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  #21  
Old Posted Mar 15, 2023, 1:10 PM
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Originally Posted by kwoldtimer View Post
The range and number of entertainment options is a huge perk.
Yesterday I met this guy from a new business partner who came over from London. He originates from Scotland but lives in London. I mentioned that if I were in London for two weeks I wouldn't even know where to start with all the things I'd want to see and do.

He is over here for a total of five weeks with two in Toronto and the other three in LA, SD and then BOS.

He was asking me for food recommendations. He already went to Hy's Steakhouse and a fancy sushi joint with his other British colleagues. And yesterday our small team took him to Kelly's Landing. I said since you're on John St. at the Marriott, walk 10 minutes west to Spadina and go for top notch Chinese.

Then he brought up sports. He loves soccer, cricket, rugby and tennis. So we talked that for a while and he would have checked out TFC but the schedule doesn't allow so he will check out either the Galaxy, LAFC or the NE Revs. But, he said he has to check out the Leafs or Raptors. They just so happened to be playing TUE/WED/THU with the Leafs in the middle. I told him just pay the $200 for the Leafs and $100 for the Raps on Stubhub or you're going to regret it! You're not paying for your flights, accomodation or food for 5 weeks. Don't cheap out!

Lots to do, but it ain't cheap!
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  #22  
Old Posted Mar 15, 2023, 1:12 PM
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Originally Posted by Arrdeeharharharbour View Post
I get a kick out of taking my boat when going out to dinner. In Halifax I can dock pretty much directly in front of or very close to a number of downtown waterfront restaurants. My out of town guests love it. And it's free parking!...as long as one doesn't stay past 11pm.
This is what I'd do if I had a proper boat and not just an inflatable with electric motor. Different docking spots along the Mississauga, Oakville and Burlington shorelines. Then up north around Muskoka or along the Trent Severn Waterway.
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  #23  
Old Posted Mar 15, 2023, 1:38 PM
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Originally Posted by Acajack View Post
I'd disagree that Gatineau's water quality is terrible. It's perfectly fine and there is no tangible difference with Ottawa's. Boil water advisories are frequent but are almost always preventive and due to them being worry-warts about anything happening.

Yes we have water main breaks sometimes just like any other city with thousands of km of older pipes.

The main impact of not having water meters I already acknowledged, which is that it leads to lots of waste.

We also have lawn watering restrictions in the summer which cities like Ottawa do not have because the meters temper the enthusiasm of water wasters.
Terrible might have been too strong of a word, but questionable might not be. The frequent boil water advisories might be the City being overly cautious, but it does indicate serious investments are needed.

What Gatineau does particularly well is garbage and recycling. Limiting the amount of garbage households can throw out, mandatory composting, multiple recycling centres accessible to the population for things that are not eligible for curb-side pickup. For environmentally conscious people, that's definitely a perk.
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  #24  
Old Posted Mar 15, 2023, 1:45 PM
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What Hamilton does well:

- large waterfront park on Lake Ontario with continuous trail
- urban amenities and a "city" feel while still being accessible to the GTA and it's benefits and without Toronto's costs
- access to conservation areas within a 30 minute drive. The escarpment is an amazing amenity which is full of awesome parks and viewpoints;
- Royal Botanical Gardens;
- Hamilton has a greenhouse in Gage Park where they grow a ton of annuals every year and plant them in road medians across the city every summer, it looks great;
-excellent road network and strong bus network makes getting around the city quite easy for a city of half a million;
- Hamilton has great cycling infrastructure for a midsized city;

what it does poorly:
- road maintenance - like, really, really terrible;
- general upkeep of the public realm - the city is full of trash, streets are not swept particularly often, etc. This is compounded by poor maintenance mentioned above;
- I find the water while not unsafe, to be quite hard and not particularly high quality;
- the city can be quite ugly in many areas.
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  #25  
Old Posted Mar 15, 2023, 1:50 PM
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Originally Posted by J.OT13 View Post
Terrible might have been too strong of a word, but questionable might not be. The frequent boil water advisories might be the City being overly cautious, but it does indicate serious investments are needed.

What Gatineau does particularly well is garbage and recycling. Limiting the amount of garbage households can throw out, mandatory composting, multiple recycling centres accessible to the population for things that are not eligible for curb-side pickup. For environmentally conscious people, that's definitely a perk.
Quebec has imposed on all its municipalities an objective of reducing by 60% the total waste sent to landfills. So they need to work towards these goals.

