areas like this tends not to involve Jane St unless absolutely necessary. The middle-aged, middle-class people in the area who enter and leave it primarily by either the GO trains or by taking a vehicle to hop on the 401, 400 or Black Creek Dr can wind up coming into very little contact with what I really must call the ghetto that surrounds Weston.

So, I figure they'll just drive up Rosemount and Yelland, the closest to Weston but on their side of the tracks, and scoot on up to Crossroads, the large big-box retail strip at Weston Rd and the 401 or to Sheridan Mall, if they're comfortable around Jane and Wilson (something that'd really vary by the individual). Though some of the same old customers will visit the same old storeowners, many of these businesses only gasp along as it is, and it's highly unlikely that they'd be able to do anything but close up shop alongside Weston itself.

There's a chance Blue22 won't come to fruition, however, and even if it becomes a reality it may be substantially - or at least sufficiently - changed in response to the small but passionate outcry from little, old Weston.

Documents relating to the original proposal, various transit plans that have included it since, and the response from the area are stored at the Weston Community Coalition website, although I'm warning you, it's an eyesore. People who don't enjoy feeling like they're doing their own research may prefer the Blue22 Wikipedia entry.

Numerous locations around this happy old-town community are adorned with historical plaques for those who care to stop and remember. Sadly, these days, I'd have to say most in the area don't feel any such connection to the area's history... they're too busy worrying about the area's future.

The fact that it's held out for over two centuries despite never really qualifying as much more than a neighbourhood by current standards is what's special about Weston, but also a part of what makes its more recent story tragic.

The unfortunate contemporary reality is that, although Weston is an absolutely beautiful neighbourhood made up of all manner of historic homes laid out along streets lined with enormous trees, this piece of Toronto's past has been almost totally swallowed up in becoming nothing more than the southern end of 31 Division's turf, a troupe best known for their trials and tribulations around the Jane-Finch area, centred a couple major streets north from Weston.

Weston's real problem, speaking in somewhat broader terms, isn't based around the train tracks. The railway allowed the area to prosper to its fullest ability when it was in a better position to do so, and the fact that the station barely exists now and that many politicians seem to already just draw over Weston when tracing their magic markers around is really just symptomatic of Weston's general economic decline and intensive dissolution as a community (while, of course, still remaining a geographic area).

Over the past few decades, the industries of the Weston area have gradually packed up and left. Well, it can be called gradual when viewed as a whole process, but every time one factory closed, hundreds or thousands of jobs would be lost instantaneously, jobs which never wound up being replaced. Much of what used to be industrial is now low-cost housing (a good feature when you find yourself unemployed) through a sort of reverse-gentrification process.

Many of these closures took place before I moved to the area, but since I've been living in Weston I saw the shuttering of the absolutely massive Kodak plant, a multi-building complex estimated in the video presentation as being on 54 acres of land and now sitting in the hands of a demolition company.

Every building in the above photo, from the offices on the left to the chimneys and sign off in the distance to the right, are on the Kodak property, and not all the buildings are shown.

Just one stop west up the 401 also used to be the Labatt brewery, which was recently reduced to rubble.

As time goes on, I don't see anything but less and less jobs for the people in the area. Sure, the Tim Horton's opened up, and it's awfully sweet that they accepted the proposal to have their building shaped like the old Weston train station rather than the standard franchise plan... but the backbone of real jobs that managed to sustain this town for so long has been almost totally cleared from the area, replaced with a creative nu-economics fusion of service jobs and crime.

Off the top of my head, I can think of Irving Tissue on Weston Rd and Annette's Donuts on Lawrence as still-remaining, larger-sized businesses, along with the lumber yard near Crossroads and a couple other quiet factories... but I bet it's been hard for Annette to push donuts ever since the Timmy's moved in a block down. What with that and the Coffee Time a block in the other direction, it's hard to imagine any donut-craving passersby making it to Annette's without having already made a purchase. (Luckily, however, most of their sales are to other stores and the direct-to-public offerings are a factory outlet sidenote.)

Irving Tissue, on the other hand, seems to find their products in high demand. There's no shortage of tears in this abandoned community.

