Don Tai (Canada) Blog

In my quest for more information about North-East Toronto, Canada, specifically Scarborough, here is information about walkability. The City of Toronto has published a report about how easy it is to walk about the city. The theory is that ease of walking contributes to better health and well-being, and therefore better living overall. How does my area of Toronto, heavily biased towards Mainland Chinese, rate on walkability? Overall, not very well.

The Walkability project is interesting to me in that I would rather walk or ride a bike to shop or go places yet I live in the suburbs, a statistically less walkable area of Toronto. While we do have better air and a far greater supply of Chinese groceries, I hope that my neighbourhood’s walkability will increase.

By destiny, luck or fate, I live in a Toronto neighbourhood that has a high percentage of Chinese families. I have often wondered, like many families, if by neighbourhood is safe, relative to other Toronto neighbourhoods. As well, if a friend from China was about to migrate to Toronto and wanted to live in a safe Chinese neighbourhood, where would I recommend? This blog post tries to answer these questions.

Going back to the commute routine has been eye opening, which caught me by surprise. It’s not like this is new to me, but getting used to the TTC and the quickness of pace has been eye opening.

The TTC seems to have stayed the same. I expected advancements, but this is not so. They struggle to keep from falling backward on themselves. While most bus drivers are courteous, I have met those who are not. Once there was a detour because of a crime and police had closed the road. This driver did not even announce why he was detouring, so many people asked. He got so mad.

The human body is composed of roughly 80% water. To say that fresh water is vital to our existence is quite true. Living in Toronto, Canada, we get our drinking water from our municipal water purification plant and water supply piping system. While those in condominiums and large apartments rely on property management companies to worry about these minute details, the rest of us that live in houses must fend for ourselves. Municipal water arrives from a pipe deep underground, protected from the frost. There is a water shutoff on your front lawn, as well as main water shutoff inside your house. If your main water shutoff has seized shut or open and you cannot turn it in either direction, you will need to replace it. Without a way to shut off the water in your house you risk flooding your house if a water pipe bursts, for whatever reason. Here is how to change your main water shutoff in Toronto, Canada.

Let me state the obvious that it is easier to blog than to roof. Roofing is hard work and dangerous. My south exposure roof was looking tattered, with shingles curling and losing a lot of small particulate. As I have not found a steady full-time job and could not afford the +$6,000 CAD fee for a professional roofer, and fearing a roof leak, I decided to DIY a large section of my roof. The roof job is progressing very well, though I have not gotten used to the hard physical labour.

My entries have been missing these past weeks because life has interrupted my normal routine, shifting me in unplanned directions. I suppose this is how life unfolds. I needed to remove my attic insulation, upgrade a ceiling pot light and vapour barrier, fix the attic vapour barrier, vent my bathroom fans to the outside, redo soffit venting, and then get everything back to normal. I get lemons and then make lemonade.

Reshingling of part of my roof went well. I did not fall off. Dirty yes, but it had to be done.

Browsing through Walmart here in Toronto, Canada, I stumbled upon some LED light bulbs on sale. From a company named “Lights of America”, they have a smaller base for use in a chandelier. Regularly $5.50CAD, they were going for $2.00CAD. Labeled “Made in China”, I hesitated. I could buy them, research them, and if necessary, return them if I was not happy. The results of research were that these LED light bulbs are junk and should be returned. They not only do not live up to brightness claims, but also only last a max of 1,000 of their claimed 30,000 hours of use.

You need to get along with your neighbours, but sometimes you must simply say “No”. Such is the case of The Town of Markham and the Morningside Extension. Markham is Toronto’s neighbour to the north east, and has a ballooning population of single family homes. Unsurprisingly these families want to commute into Toronto, where they have jobs. Unfortunately the existing north-south roads from Markham, through Scarborough, a suburb of Toronto, to Toronto’s Highway 401 are already at capacity and overflowing. The solution proposed by Markham is to build a new North-south road, through Scarborough, to Highway 401. Between Markham and Highway 401 lies the Rouge Valley, a large protected area of land soon destined to become a national park.