Also Gatineau is not fussy about recyclables and so you don't need to rinse and sort here. Just dump everything in the big bin.

In all honesty it is not perfect and there is still a long way to go but it does get people on board if it's simple. In other municipalities where they are sticklers about recyclables, my sense is that this discourages a lot of people from taking part and they just dump everything in the garbage.
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  #26  
Old Posted Mar 15, 2023, 2:23 PM
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Hm gorgeous setting, hot sunny summers, mild -2C snowfalls, basically every form of outdoor recreation there is available year round and close by including world class fishing within city limits, the airport, regional college main campus, relatively low taxes, and really nice people.
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  #27  
Old Posted Mar 15, 2023, 2:58 PM
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Originally Posted by flar View Post
Chatham and Windsor are probably the most backward places in Canada. A few years ago, Chatham discussed introducing a tree cutting bylaw, and promptly thousands of acres of precious Carolinian forest were bulldozed by farmers trying get a few more bushels of beans. Deforestation is now at over 97% in both Essex and Kent.

The perks are, ironically, Point Pelee and Rondeau, as well as Lakes Erie and St. Clair

My taxes are very low, but you're on your own for everything. I don't even have garbage pickup or recycling
I agree completely. I even remember not that long ago, the mayor of Windsor was petitioning Doug Ford’s government to remove the ANSI/PSW designations from the South Cameron Woodlot and Tallgrass/Ojibway Prairie areas so they could fill those areas in with more detached homes. Fortunately, even the current government believes that this is a very stupid idea, but this sentiment is still maintained by the city of Windsor to this day. Actually making environmental and conservation considerations during development and planning is a relatively new thing to Windsor, but they’re slowly starting to understand. It’s taken the federal government working toward a National Urban Park as well as re-naturalization around the Herb Gray Parkway/Gordie Howe Bridge to finally change the discussion.

Chatham, meanwhile, has so little naturalized space left that they have a massive crow problem, as they prefer non-naturalized areas (agriculture and urban areas provide lots of food). Their solution? Try to kill all the crows year after year, instead of treating the root of the problem and re-naturalizing some areas.

Both Windsor and Chatham (as well as Essex/Kent) just cut everything down or pave everything over and let people build homes right next to the water’s edge on every little creek and river. Yet the governments wonder why everything floods when it rains.
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  #28  
Old Posted Mar 15, 2023, 3:03 PM
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Originally Posted by flar View Post
A few years ago, Chatham discussed introducing a tree cutting bylaw, and promptly thousands of acres of precious Carolinian forest were bulldozed by farmers trying get a few more bushels of beans.
Its my understanding that Ontario actually has provincial legislation that prohibits municipal bylaws from restricting any commercial agricultural activity. There was a kerfluffle in Ottawa recently about deforestation of farmland and the city said they can't do anything because farms are exempt from the tax cutting bylaw, and have to be because of this provincial law.
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  #29  
Old Posted Mar 15, 2023, 3:06 PM
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Do apartment listings in Kingston still refer to "PUC" being included or not included? You need to learn what that means when you're looking to rent a place in the city.
Yep, still quite common. Even though the entity is know called "Utilities Kingston" instead of the PUC.
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  #30  
Old Posted Mar 15, 2023, 6:24 PM
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Originally Posted by 1overcosc View Post
Its my understanding that Ontario actually has provincial legislation that prohibits municipal bylaws from restricting any commercial agricultural activity. There was a kerfluffle in Ottawa recently about deforestation of farmland and the city said they can't do anything because farms are exempt from the tax cutting bylaw, and have to be because of this provincial law.


Woodlots can be protected, Chatham-Kent is still looking at this, there was recently a call for public input and citizens are overwhelmingly (>80%) in favour of a protecting the remaining forest. But, agriculture is a $4 billion dollar industry in Essex-Kent...
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  #31  
Old Posted Mar 15, 2023, 6:26 PM
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Yep, still quite common. Even though the entity is know called "Utilities Kingston" instead of the PUC.
Showing my age.
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  #32  
Old Posted Mar 15, 2023, 7:18 PM
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In the Lower Mainland.............no mosquitos!
Surrey has a lot of dog parks and many are quite large.
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  #33  
Old Posted Mar 15, 2023, 8:56 PM
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Originally Posted by ericmacm View Post
London has really great naturalized spaces and a very wide-reaching and highly connected multi-use pathway system that runs through the Thames River. It’s definitely not as green or as naturalized as some other cities in the country, but no matter where you are in London, the Thames River or some offshoot creek or forested area is located nearby, and there’s a good chance it is connected to the Thames Valley Parkway path system.