Okay, so that was being really nauseatingly melodramatic. I mean, I see Historic Weston Village in relatively bad shape in 2007 compared to 50 or 60 years ago, but I like to think positively and I really do appreciate what magic remains in Weston's perseverance thus far, regardless of where things go from here.

Weston is rich with history in a way that is so uncommon these days, it can seem unfamiliar at first. During amalgamation, duplicate street name conflicts across the city were meant to be completely addressed. However, Weston's street names dated back such a long time that they were left alone for the sake of preserving history.

As such, Weston includes such popular hits as King St, Church St, John St and many others. Even the more unusual Springmount Ave has a double around Dufferin and St Clair.

This is lovely for the people who have lived in Weston for their entire lives and don't want to let go of good old Elm St, but let me tell you it makes it impossible to get taxis or pizzas to show up at your door. The people taking the orders just punch the street address into their computer and assume it's right... a fair assumption, really, because no one except Weston residents and postal workers have any idea that addresses in this one small area need to be given as "York, ON" rather than "Toronto, ON" in order to compensate for this.

It gets really ridiculous when a pizza place on Weston Rd can't find an address two blocks away, though. That's what I get for buying from a pizza chain, I guess - the local businesses definitely don't need to have your postal code repeated twice for them to come find you, they probably know your neighbours anyway.

The community that makes up the historic residential neighbourhood have some of the most genuine, old-school community in town. There is an annual garage sale on Queens Dr which can include as many as 35 homes or more, and the "Neighbourhood Watch" signs actually mean something, with people creating and distributing maps giving nearby homes' residents' names and phone numbers.

I do try to take advantage of the select gems amongst the local retailers, recognizing that I could be living in many different places in this city where I would have to struggle to avoid corporate chains.

Anyone visiting the area should stop in at the UrbanArts office at 19 John St, which is shared with the Weston B.I.A. - one of the oldest B.I.A.s in the city, who can provide you with a directory of local businesses.

The first such business you should see is Squibb's Stationers. The oldest remaining business in the area, Squibb's was initially focussed on all manner of stationary but has since shifted to educational materials, and was Toronto's first independent textbook retailer. Even if you aren't interested in the products, it's worth checking out the store's collection of historical antiques and photographs and talking to the owners about the area's history.

Squibb's is no longer in the Squibb family, but the current owners are no less a part of Weston's historical scene. Suri Weinberg-Linsky, who now runs it, is part of a group which is pushing to have Weston designated a heritage conservation district and both she and her husband are excellent sources of information on local history.

The Weston Farmers' Market takes place in the morning and afternoon every Saturday from late spring to the harvest in the parking lot at the intersection of John St and S Station St.

The market is actually pretty great. Authentic farm families offer samples of locally-grown produce at much higher quality and better pricing than in any grocery store, often alongside some form of entertainment, ranging from steel drum bands to an Elvis impersonator.

$20 should send anyone home with more bags of groceries than they can carry. You can also find breads, meats, apple jellies and other jams, some stand that's always selling some sort of back-bacon sandwich things, fresh-made crepes, diabetic desserts, eggs, and sometimes assorted used goods, such as used books. Of the farmers' markets around Toronto that I've checked out, Weston does manage to rank pretty high - above High Park, but not quite Dufferin Grove.

Not to mention that no Leafs fan (yep, those still exist in Weston too!) should pass up an opportunity to stop by Peter's barber shop on John St for a $12 haircut and check out all the memorabilia, such as the Maple Leaf Gardens turnstyle just past the front door and walls chock-full of autographed pucks and photos.

The people at Poon's Express midway between Lawrence and John on Weston are quite friendly, and though it is very greasy, their super-fast chinese food will fill you for under $5. No health food guarantees from me on that one, though, and there's a pretty definite limit as to how much of their food a person can reasonably eat.

In a similar vein but about twice as expensive, five times less greasy and designed primarily as a sit-down restaurant is the Peter Anan Thai restaurant a few blocks further north at 2049 Weston Rd. The food is both better and healthier, if you ask me, but whether I want to pay more and walk further factors into my decisions between the two. (Again, clearly not medical advice.)

