Comment 30761

By Hopeful (registered) | Posted May 05, 2009 at 09:25:13

Hi Geoff I really hate to keep defending Burlington (it's just not in my blood) but here's the deal... I suspect the person you asked for a grocery store either didn't know the area or was thrown off by what you asked for. In fact, you could have walked along one of the nicely treed and maintained power line trails I noted in my first post to Roseland Plaza at New Street and Guelph Line to find a Shoppers Drug Mart with a large grocery section right beside a Hasty Market with decent produce and fresh baked goods (both 24/7 with no security guards). It would have taken you about 10-15 minutes and you would have only been on roads for a minute or two of this. Any other night, or an hour earlier, you could have walked 5 minutes north on Brant Street to a clean No Frills with excellent produce and all the grocery fare. In either case, I suspect your impressions of Burlington would have been quite different.
It's far too easy to dismiss Burlington with its stereotype of a car dependent wasteland, the same as folks diss Hamilton for being only crumbling rot.
I'm not sure where you would have gone in Hamilton on a similar quest but I can't imagine walking to the Westdale Metro (the closest late night store I can think of to downtown) would have been much better. You'd have to cross the same highway but do it beside five lanes of blight without cross-walk stop lights at the interchange instead of four with buttons you could push to get a walk signal. Let's take the good our neighbour's built and emulate it here. Let's take the plain mistakes they've made and file them in the do not do pile. We seem to want to be like them but are only succeeding at the worst of it.

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