I lived in Windsor for 6 years and Chatham for 1 year, prior to moving to London. Both have a terrifying lack of naturalized green space throughout their urban areas and you can very easily feel the effect that it has on you. I will never take good naturalized green space for granted ever again after living in both of those places. The fact that many SW Ontario cities (and SW Ontario as a whole) have long neglected the need for naturalized areas is a tragedy, in my opinion.
It helps that London has three branches of a river running through it, each of them with a wide floodplain where development can't occur anyway and the only sensible thing to build is a trail. The one tiny river that Windsor has is mostly naturalized (the Little River on the east side of town). Windsor has a very good and well-maintained parks system. We will have one of the few national urban parks in the country within the next few years.
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  #34  
Old Posted Mar 15, 2023, 9:19 PM
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Dude Chillin’ Park. Lots of bum fights to watch. One of the worst beatings I saw was when this huge lady beat the hell out of a small drunk guy who could barely stand. She punched him in the face around 20 times, even while he was on the ground passed out. He came to a couple minutes later and wandered off somewhere.
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  #35  
Old Posted Mar 16, 2023, 2:34 PM
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Another for Kingston - intercity transit connections. We have frequent train and bus connections to Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal. Bus service is much better after Ford deregulated the market and Greyhound went under - there's multiple providers, a lot more trip options (especially to Ottawa where back in the Greyhound era we used to have only 1 bus a day on weekdays) and many of the new companies have added downtown stops whereas before they all stopped at the bus terminal in the industrial northern area by the highway.

This is unique for a Canadian city but globally pretty normal.
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  #36  
Old Posted Mar 16, 2023, 2:37 PM
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Originally Posted by 1overcosc View Post
Another for Kingston - intercity transit connections. We have frequent train and bus connections to Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal. Bus service is much better after Ford deregulated the market and Greyhound went under - there's multiple providers, a lot more trip options (especially to Ottawa where back in the Greyhound era we used to have only 1 bus a day on weekdays) and many of the new companies have added downtown stops whereas before they all stopped at the bus terminal in the industrial northern area by the highway.

This is unique for a Canadian city but globally pretty normal.
Megabus is increasing frequencies in May on its routes in between Ottawa, Montreal, Kingston, Toronto, London, and Niagara Falls, FYI. Multiple trips per day at increased frequencies.

Combine that with pretty consistent VIA service and Kingston is indeed in a good spot.
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  #37  
Old Posted Mar 16, 2023, 3:43 PM
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Originally Posted by J.OT13 View Post
Terrible might have been too strong of a word, but questionable might not be. The frequent boil water advisories might be the City being overly cautious, but it does indicate serious investments are needed.
To be honest, I remember 2 or 3 boil water advisories in the last 16 years in my area of Aylmer (last one was quite recently).

They seem to be more common in Hull and Gatineau sectors.
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  #38  
Old Posted Mar 16, 2023, 5:31 PM
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One of the perks of Niagara is some of the most fertile soil in all of Canada so in the summer the abundance of locally grown fresh fruits (and vegetables), and 100 wineries to choose from. At least 1/4 of them range from good to great quality
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  #39  
Old Posted Mar 16, 2023, 7:08 PM
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For Vancouver, it's the number of neighbourhood parks absolutely everywhere. I never really appreciated these parks until I moved to East Asia, and they became non-existent.
Another positive aspect of Vancouver are it's well defined and distinctive neighbourhoods and associated commercial amenities; which always seem to include "mom & pop" produce stores. One never really has to buy their fruit and vegetables in a supermarket in Vancouver.
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  #40  
Old Posted Mar 16, 2023, 7:36 PM
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One of the perks of Niagara is some of the most fertile soil in all of Canada so in the summer the abundance of locally grown fresh fruits (and vegetables), and 100 wineries to choose from. At least 1/4 of them range from good to great quality
Us Quebecers love your millions of peaches. Peaches for me.

Millions of peaches, peaches for free.
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