My Hometown Feels Like It Is In Trouble

For the majority of my stay, I have been in St. Catharines with my mom and dad. I lived in St. Catharines from 1986 (14 years old) until I moved to Toronto in 1992 (19 years old). The city hasn’t seen much change in new buildings and condominiums, unlike Toronto. It is still mostly an Eastern European kind of place, with few other cultures represented. I still remember my ex-boyfriend commenting how St. Catharines is “the whitest place he has ever been.”

The city is struggling, and it is easy to see where and how. It used to be a huge manufacturing centre for the province, with General Motors (GM) and auto parts companies, as well as pulp and paper mills such as Domtar. GM closed its last plant last week. The pulp and paper mills have turned into restaurants. The jobs are mostly in the service industry, such as restaurants, bars, donut shops, and grocery stores. They are lower-paying jobs at $7 an hour compared to the $20 an hour in the manufacturing industry. Niagara Falls is only 10 minutes away, so many people work there at the casino or other tourism sites.

The population is the oldest in Canada, and it is easy to see without reading it. There are tons of old people around. A bar my father frequents looks more like an old age home than a bar, with everyone well in their 70’s or even a few in their 80’s.  The people are good, and they will help a neighbour. Most have lived in the area all their lives, so there is a strong sense of community.

It is known as the “garden city” for its numerous public parks and gardens that are constantly used. There are more boarded-up businesses in the downtown area. There is some construction, with a new hospital being built and large “big box” stores being built in the western part of the city. The population on the sign is 125,000, but I wonder how true that is. Talking to an old high school friend of mine, I learned he rarely sees anyone from the “good old days” anymore. Most of the people who have moved to the Toronto area or left the country are like me.

To me, the best way to solve this is to introduce affordable transportation, such as the commuter train called GO. This would bring more people who could live in St Catharines and work in Toronto. It is only an hour and a half away, and people are now willing to commute 2 or 3 hours by going up to the cities of Barrie and Orillia. These new people will increase property values and create some construction jobs as well. Living here is cheap, with the average house going for about $100,000 CDN. With this new revenue from taxes, funds could be used to shift the manufacturing base toward green energy. The people here know how to build things; maybe there's a desire to build more wind turbines and the like.

Something needs to be done here, or I fear things will get worse here.