Guest Columnist

Stouffville Free Press, for July 2013

You can love a town, but can you love a city?
-Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

We love to think of Whitchurch-Stouffville as small-town, Country Close to the City.
Recent local challenges suggest that our towns branding is no longer able to frame and provide
direction to some of our most pressing conversations, like library funding, transit, apartments,
downtown development, employment opportunities, housing density, sprawl, heritage, and
environment.
Twenty years ago the Towns Economic Development Advisory Committee proposed the motto:
Country Close to the City. The branding was a strategy to promote tourism, residential and
business opportunities. Since then commuter GO train service was added, we connected to the
big pipe for water and sewage, and over 8,000 residences were built. We already have
a population greater than some seventy-two Canadian cities.
One could argue that weve been here before. Media outlets in the U.S. have declared our
towns recently uncovered sixteenth century Huron-Wendat village the ancient New York City
of Canada, and the largest, most complex cosmopolitan community of its time.
Fast-forward to the 1880s: Stouffville saw up to thirty trains per day come to town because of
intensive forestry. We had a regular stage coach and a first-class hotel (now Pizza Pizza!) with
electric bells, hot-air, and hot-water heating, which could accommodate up to one-hundred
guests. After all the trees were cut and desertification set in, industry left. Though it is easy to
do, we never became a city.
When the Town of Whitchurch-Stouffville was created in 1971, two-thirds of the 11,000
amalgamated residents were rural. Today, however, they form a shrinking minority--in 2001:
50%; currently 33%; and in 2031: 20%. While a rural lifestyle continues to describe the estate
properties on the moraine, an overwhelming majority of us are now urban.
This shift is not represented by our ward boundaries, which were adjusted as recently as
January 1, 2010. The principle of representation by population was trumped by consideration of
rural residents, who continue to hold one-half of Council seats.
Political weighting toward the country while building one of the fastest growing
municipalities in Canada has blinded us on a number of issues, including the economic and
social benefits of robust library funding, or the friendliness, walkability and affordability
factors related to more compact, higher density housing. A country close to the city vision
assumes and requires multiple automobiles per family, and has kept us from aspiring to great
local transit service.
Our Towns Official Plan is guided by the vision of a genuinely rural lifestyle ... in a community
with ready access to urban amenities. For some, this communicates that we are a decent
bedroom community not too far from amenities in other communities. These factors make it
more difficult for our Economic Development Office to attract the knowledge-based industries
which they are targeting to this community.
But what about our country-side, the local farms, estate properties, and our hamlets? Without
a decidedly urban vision the town cannot possibly meet the growth targets set by the Region
and Province within the designated Phase Two development lands (60,800 residents by 2031).
Ironically, only a vibrant, compact urban vision can save our towns country-side from sprawl,
and our roadways from gridlock.
The motto of St. Catharines where I grew up would fit our current rural and urban mix well: the
Garden City. It inspires the tending of the garden as well as vibrant, urban community
building. Our changing demographic mix also gives opportunity for fresh vision, e.g., The City
of Stouffville: Canadas Global Village. It would capture the urban-rural mix, be rooted in the
cosmopolitan, Wendat Village history, and also inspire global, knowledge-based industries to be
a part of our vibrant community. These are but two ideas.
"Country close to the City?" Perhaps it's time to retire the current motto and become the "city"
that we can love (remember: smaller, friendly places like Stratford are cities). Hopefully the
Fall 2014 municipal election will be the opportunity for each of us to look back, forward, and
around us to understand the community we are, and re-imagine the community we would love
to become.
-Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, Stouffville