Honest Ode To Ramsay
About a week ago I received an email from some cool folks in Toronto, looking to move back to Calgary after many years away. Sounds like they're looking at Ramsay as a possible staging ground for their return to this city, with the intention of avoiding suburbia and hopefully finding something similar to their super neighbourhood in Toronto.
Hi Ashley,
I came across the post about the rendering plant on your blog when I
was researching the community of Ramsay.
My name is [name removed]. I'm an ex-pat Calgarian now living in
Toronto with my wife, and our 14 month old daughter.
I thought I'd write you to ask your thoughts on raising a family in
Ramsay. Seems from your blog that it's a nice place to be.
We are considering returning to Calgary after five years in Toronto,
but the thought of living in suburbia is, well... unthinkable. We
have really gotten used to the community spirit of living in a dense
residential environment, especially in our neighbourhood of
[inner-urban community in Toronto near Lawrence and Eglinton],
which is full of young, smart, creative people, who are
raising families. We're in an amazing mom's group, there are several
playschool co-op centres, parks, cafes... It's the kind of
neighbourhood where you go for a walk and keep bumping into people
you know.
So I'm trying to figure out where we would live if we come back to
Calgary. I grew up in [near-northeast middle-class community in Calgary]
so I know the loneliness of the
suburban teenager... I've driven through Ramsay on my last few
visits home and got the feeling that it's one of the only
neighbourhoods in Calgary that compares to what we have here in
Toronto. I like the look of the creative folks roaming the streets,
the pretty streets, and the cute houses that give the place a very
inviting feeling. We would consider living there.
So, if you have a second, maybe you could tell me about Ramsay and
what the community offers to young families. Are there good
preschools? Are the inhabitants progressive, creative people? And
do you know if the city is planning any development projects in the
area that might compromise the neighbourhood? Do you get used to the
smell?
Thanks, glad I found your blog.
While I complain periodically about the local drug scene (found another crack pipe by the newspaper box across the street yesterday), and the folks dragging all their worldly possessions up and down the sidewalk in front of our house (periodically peeing on my neighbours' steps, true enough), and it's accurate to say that the smell of the Liliydale factory is, some days, pretty gross, I have a lot of good things to say about Ramsay too. So I figured I'd post my reply to these fine people, for the rest of you Canadians looking at the Alberta economy with wistful longing. To pique your interest, likesay. Calgary may well be a city of 990,000 that sprawls over the geographic area of Delhi (a city of 14 million), and a large portion of the population does reside in the sprawl of blandified pink suburbia chewing up the prairie in every direction. But there are some pockets of urban living here, too, and certainly Ramsay's one such example.
So here's my reply, which became a sort of Ode to Ramsay, Calgary's wrong-side-of-the-tracks hidden gem community. Read on:
Hey there. We lived in Toronto for a long time - at Gerrard & Broadview, and on Roncesvalles, and my husband put in time on Vaughan Road for a while, way back. I'm a reluctant returnee-to-Calgary after growing up here (Bonavista - I know what you mean about the lonely suburban teenagerdom) and fleeing for university. I built my adult life in Ontario and overseas, and was based in Toronto for the rest of my life, so I thought. Like, I was NEVER coming back to Calgary. Somehow, it happened anyway.
I bought in Ramsay for a couple of reasons. I'm a housing planner, but you don't need any special training to look at a map of Calgary to see that all the inner city housing is either waaaay out of anyone's sane range (Kensington & Mission), completely condo-ridden and full of drunk kids (the Beltline), the eyries of Mount Royal, or... Inglewood/Ramsay. Even this area is getting a bit crazy price-wise now, but we bought in two years ago just before things went totally insane. If you are coming from Toronto you'll be satisfied with the size of houses on the market for <$300K than the new Calgarians who need 2000 sq. ft. pink McMansions in order to feel at peace with the world - those people drive through here and see a slum, I think. But then, they can have their homogenized suburbs as far as I'm concerned, too. So I suppose we're even?
"The Barns" of 18th Ave SE
While Ramsay may well have been a vacant ghetto fifteen years ago when we were growing up in Calgary, things have changed a lot since then. When I was looking to buy I knew this area would be a sound investment, I could walk to work (my job was downtown, then), and most importantly, I could afford a down payment here. Also, my dad lives in Douglasdale (the DEEP south), so the Deerfoot corridor is well-known to me and allows us quick access to areas of the city where I grew up, where I can navigate blindfolded. Plus my dad can easily drop by on his way home from work. And my brother ended up buying the house three doors down from us a few months after we moved here, so overall it's turned out to be a great location for us in terms of proximity to family.