Khullar Foods & Sweets at 2011 Lawrence Ave W Unit #18 is a small local Indian bakery that mainly sells wholesale, but is open to the public every day of the week and sells desserts, samosas, etc. The veggie samosas are sold $1 for 3 and are some of my favourite in the entire city. Being able to pick up a bag of 30 samosas for $10 is great, as it'll last a week in my fridge even with me eating them all the time. If you're closer to here than Little India, you should definitely check them out.

Weston does have the standard-fixture Ali Baba's location, just south of Lawrence on Weston Rd.

Being vegetarian, there are a number of places that I'm incapable of commenting on but which I'm sure are worth checking out - the fish 'n' chips next door to Peter Anan is one, and a Sardinha location just opened up at Weston & John as well.

TTC service through Weston is a definite hassle. In an unusual turn of events, however, I'm not sure I can really fault the TTC on this one, because they do seem to be trying.

The 87, 79, 79b, 52 and 58 all pass through Weston and Lawrence going different directions, and I always find myself doing what I've termed "The Weston Shuffle," darting back and forth from a vantage point trying to keep tabs on traffic in every direction (blocked by curves and hills in the road, plus the railway overpass) in order to spot the first available bus and rush to its stop before it gets there.

I play it like a sport, but really once I'm sitting on the bus I'd better have something to do, 'cause even on totally empty roads it takes over a half hour to reach a subway station - regardless of whether I'm going to Lawrence West, Keele or Runnymede.

When I leave Weston for, say, downtown, I tend to spend as long as possible away from it before I have to deal with the transit mission back, knowing that once I'm back in Weston I'll again be stranded by geography. There is no such thing as "a quick stop at home" in my world... I literally may as well be "quickly stopping at the airport."

To sum up, Weston is one of Toronto's most beautiful and history-rich neighbourhoods containing a wonderful community of people, but you'd better not be looking for work or a train because those things don't come by too often these days.

If anything really represents Weston to me as it exists now, it would have to be this old but proud tree that seems to spend every day struggling against the pavement that completely surrounds it.

It should be pointed out that there's a strong perspective bias included in the above metaphor, and I am aware of that.

To describe Weston's struggle as primarily one of loss of historical artifacts, something which is easy to do when the Weston residents association all act like it's the biggest concern on the table, is to hold up the nostalgic attachment of the middle-class minority in the area (representing perhaps a non-minority amount of income, savings and property) as the height of community worth and action in these three miles.

To some, this seems perfectly reasonable to do... but you're far more likely to hear that opinion from the middle-class property owners than those living in the apartment buildings, subsidized housing / housing projects, historic homes which have been renovated and subdivided into a dozen tiny units, and various other forms of low-cost housing.

The "Summer of the Gun" did a good job of shaking the whole city up, but sitting and worrying about society from the comfort of your air-conditioned living room is very different from hearing about and personally witnessing fatal gun violence a few short blocks from your own doorstep, around places that you would've otherwise felt comfortable and at-home in.

The two sides I illustrate there (sofa-perched vs street-side) could represent the richest home in Toronto vs the poorest basement room in a crumbling Toronto City Housing Co-op building far across town, but they are also both distinguishable positions that exist within the tight confines of Weston's borders.

I'm huge on nostalgia, I adore urban history, I love close community and I'm opposed to the Blue22 concept as it was initially introduced (I do like the suggestion that there could be frequent, fast train service that does stop in Weston)...

But the perspective that treats "Weston Village" as something that refers solely to the areas with a sufficiently high average family income and total number of house-years per block - with the rest of the three miles and sixty-six feet mentally blocked out - is a very unreasonable one.

When talking about Weston in historical terms, it makes sense to distinguish the outgrowth of that long-ago saw mill and what it all flourished to become from the post-industrial-retreat period that has been working to progressively turn the area entirely into repetitive sections of low-cost housing.

However, thinking about Weston in strictly historical terms is really not something that should be done outside of the confines of the historical society's offices, the Weston library (ask to see their historical reference materials, which are kept in a cabinet at the desk), and the self-guided walking tours. Weston is a real place, right now. It is no longer a single, self-oriented small-town community, but a combination of the remnants of that with other groups that are rooted in shared living spaces, ethnicity, business and community organizations.

