Everything seems to have come together for me to relocate to Toronto by early September.
There will be much to do, winding down life in Ottawa, sorting out the move, finding somewhere new to live, and applying to doctoral programs for the fall of 2012. I am still not sure if I actually want to do a doctorate, but the only cost associated with applying is work and a modest amount of money. It seems like a good idea to give myself another option for a year from now.
Does anybody know of any good housing options in Toronto available for September? A place of my own is one possibility. Cool roommates would be another, as it would make sense to save some pennies for potential future tuition payments.
Congratulations.
I find the various communities in Toronto quite interesting.
I’m very glad to hear this.
I am looking for:
(a) a bachelor’s apartment OR
(b) a one bedroom apartment OR
(c) a room in a house or apartment with good roommates
I want it to be:
(a) in an interesting part of town
(b) less than $1100 per month including utilities, ideally much less
(c) ideally, close to the western portion of the Yonge-Spadina subway line
(d) definitely within a few minutes walk of a subway station
Every weekday, I will need to take the subway to Downsview and then catch a bus a few more kilometres.
I am so happy to hear that your dream has come true for the next year or more. Toronto is such an interesting city and a new environment for you. You also have some good friends and family there.
I’m glad you’re moving forward Milan, but I’ll be sorry to see you go.
How Toronto Lost Its Groove
And why the rest of Canada should resist the temptation to cheer
The city of toronto is stumbling toward the end of 2011 mired in a deep civic funk. Mayor Rob Ford, a renegade small-c conservative from the suburban ward of Etobicoke North, bulldozed his way to victory a year ago on a simplistic pledge to slash municipal waste. His mantra: “Stop the gravy train.” While he has yet to identify instances of reckless spending, he has ordered city officials to extract almost $800 million from Toronto’s $9-billion operating budget, the sixth-largest public purse in Canada. This punishing and potentially ruinous process may entail shuttering libraries, firing police officers, and scaling back everything from snow removal to grass cutting to transit. Municipal services — such as public housing, environmental advocacy, and even zoos — that don’t conform to the mayor’s narrow vision of local government may be eliminated, privatized, or significantly reduced.
Toronto’s woes, however, go well beyond the mayor’s fiscal populism. The Greater Toronto Area — a 7,100-square-kilometre expanse of 5.5 million residents who live in a band of municipalities extending from Burlington to Oshawa to Newmarket — finds itself increasingly crippled by some of North America’s nastiest gridlock, congestion so bad it costs the region at least $6 billion a year in lost productivity. Sprawl, gridlock’s malign twin, continues virtually unchecked, consuming farmland, stressing commuters, and ratcheting up the cost of municipal services. Without reliable funding, transit agencies can barely afford to modernize, much less expand, straining the GTA’s roads and highways to the bursting point.