Meet the Southies
Some think of south Guelph as urban sprawl. But others think of it as home. Ben Gelinas looks at how it's growing out of a subdivision and into a community.
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SOUTH GUELPH (Jun 23, 2007)
Residents of north Guelph, please don't shun the Frost family. Sure, they live in Clairfields, way south of the Stone Road wall many feel divides the Royal City in two.
But you should know Tony and Laura Frost once lived downtown. They, too, had nothing but disdain for the template townhomes and all those rows of look-alike Cape Cods built inches apart down there.
A tourist in Guelph for the first time, entering from Aberfoyle, might look around and think it's Brampton Part II.
The south end still has that new neighbourhood smell; the dust has yet to settle.
Tony and Lisa never thought they'd live in Clairfields, a several-hundred-home subdivision clustered on land off Gordon Street. The warren of tightly developed, new residential streets occupies what had been a single, rural, family farm. It offers scant visible evidence of its not-too-distant past.
It was the last place the Frosts looked when searching for a bigger home.
But here they are, four years later. It's Thursday and they are home from work after the routine Waterloo commute.
The Frost family takes its dinner to the backyard. It's nice to get out of the many-roomed two-storey on Hayward Crescent sometimes. Their two-year-old, Hayden, is chatty. He seems to love being outdoors.
The sky is clear. Robins have made a home in a cherry tree Tony planted to complement the tiny yard's extensive landscaping.
Their eldest son Ryan, 7, walks around with a skipping rope. The loop keeps catching on shrubbery, the swing set and patio furniture. He seems frustrated.
Chunks of sky are obscured by the blank backs of houses that loom in all directions. Every home has tiny windows in the back, presumably to keep neighbours from seeing too much, given everyone is yard-to-yard.
There is no alley, only a grid of fencing separating them. Tony says they rarely see anyone out back.
"I was really against moving here," Lisa says. "My perception of the Clairfields was that it was a bunch of cookie- cutter houses." No personality -- a subdivision, not a neighbourhood.
"I remember coming out here before any of this stuff was built," Tony says. "It looked just like a barren wasteland." The land was pushed flat. "It looked like a moonscape, and I thought: how could a community be here?"
It's hard to compare the Clairfields Drive-area to their old home turf on Waterloo Avenue, where every home has history.
The billowing green tops of trees overtake downtown Guelph's rooftops. Tony and Lisa cherished the space, weekend walks to the market, nights out at restaurants, mingling in the people mix -- Guelph has character.
But the family was growing. Kayla, now 5, was a newborn. Hayden wasn't here yet, but he was expected.
The Frosts needed a bigger house and the only place they could find one within their price range was far south of Stone Road, among the dirt lawns and adolescent trees of Clairfields.
Tony eats quickly. Soccer practice looms. He and Kayla are already in royal blue uniform.
"How was your day today, buddy?" Tony asks Ryan.
"Good. We did a lockdown today."
"What did you learn?" Tony asks.
"Stay near the windows?" the nine-year-old says.
"Stay away from the window," Lisa corrects him.
Kayla's quiet, concentrating on her share of homemade pizza. "Can you eat some veggies please, honey?" Lisa asks. "They'll give you energy while you're playing."
Ryan rises to take his empty plate to the kitchen. Hayden watches from his high chair. He'd rather recite new words he's learned than eat.
Ryan is in Grade 2 at John McCrae Public School, half a city away on Water Street.
"It's the French immersion centre for the south end," Lisa says.
Ryan takes the bus every morning, a 20-minute ride. He says he looks forward to it. It's time to socialize.
Lisa was home with Hayden and Kayla today.
"Tell daddy where we went," Lisa says.
Kayla forgets.
"It was that exciting?" Tony laughs.
"Remember," Lisa says. "You met a little girl and you guys were playing."
"Oh yeah, the library! The one what's near our house," Kayla says.
"I thought I saw new videos upstairs," Tony says.
A short walk away, next to the new library just off Clair Road, is a massive stretch of grey dirt. Soon it will be a commercial development.