Just as much as it is an abandoned outpost of history, Weston is also a stretch of mainly low-income residences which extend Jane St's ghetto character from Wilson down towards St Clair, where it transitions for the most part into something else. This stretch contains some pockets of higher-income homes, and schooling in the area is handled in an integrated way between these two groups and as a result located in these pocket areas.

Really and truly, the only way Weston will be able to proceed into the future in any form and stand a chance of addressing the various problems and concerns that arise in the communities is if those communities recognize that they are really a singular community, and that everyone is now a part of a whole thing, together, today.

Concern about train schedules drops off dramatically as you enter the "wrong" side of the tracks, while those in the historic homes are capable of being in complete denial of violent crime in their neighbourhood by maintaining a lifestyle bubble of too much time inside, too much vehicular travel, and too much of a tendency to spend their money at chain stores located miles away instead of supporting the collapsing community they stare adoringly at through rose-coloured glasses.

The position that some people of every side of every fence hold, that these groups can largely remain separate from one another despite technically being in close geographic proximity, falls apart the more people try to hold onto it.

As an example, and bear in mind that this story is a very extreme and uncommon example:

Weston Collegiate, the century-and-a-half-old high school in the south-central region of the Weston Village homes neighbourhood, has a population of students who come from every direction and every part of the area, regardless of any other details of who they are. This mixed bag of only semi-mature people carry with them all of the problems inherent in their lives and social groups, and often tend more towards imitation of the boundary lines they see drawn in their communities than the less-common notions of race-blindness and cross-group respect and unity.

When economically-divided and ethnicity-centred groups in the community don't care to or specifically resist interaction with the groups in their community who they perceive as least similar to them, it lays a groundwork of separation from which a healthy community can never possibly be rebuilt.

Likewise, when any (and not all are guilty of this, by any means) middle-class and more "officially representative" community groups decide that they are going to act like there's not a single apartment building in site every time they take a stroll down Rosemount Ave, they encourage racial tension and segregation amongst their youth, who do still get outside a lot and are bound to encounter this "other part" of the community.

But that racial segregation doesn't manifest itself in the traditional way, like the gender segregation that is apparent in the way-outdated "boys" and "girls" signs marking a certain area school's entranceways (now sealed up and painted back on). Of all these youth, few have much money in their families, and most are exposed to a variety of local, social and media influences encouraging them to engage in crime whether for the sake of any money or simply more money. These influences can be counteracted with opposing messages, but it requires co-operation through all levels of the community, and that is something that only some from each demographic actively engage in.

When the various social groups in Weston Collegiate become too oriented around drug dealing and money, aggressive confrontations between them become more and more common, most typically between those on opposite sides of one of the neighbourhood's established cultural-separation walls.

I think there was a perception from a lot of area residents that they could stay stuck in their ways to their heart's extent, and everyone living in the cute and quaint homes surrounding the school certainly decided to keep on partying like it was 1959 with lemonade stands and tricycles.

Well, unfortunately things weren't going to work out like that, and at one point in recent years a conflict between two people from two of the area's different social and ethnic groups turned into threats of violence, then an arranged time and place for a fight. Both went back to their own crews to rally support, setting off a viral chain that eventually wound up bringing out literally hundreds of youth who were specifically planning for violence.

It might be even difficult to conceive of some of the weapons that were brought out - would you believe throwing knives? It's true.

I was living near the school at the time this took place, and I know people who were present at the actual mass-fight. There's not a whole lot of reporting or writing about it in Google's web database that I'm able to find, so I can't provide a reference link, but this fight did consist of literally hundreds of students from the school and friends even beyond that, and finally brought unity and community to the troubled area through the wonders of group activity.

Well, no. I should say not.

People got the snot kicked out of them all over the place, and everyone frantically calling the police were left feeling frightened and helpless in the face of the whole of the community's problems boiling over in front of their time-bubble-protected happy Weston homes... as police arrived, they could hardly do anything beyond trying to come to terms with the fact that they were severely outnumbered by already-violent groups of youth.

What they did do was continue to call in reinforcements. By the time the police presence at the weathered, 150-year-old educational institute in the quiet historic neighbourhood was sufficient to start convincing those duking it out that it was a good time to run, literally every police unit who was on duty in the whole of 31 Division was pulling into the tree-lined streets filled with all these home sweet homes.

