Virtual Beach, Toronto

I am writing about the situation of the Beach area in Toronto, Ontario. The area of Queen & Woodbine Sts. to Queen & Neville Park Avenue is called "the Beach". It extends down to Lake Ontario, where there is a Bay, Ashbridges Bay, and over the past five years, the merchant zone along Queen Street East have taken a turn for the worst. Or have they?

Businesses come and go naturally due to economic inflation and deflation, but the beach now has more coffee shops, bars/pubs, banks, medical/dental offices and drugstores than it needs. Without biases, I would like to question why this is happening because for good, or for bad, the Beach or the Beaches is not the same place that it used to be.

With money from the bank, coffee in your hand, a doctor nearby and a pub to go to at nighttime, the beach seems to be a good place to live. Services offered at these places is quick and convenient. But with a current increasing interest in environmental concerns on political, legal and emotional levels, the Beach is not standing up to its name.

Below Queen Street East is a stretch of boardwalk and a bike/rollerblade path to go on for 3 km. After that, the path is extended through the Gardiner to Harbourfront. This means that it is accessed by people living downtown, as well as people living in the Beach community.

Every season and every year, there is a community festival hosted by the Beach and the Beach Business Improvement Association, as well as other corporate sponsors and donors. These events bring in the masses to the Beach, who often choose to live in the area for its pleasant scenery and location—a city within a city is often the feeling you get living here— water, sand, parks, sun, pools, and then city, residential space, office space, business space. With the increase in population, it is expected that a community has to conform to the new needs of its inhabitants, but the issue is that businesses who have been around for ten or twenty years are shutting down due to the high inflation of rent. Prime locations mean prime pricing and this is completely draining the Beach of culture.

The business area of the Beach is now a virtual community, with consumers passing through the community to pick up a coffee, pick up their Prescriptions, pay their bank bills, pick up their groceries. "Pick up and pay" are words often found online, and the association is connected to words like, "fast, need, now, want, have, own, get, take".

Greed and need are taking over the artistic Beach which used to be a place where you could wander in and out of boutiques, restaurants with fine service, galleries, retail stores with unique pieces and at the same time, pay your bills, get your drugs, go out to the pub with friends and then walk home along the boardwalk with a feeling of satisfaction and also knowing that the community hardware store would be there the next time you walk by.

This form of development is simply not sustainable. The Beach has been experiencing an influx of vandalism, homelessness, and empty storefronts and is at risk. Let the internet be the internet and the Beach be the Beach. We are a society of get, take, now, want, have, own and time seems to be moving and shifting faster than the neurons in our brains. It is no wonder people are depressed in the winter months, when due to the cold temperatures at the Lake, all is left are some pubs and grocery stores. Virtual Communities can be places for speed and efficiency because that is the nature of the internet, but there needs to be a divide between that and a more passive form of entertainment. High tech meets low-tech; for a community to survive, these systems cannot overlap.

The BIA needs to honour the current businesses, not shut them down. Community members need to participate in decision-making at the Political Level. Rent needs to be decreased for businesses. The Beach life needs to be revived. Current community members need to share with new community members the culture and feeling of the Beach. Changes to the business community suggested to the Municipal Representative need to be monitored by a Sustainable Urban Development Advisory Committee. People need to be heard. The community voice is the voice of the Beach. To move forward, the Beach community needs to pull together and guard the long-standing traditions and cultural practices of the Beach for today's generation and generations to come.

-Bryn Ludlow, Beach community member

*can members of Virtual Communities please edit this content- I would like to send it in to the Toronto Star, or Beach Metro Newspaper.