"There aren't enough parks," Tony says. "Downtown has little quiet backwaters, if you will, where mom and dad can take the little ones."
Clairfields has Dragonfly Park by Bishop Macdonell Catholic School. But Tony and Lisa aren't about to let Ryan cross four lanes of bustling Clair Road traffic on his own to get there.
The south has grown so much faster than any other front that the city's shape has come to resemble a person.
It will likely grow longer legs over the next few years as Guelph's limits extend further south, into a treed section that is relatively untouched, save the golf course, senior's home and acres of lots off Victoria and Clair colonized by seemingly more affluent types. Their modest mansions lie along dead-end curls of roads with such names as Kilkenny Place and Serena Lane.
You could almost fit a Clairfields block on a Kilkenny lot.
The city has received 587 proposals for new dwellings in the south end in 2007. The majority are townhouses.
New development in the south end has, for the past few years, equalled the rate of development for the rest of the city.
When Karl Wettstein, councillor for Ward 6 in the south end, moved to Guelph from Regina in 1978, most of the infrastructure in his ward didn't exist.
"The south end at that time was Keats Crescent," he says.
That's now hard to imagine, with the Kortright-at-Gordon-area Keats entangled in a string of residential development that continues southeast and southwest for kilometres.
The look of the newer homes on the south end, the fledgling green spaces and constant development seem far removed from the aging beauty of downtown.
But does the south lack the core's character?
"I don't buy that," Wettstein says. Ward 6 is young. Give it time to mature."
"I can go downtown Guelph and I can run up and down the street and find homes that are cookie cutter," real estate board president Lyle McNair says.
They were all the same at first, he says. But as homes pass between owners, they evolve.
Tony expects 50 years from now, his street will look like Alma Street South.
Look at old pictures of the veterinary college, he says. The trees are shorter, the land around it sparse and developing.
"From Westminster Woods to Pine Ridge to this one, you get the same house. Ours is a Cape Cod, the same style as next door, essentially the same house. But when you look downtown, they're all the same," Tony says.
"The difference is this guy's got a maple tree, this guy's got some birches."
Solariums, porches, decay: modifications apparently beget character.
But for now, the south and north are esthetic solitudes.
Despite this, Wettstein says the south is not a city unto itself. It lacks the services. "We've got a library now and a grocery store and a nice drugstore. But all of that's been within the last year, year-and-a-half," he says.
Fire and police coverage, as well as parks and churches are lacking.
When those things come, the south will still be part of Guelph, he says. What they don't need is to be self-sufficient. No way. Downtown needs the traffic.
Tony spears a piece of lettuce and stuffs it in his mouth. They need to get to soccer, U5 -- a division for kids born five years ago or less. The league's practices and games unfold at pitches on the Centennial CVI grounds.
It's rare that Tony and Lisa have an occasion to go north of Stone Road. Usually it's because of soccer or the kids' school functions.
Tony stands and disappears into the house. Kayla follows. They jump in the family's hybrid vehicle -- their other one is a minivan -- and head up. Lisa, Hayden and Ryan will follow.
"The load on the school system in Guelph has been dominated by people in the south end for quite some period of time," McNair says. Just look at the size of Bishop Macdonell.
He expects a public high school to be built down south in the next five years.
The Frosts do everything in Guelph, save work.
Lisa is a researcher for the University of Waterloo; Tony maintains the website at Wilfrid Laurier.
They drive the hybrid instead of the minivan to work. It leaves a less obvious environmental footprint.
"The guy next door works in Peel," Tony says.
"And Chuck?" Lisa asks, of another neighbour.
"He goes to Kitchener," Tony says.
The Frosts live in Guelph because they prefer to.
Lisa grew up here.
Tony coaches kids from every corner of the city.
And as the south matures, the southside life grows on them.
The mix of mostly young families and people who buy to sell ensures plenty of friends for the kids and quiet nights.
Neighbourhood groups are becoming more active.
There are rummage sales and barbecues.
"It's definitely just a subdivision, but it is becoming more of a community," Tony says. "Things are changing."