Again, to be clear, 31 Division is the Toronto Police Service's region for operations in the area from Steeles in the north to Lawrence W in the south, and from the Humber River to the west to halfway between Keele and Dufferin on the east.

31 Division includes every infamous Jane St intersection from Jane & Steeles to Jane & Finch, and so on, all the way down to Jane & Lawrence. 31 Division includes Driftwood Ave, final resting place of many a drug dealer and drug dealer's arbitrary victim alike. Home to the highest concentration of criminal gangs in the country, 31 Division reaches far west down Finch towards Islington, approaching the area known as Rexdale, well-established as a severely troubled community in its own right.

Despite the fact that 31 Division is meant to be monitoring, serving, protecting and so on through all of these hotspots, every single on-duty police unit was sitting up my quiet street in my idyllic neighbourhood trying to scare a bunch of violent thugs enough to not have to actually deal with trying to fight and arrest them all.

While I most definitely understand and relate to the passion for historical preservation, I think that it must inherently go hand-in-hand with developing the present into the future, or everything will just fall apart. The community with its hearts in early 1900s must learn to be a part of the community trying to struggle through the 21st century, and vice versa.

If the Somali, Asian, African-Canadian, Jamaican, Arab and many other groups who all struggle to make ends meet every day at Weston Rd stores (in an area with so much more competition than customers that the dollar stores are beat out by the appearance of 99, 98, 96 and recently even 88 (!) cent stores) would at least pop briefly into the minds of those people jumping into their cars three blocks east to zoom off to their comparatively-overpriced big-box competitors, then maybe storefront turnover in the area wouldn't be more frequent than my haircuts and the economy in the area could once again be something people were willing to discuss without alcohol alongside.

Just maybe, a few people bothering to stroll down to the downtown heart of the area they insist they're so hopelessly enamoured with would wind up with a few more moneyed customers realizing that they can buy many equivalent goods at a significant fraction of the corporate chain price, and actually injecting a little bit of their wealth and comfort in life into the problem-riddled surroundings and people that they've been trying so hard to prevent themselves from encountering for fear of being robbed.

Then - again, just saying maybe here - some of these stores might stay open long enough with the same owners and management that they actually get to know their regular customers, not only encouraging repeat business but building genuine connections between people and between otherwise disparate segments of the Weston community.

It sure would be a lot easier to get the majority population of the area that is based around Weston Rd to care about something like Blue22 if they actually saw a good segment of their customer base coming from "Weston Village" in the first place... begging the question, how many people are genuinely concerned about access to Poon's fried noodles, and how many are just annoyed that the loud trains will decrease their property values?

It would also be a lot easier to get the middle-class minority population engaged in the most serious issues facing the area such as gang gun violence and crushing poverty if they were more integrated into the whole community, and not just left to hide themselves in safe-seeming areas and ramble to one another about what the train station looked like in the old days.

I think building such connections across conventional socio-cliques is important in any such situation, and absolutely vital at this late stage in what is seeming increasingly like Weston's final act.

Thankfully, there is a fair segment of the community who is already aware of these realities, and their work has spawned a number of positive approaches to the different issues at hand.

The Weston Area Emergency Support (WAES) Food Bank is often faced with shortages that outdo the larger but also perpetually-struggling Daily Bread Food Bank, but it is nonetheless supported by donations and volunteer work from different members of the community, and the service it provides is accessed by people from a range of demographics, some only in one difficult moment and others over the course of a time of prolonged instability and problems in their life.

The WAES Food Bank is open Sept - June and food distribution takes place Tuesdays and Fridays between 9:30 a.m. and 12:00 noon. No distributions take place during the first week of each month, and information about WAES can be acquired directly from them at (416) 247-3737.

WAES donations are collected at area churches and then taken to the Frontlines office for sorting prior to the twice-a-week distributions based out of Frontlines' 1844 Weston Rd location.

Which brings us to Frontlines. Operating since 1987, Frontlines is exactly the sort of organization people are referring to when they vaguely discuss "at-risk youth" requiring "social, employment and community support programs."

