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  #61  
Old Posted Oct 18, 2018, 2:39 PM
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I agree that Fredericton needs a sports team that isn't university funded. I think thoigh for a city of 60,000 we are in pretty good shape.
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  #62  
Old Posted Oct 18, 2018, 2:44 PM
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I'd love to know why as well. It seems like a a canoe and kayak rental run by the city would be a nice little revenue maker. I was just reading through all of the rules and it sound's like a look but don't touch policy with that pond. They even say where you can fish but people generally don't fish there.


"Fishing is only allowed on the south side of the pond but people generally don't come here to catch fish, they rather simply take in the calmness the lake has to offer."
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  #63  
Old Posted Oct 18, 2018, 5:00 PM
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Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker View Post
Isn't that old pharmacy by 351 still in operation? And Theatre Pharmacy is close at the bottom of Long's Hill.

Agreed about the lack of a grocery. There used to be a market at the east end of Water Street but I think that's folded into the new farmers market on Freshwater.

At least all of these things are met within a couple blocks of downtown so it's not like you have to go right out to the suburbs. They'd only have to come to my neighbourhood at the farthest.
I never had the impression that downtown St. John's was missing some of these essentials. Always thought of it as a pretty comprehensive (if small) downtown.

Downtown Gatineau (which is the island of Hull across from Parliament Hill) is missing a grocery story but has at least two pharmacies and a bunch of other stuff like small shops, etc. Though you can't do all of your shopping there. There is no traditional downtown shopping street in the area. It used to have a grocery store maybe 20 or so years ago and the city and residents have been working to get one back ever since. No success yet.

Of course, you can walk to Ottawa's Byward Market in about 20-30 minutes from most of Vieux-Hull, and the Wrightville district of Hull/Gatineau which has grocery stores, a mall and quite a few more shops is about the same distance in the other direction.

It's still surprising that we don't have more stuff in Vieux-Hull. Its resident population is about 10,000 (about the same as downtown St. John's) but its daytime population is probably in the 50,000 range due to all the office buildings there.
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  #64  
Old Posted Oct 18, 2018, 5:06 PM
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Oh yeah, that reminds me of another thing that's missing in Winnipeg. Downtown shopping. We actually have the "functional" stuff that people need day to day, such as small but useful grocery stores, pharmacies, dollar stores, etc.

What we're missing is any kind of destination retail. All that's left is the downtown Bay which is a shadow of its old self (only 2 of 7 levels remain open), a handful of low-end shops in Portage Place, and then a handful of random boutiques and specialty stores mostly in the Exchange. If you want to buy a men's suit there are literally 2 places in all of downtown where you can go and buy one off the rack... The Bay or Hanford Drewitt. I guess there's also International Clothiers if you're 16 and you need one for your high school's formal dance.

Even much smaller cities like Regina are way ahead of us in terms of downtown retail selection. I get that downtown retail will never be remotely as big as it once was here up until about the 70s, but it would be nice to actually be able to buy a few things without having to boot it out to suburbia.
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  #65  
Old Posted Oct 18, 2018, 5:08 PM
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Originally Posted by esquire View Post
Coming from the prairies, I always found that a bit peculiar with respect to Atlantic Canada... around here, a big downtown department store was a standard civic amenity. It seemed odd that in a city like Halifax there wasn't any such thing. These days it isn't such a big deal, but what about back in the 40s... where did everyone shop?
It's just the Bay specifically that was missing. Back in the 1920's or so Halifax had Eaton's, Simpson's (or whatever the predecessor was), Woolworth, and Zellers (which originally looked more like a department store and less like Wal-Mart).

This building is still there:

Source


I do think that smaller stores had a higher market share in more eastern cities than they did in western cities. If you go back earlier to about 1860 in Halifax there were still shopping districts but they were all small storefronts. Western cities like Winnipeg first developed with the department stores and railways.

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I didn't know that was the case... what is the main concert hall in Halifax? What would the local symphony, for instance, use?
There isn't really a main concert hall. I think the symphony mostly plays in the Neptune Theatre and Rebecca Cohn, which are around 500 and 1,000 seats. There are a handful of venues in the 500-1,000 range, then you have to either hold the event in an arena or outside.
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  #66  
Old Posted Oct 18, 2018, 6:09 PM
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Originally Posted by wave46 View Post
In North Bay, Ontario: A Starbucks. We had one, then it closed, along with the Target it was located in. Timmins has Starbucks now, for crying out loud.

I don't really miss Starbucks, as I almost never went there when I lived in the places that had them, but it's the only thing I could think of.

Other than that? I can't really think of much a city of ~50,000 really has that we don't. We actually do quite well with regards to 'stuff' otherwise - a university, decent arena, arts centre, decent movie theatre, etc. etc.
Starbucks is building a new store on Algonquin Ave:

https://www.baytoday.ca/local-news/s...th-bay-1019363
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  #67  
Old Posted Oct 18, 2018, 7:55 PM
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Originally Posted by megadude View Post
To compare TO to other big cities, as mentioned NYC you can boat in Central Park. You can rent pedal boats at Flushing Meadows in Queens. Same with Prospect Park in Brooklyn.

Same with Humboldt Park in Chicago. And I believe you can boat in Wolf Lake Chicago.
There is that small pond at the Harbourfront where you can rent paddle boats.
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  #68  
Old Posted Oct 18, 2018, 8:08 PM
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There is that small pond at the Harbourfront where you can rent paddle boats.

