Originally Posted by
chephy
A few weeks ago I walked through a neighbourhood of Toronto called Cabbagetown. <snip>I was completely amazed at how dingy, sad and run-down much of the area looked, how many homeless there are, how much garbage, and how many times I was approached by panhandlers and startled by crazies yelling things.
i know *exactly* what you're talking about. in the eighties my parents basically forbade me from going down to cabbagetown. they billed it as, basically, the harlem of canada. they wouldn't even drive through it. so, being a teen, of course i went. and was amazed at two things: 1. poverty. growing up white and middle class i'd never seen it before outside of tv. it was kind of a shock, especially since the canadian middle class likes to tell themselves the comfortable lie that urban poverty is a uniquely american problem. 2. no one killed me. or even threatened me. in fact, i came to the conclusion that what made middle class folks uncomfortable about cabbagetown was their self-realization of the disparity between them as wealthy outsiders and the local residents as some sort of threatening, faceless, incomprehensible brood.
anyway, since then i've lived in some 'bad' neighbourhoods, most notably 97st in edmonton aka 'boyle street', and i bike every day through calgary's vic park (rip. it's all condo construction now) and i have had pretty much zero problems.