Sloaner and Uncle Jah (aka Brother John) on point.
Ramsay is a bit down-at-heel in comparison to Inglewood next door; Ramsay's houses are of slightly lower quality, the commercial development isn't cohesive, you hear stories about drug busts - or see them taking place down the road (just once so far, but you never forget your first real-life SWAT team sighting). But this area is very definitely still in transition. Our neighbours are a bus driver, a carpenter, an electrician, house cleaners, etc. and all fine people, regular folks. However, Ramsay also pulls the creative folks to an extent - people who work at Critical Mass, One Yellow Rabbits, the puppeteers of Green Fools and Old Trouts and CAOS, my husband is a writer and I'm a photographer, there are massage therapists and painters and so on. I'm sure there are creatively-minded people living everywhere in Calgary, but because Ramsay is so raw, it's easier to uncover the public dribbles of obvious effort spilling over the landscape. As one of the oldest areas of Calgary, Ramsay has fewer controls on what colour you can paint your house and people are happy to hang public sculptures on their garage frames for everyone to enjoy as they rumble up the back alleys. There are prayer flags, and people trying their hand at haphazard self-taught home renovations, and weird cars, and violently snarly dogs running along (thankfully solid) fences, dogs that would never last in a more upscale neighbourhood.
There's no nearby large-scale grocery store, which is a big pain in the ass - but the Safeway in Mission is a short drive or a long walk, or for better selection we go across Deerfoot to the Forest Lawn Co-op. Hope springs eternal that someone will finally put a proper grocery in somewhere in Inglewood so we can shop locally, but a big condo project (that might have shifted things in that direction, services-wise, in Inglewood) just fell through due to water table issues, so for now the antiques stores and ridiculously-upscale furnitureplaces hold sway down 9th Ave there and we still have to drive to get proper groceries. So there are good things about Ramsay, but there are also things I'm looking forward to, when it gentrifies a bit more.
Thrown aside as "garbage", this perfectly good crack pipe. Some people, y'know?
As I'm typing this I realize that while I can give you a good overview of the community, I should mention that we work away from Calgary for about a third of the year, every year, in short bursts of two weeks to two months, all year round. Due to these kinds of schedule disruptions we haven't fully dug in to the neighbourhood, and I think we aren't as invested as we probably could, or perhaps should, be. I think this will change for us when Turner starts the writing portion of his current book (www.thegeographyofhope.com) - right now we're still in research mode. In the fall he'll start writing and we'll be here for a good long seven-month stretch, and I think that'll change things for us here in that respect. In theory we're very community oriented and I know what you mean about wanting those Toronto-type things in Calgary, but aside from a few community meetings and kids' birthday parties, we haven't really gotten properly involved, so I'm speaking mainly from our everyday experiences here, and what I hear from the other people we know in the area -- and from all this, Ramsay is known to be a fairly cohesive community and I don't dispute that claim, particularly for Calgary. Even having been around and out in the yard for the last month I've met tons of people our age new to the community, seeking just what you and I are: an established neighbourhood in the city's core. Certainly Ramsay has that going for it, in spades.
Looking north up Bellevue Avenue, the ridge of Renfrew visible in the distance.
I don't think I need to warn you that there is nowhere in Calgary that functions like a Toronto neighbourhood except perhaps Kensington, especially with the real estate market being so insane for the last few years and people flipping and moving and flipping and moving, not being grounded in one place. But there's also the car love of Calgary and the empty downtown (this latter is changing, but slowly). So I would be concerned that your abiding satisfaction and pleasure in your current Toronto community which may not be wholly replicable here. If you move back to Calgary you obviously have to be prepared to try to find the things that Calgary has, specifically, to offer, and exploit those aspects of life here, mercilessly. (I.e. suck it up and get a cowboy hat, etc.) Otherwise you'll go nuts missing Toronto and castigating Calgary for being so... not Toronto. In so many ways.
Historic Ramsay school (Calgary's oldest) was recently saved from Calgary's land-grabby and demolition-happy City Council by parents who locked themselves to the building's doors and protested day and night. ...Score one for the good guys.