Oh ya! I think even a small canoe is available. Also the harbour over near Cheery Beach feels like a lake onto itself so Toronto actually has plenty of water sport activities.
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  #69  
Old Posted Oct 18, 2018, 8:53 PM
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One thing I've always thought that Toronto was missing was...me. I would be such an amazing asset to the city.
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  #70  
Old Posted Oct 18, 2018, 9:34 PM
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One thing I've always thought that Toronto was missing was...me. I would be such an amazing asset to the city.
Can you strip? Do you have big jugs?
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  #71  
Old Posted Oct 18, 2018, 11:40 PM
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Too bad Harbourfront pond is not a natural setting. But that is better than nothing.
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  #72  
Old Posted Oct 18, 2018, 11:42 PM
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I miss these bumper boats at Ontario Place.



THE CANADIAN PRESS/Richard Buchan
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  #73  
Old Posted Oct 18, 2018, 11:48 PM
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Can you strip? Do you have big jugs?
It's not my favourite thing to do, but sure, I can strip.



But my jugs aren't really that big.

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  #74  
Old Posted Oct 19, 2018, 12:01 AM
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Originally Posted by Marty_Mcfly View Post
I'll add a bit more for St. John's...
...
Something other that I think is pretty lacking: downtown is lacking in the basic amenities that you need to make a neighborhood livable. One of the great advantages, in most cities, of living downtown is that you can ditch the car and walk 99% of the time to get what you need. That doesn't exist in St. John's. Sure, you're close to restaurants, bars, coffee shops, and boutique-styled shops, but these don't really help in your everyday life. There is no grocery store downtown. There is no pharmacy downtown. Need groceries for dinner? Better get in your car and drive uptown. Sort of defeats the purpose of living downtown, doesn't it?
Nimbyism is mostly responsible for this status quo in the inner city, and the normally less than ideal economic conditions in St. John's have always favoured this. In addition to its meritorious and high profile heritage preservation, St. John's is still working very hard to increase and legitimize it's level of private automobile dependence.

However, one of the singular things that you have all missed, is the absence of a real Public Library in the city, that is, in the form of a dedicated structure.

Last edited by Architype; Oct 19, 2018 at 9:27 PM.
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  #75  
Old Posted Oct 19, 2018, 1:35 AM
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^ Crap, you're right. No major public library is a big one.
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  #76  
Old Posted Oct 19, 2018, 3:51 AM
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Originally Posted by Acajack View Post
You see the historic impact of the Hudson's Bay Company in the West when it comes to big downtown department stores. The Bay came later in main Atlantic cities but by that time the trend was more suburban malls in many places.

Though the major Atlantic cities did have downtown department stores like Simpson's or Eaton's, if my memory serves me right.
wasn't the bay mostly out west? I worked with a guy in 1991 who was from Toronto and he came out west to work on the coast for the summer and he had never been to a bay store, he said they had Simpsons and I think it was shortly after that that the bay took over the Simpsons dept stores out east.

I gre up in a small town of 8000 or so in NE BC and we had a bay store up until the 80;s when they built a mall and a Zellers opened up.
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  #77  
Old Posted Oct 19, 2018, 10:53 AM
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Originally Posted by SpongeG View Post
wasn't the bay mostly out west? I worked with a guy in 1991 who was from Toronto and he came out west to work on the coast for the summer and he had never been to a bay store, he said they had Simpsons and I think it was shortly after that that the bay took over the Simpsons dept stores out east.

I gre up in a small town of 8000 or so in NE BC and we had a bay store up until the 80;s when they built a mall and a Zellers opened up.
I checked and you're right. I had imagined that Bay stores were present in central-eastern Canada earlier than they actually were. They were implanted starting in the 1960s gradually until the 1990s. In Atlantic Canada in particular most cities got Bay stores in malls as opposed to downtown stores. Places like Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa got downtown stores due to takeovers of existing chains: Simpson's, Morgan's, Freiman's, etc.
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  #78  
Old Posted Oct 19, 2018, 12:54 PM
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There's Mills Brothers and a Miniso but this is generally true.

It's not something people would notice as much today but Hudson's Bay was conspicuously absent from downtown Halifax in 1950. I don't think they came to the region until the 1960's or so, and when they came they opened suburban stores. Quebec City also does not have a downtown location and I am not sure they ever had one, but they do have Simons (it started there).

The single Bay location left in metro Halifax is a depressing run down suburban location in Dartmouth, not even in the nicest mall in the city, let alone downtown.

I would not be surprised if Halifax ends up with a Simons soon.

Other missing Halifax stuff:
- Stadium with more than 10,000 permanent seats
- Downtown train station or multimodal transit hub (instead trains go to one place, ferries are someplace else, buses terminate in a third location)
- Purpose-built performing arts venue with more than 1,000 seats or so. There are lots of medium-sized venues but no big ones (not counting arenas). The nicest theatre in the city was torn down in the 1970's and a bigger one was never built.
Hudson’s Bay didn’t have stores anywhere in eastern Canada until well after 1950 when they bought out Morgan’s in Montreal and began opening locations in shopping malls.

You’re right that, as nice as it is, Halifax seems to lack amenities that would be taken for granted in most North American cities. Hopefully a stadium will come soon.
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  #79  
Old Posted Oct 19, 2018, 1:19 PM
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Toronto was missing a grand fountain until three years ago when the existing fountain at Berczy Park was replaced by something bigger and more interesting to look at. Though it's still not that "grand".

I believe the major cities in Canada just below Toronto in population had impressive fountains before TO got one? And comparable cities in the US have had one for far longer.
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  #80  
Old Posted Oct 19, 2018, 1:24 PM
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Toronto was missing a grand fountain until three years ago when the existing fountain at Berczy Park was replaced by something bigger and more interesting to look at. Though it's still not that "grand".

I believe the major cities in Canada just below Toronto in population had impressive fountains before TO got one? And comparable cities in the US have had one for far longer.
Berczy is pretty nice IMO. I am trying to think of one in Canada that's in the same class, except maybe for Tourny in front of the National Assembly in Quebec City.
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