I really must say that Frontlines is a group that is worthy of any donation of funds or volunteer hours that you might be able to contribute, and the impact of what they do reverberates through not only the individuals they work worth and their families, but their friends, their social networks, their neighbourhoods, their local communities, their regional communities, their ethnic communities and people of all stripes across the entire city.

This is because what happens in Weston's ghetto, North York's ghetto, Etobicoke's ghetto and other such neighbourhoods around the city has a real, tangible impact on areas of the city that are really pretty far removed, both geographically and demographically, a lesson that was made most severely clear by the random shooting death of Jane Creba on Boxing Day in 2005.

The anti-poverty and anti-crime initiatives like WAES and Frontlines, along with youth employment services and youth arts programs, are all working hard to bring a little more positivity into the lives of people who feel so much anger and fear in their daily lives and see so little in the way of alternatives and options that they commit themselves to destructive and sociopathic behaviour.

Another group working to promote cultural and community development in the area is UrbanArts, who provide after-school arts programs for youth and coordinate workshops, events, murals and other artistic opportunities.

Now, it's absolutely crucial that the rest of Weston wake up from its two-century sleep, take a hard look at everything that's going on lately, and figure out what positive actions might make sense to start trying to resist, counteract and repair the damage done to the community, surrounding area and city at large by letting these issues to fester unaddressed.

This is obvious to many people in the community already, but many also remain in either sad or willful denial of it, and prolonged inaction in the face of this is what has allowed Weston to reach this current position, where all the businesses seem to be failing and the government wants to just split the whole thing in two and forget about it.

Certainly, no one is under any moral obligations to invest all of their personal savings and spare time into ensuring that Weston stays alive as an independent community, which would essentially mean propping it up somewhat artificially (although, if I understand my economics properly, the hope would be that this would be temporary and act as a kick-start).

However, Weston's current trajectory is definitely not along a path that winds up with it back to the days of booming local business, and unless exactly that kind of effort is put in right now, it's doubtful that Weston will be anything but a name by the time that third century rolls around. The fate of Weston Village now remains in the hands of the members of the community, and though some of them work very hard on these issues, most are simply letting it all happen.

But this isn't all just about soliciting handouts from those who own the huge, 150-year-old homes to those who hope desperately not to be thrown out of an infested apartment they can't afford to pay for. Encouraging more stability and permanence in Weston's businesses, developing strong social connections and using regular and fair exchanges of money for goods and services would help reinforce a more solid sense of community along with the economic foundation on which it sits. The prices are actually pretty much always better in Weston - so why do so many people drive to Crossroads instead of walk to Weston?

A simple conscious effort to overcome advertising campaigns and instead choose local independents would help those businesses maintain their footholds in the face of competitive advances from chain stores, which is a vital part of maintaining this whole Weston Village thing as anything with any actual meaning.

If Weston Village shifted so that the independent businesses closed up and were replaced entirely by franchises (surrounded by historic plaques), the whole of the area would be nothing more than a plastic imitation of its history.

I really do suggest you make the trip to Weston, especially if your interest in the area comes out of a general interest in urban life, character and history. This is something I recommend to people who I know are specifically very involved in municipal issues yet tend to keep themselves confined to the downtown core. Life in the rest of the city is definitely a lot more than dwellings and convenience stores, though it may not always be apparent if you don't look under the surface.

Anyone can peruse the historical society's website, but in order to get a look at what remains of the real Weston, and see how the entire community is being reshaped by the daily actions of every member of it, your only option is to visit in person. Weston's 21st century story isn't one that's told too widely outside of the area, occasional police pursuits aside.

I encourage you to experience Weston's past and present yourself, rather than just read a fictional letter about it in a musty historical society office sometime in the future.

It may not seem like a whole heck of a lot, but Weston is a living part of a past that is no longer included in many Torontonian's lives... and one day, when the city consists of nothing but post-modern twisted metal and glowing things, you may find yourself wishing you could actually take a walk down the type of tree-lined neighbourhood streets that most people nowadays only really see in Hollywood films. So, even if it's not where you call home, Weston is a place worth spending some time in.

For further information on local businesses and organizations, you can consult the Weston Community Directory of both commercial and non-profit groups.

Photos by Chris Orbz, with the exception of Weston Credit Jewelers by Dave Till.