However, having said all that - you will certainly be able to afford something in Ramsay before the other inner city areas, and there's a great deal to recommend this community. The truly spectacular Crossroads Market (a farmer's market/antiques garage sale) is right here, open every Friday, Saturday and Sunday - way better than St. Lawrence Market, you slalom Hutterite and Punjabi farmers on your way in to buy just-arrived Quebec maple syrup from the honey-selling guy in the overalls, Ukrainian ladies are hawking holipche and perogies out of coolers next to the German deli which is across from the Calgarian/Guatemalan butcher (best lamb in the city)... there's also an awesome cheese store that I slavishly worship, having become addicted to their cave-aged gruyere; upstairs is ArtSpace, and the new headquarters of the world-famous Loose Moose Theatre (originators of Theatresports). Lindsay Park sports complex (the "Talisman Centre" now) is very close by. There are parks, and family-run corner stores. People are building amazing R2000 and funky houses. The local school has a very committed parent network and community connection, and the changeable sign out front of the school regularly regales drivers with cute messages; last week it was "Welcome to Ramsay: Be Nice!". However, if you would rather send your kids somewhere else, Ramsay kids do qualify to attend Earl Grey, the elementary school in Mount Royal. There's a great daycare at the Alex Centre on 9th Ave that I just toured the other day, and I put Sloane on the waiting list so she can enter in September (care starts at 19 mo.) -- high ceilings, Waldorf-based, huge playground, etc., everything I remember from my wee years elsewhere. There is a tech-and-creative corridor developing along 12th Ave where Avenue and Up! magazines are based, media companies, tech people, a violin maker, etc. are in place and becoming fixtures. The zoo is just over the river from Inglewood, walking distance. The river pathway system is amazing, and you can watch the (deafening) fireworks from atop Scotsman Hill during Stampede with a huge gaggle of everyone else from the community, and people who drive in from elsewhere in Calgary, besides.
Looking south along the bluffs of Scotsman's Hill, the edge of Stampede Park visible in the bottom right of the photo.
...I'll mention the trains because they're a reality of the neighbourhood -- I love the trains, the sound of them in the evening. After Sloane was born last year we took our bedframe out of the room so we'd be closer to the basket height for nighttime feedings, and we could feel the vague-but-discernable rumble of the shunting trains through the futon mattress late at night. There are five ways to get "out" of Ramsay into the surrounding city and this is a blessing because for all the romance of their soundscape, the trains can be a crick in the bum in terms of blocking off various main arteries in and out of the community at inconvenient (and unpredictable) times of day. But I think that if you buy a house in the north end of Ramsay, the trains are a great deal louder, day in and day out, than they are in this area (Spiller Road and Scotsman's Hill). There are tradeoffs either way - that area is closer to the shops of Inglewood. You'll have to drive around and see what you prefer.
[photo of "train blocking traffic and people having temper tantrums in their cars": coming soon]
Typical scene at the corner of Portland and 12th/11th, kitty-corner to the Shamrock.
If you're in any way gardening-inclined, this neighbourhood has some of the best soil in the city, and Inglewood/Ramsay has a microclimate due to the Elbow-Bow confluence, which often makes it anywhere from 1 to 5 degrees warmer here than in other areas of town. There're tennis courts up the hill, and an old-timey outdoor covered rink where guys play shinny on Saturdays in the wintertime. And in the city's official plan, the Lilydale plant is slated to be replaced by a Ctrain station in 2012 or 2015 or something, so in any case there's going to be public light rail transit very close by in the foreseeable-though-not-immediate future. In the meantime we have lots of great bus routes that run through the community, including two routes called the Inner City Loop that circle in opposite directions, bringing people to Erlton station or to downtown -- very, very convenient for going down to Stephen Avenue for dinner if you don't want to drive and have enough pluck to deny yourself the $7 cab ride. (After growing up down south, where it was $38-45 to come home by cab from the bar, $7 seems ridiculously affordable and Ill admit that we often cave in to calling a taxi.)
The Alberta Grocery - where you can get, uh, groceries and videos, and a wide selection of lottery tickets. Very typical prairie-style general store facade (original).
So while in some respects I urge you to abandon all hope ye people moving from Toronto who enter here (Calgary, and Alberta in general) , there's certainly a lot to recommend this area and Ramsay in particular. Just make the best possible decision given your needs and proclivities and financial situation, and then throw yourself headlong into community life wherever you settle, and hope for the best.
In any case, let us know when you move back and we'll have you over to dinner on our new back deck. Sloane
is only a month younger than your daughter - she'll show her the trampoline.
All the best, A
Categories: Calgary | City Planning | House