[QUOTE=matt_mcl]
Esquimalt, BC.
[/QUOTE]
That sounds like hooch made in an igloo.
I’ve lived all around Southern Ontario (mostly west of Toronto), and the worst was St. Catharines. You can just smell death on the place. The “downtown” consists of one street where it seems half the businesses are boarded up. And this is coming from someone who has actually worked in and lived around the steel mills of Hamilton.
[QUOTE=Beware of Doug]
That sounds like hooch made in an igloo.
[/QUOTE]
I think it’s pronounced more like “Ess-Kwai-Mo”.
I see Regina was only mentioned in passing. I’ve never been there, so I can’t really comment, but I was surprised to read a recent article http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/08012007/21/canada-s-worst-neighbourhood.html that really made it sound like hell. Can anyone who has visited or lived there comment?
[QUOTE=Ultraviolet]
I see Regina was only mentioned in passing. I’ve never been there, so I can’t really comment, but I was surprised to read a recent article News & Analysis | Yahoo News Canada that really made it sound like hell. Can anyone who has visited or lived there comment?
[/QUOTE]
I’ve never lived there, but I drive through once or twice a year on my way to visit my parents. It’s not spectacular for sure, but Winnipeg is still way worse. Winnipeg is UGLY.
[QUOTE=Ultraviolet]
I see Regina was only mentioned in passing. I’ve never been there, so I can’t really comment, but I was surprised to read a recent article News & Analysis | Yahoo News Canada that really made it sound like hell. Can anyone who has visited or lived there comment?
[/QUOTE]
Jesus.
My brother lived in Regina for a couple of years, left in the late 80s. He hated every single minute of living there.
Never been there either, but it’s at the bottom of the list in terms of real estate appreciation.
[QUOTE=alice_in_wonderland]
I’ve never lived there, but I drive through once or twice a year on my way to visit my parents. It’s not spectacular for sure, but Winnipeg is still way worse. Winnipeg is UGLY.
[/QUOTE]
I disagree - parts of Winnipeg are ugly, the Core (very poor) area for sure, but parts are very beautiful - Assiniboine Park/Forest, Wellington Avenue, The Forks, we have some beautiful bridges and some great locations. We have the most restaurants per capita and a thriving theatre and arts community. Some of our (Core) downtown is ugly, but we also have many turn of the century buildings still in use and the architecture is lovely.
Do we have cold winters? Yes, but we have indoor festivals and parties almost every weekend, as well as some outdoor (even in the winter). Our city does a wonderful Festival of Lights parade for Christmas. Every single weekend in the summer has something going on. We have some of the world’s most beautiful freshwater beaches within an hour’s or two.
I know I’m defensive, but for all of it’s not-so-nice parts, I don’t think it is any better or worse than anywhere else. Our winters are brutal, but our summers are hot and not super dry, best of all it stays warm when the sun goes down (but not too hot to sleep).
The people are generally friendly and our homelss population is a tad smaller, than say, Vancouver, since our winter is not “sleeping outside weather”.
You can still buy a beautiful house here for about 250,000 or less (depending on the area).
I think the biggest problem with our Core area is that unlike other cities, it’s not hidden away and easy to avoid, ours starts on North Main and continues. We have a poverty problem and we need to do something about it. As far as organized crime, the last I heard, most of it was coming here by way of Montreal and other bigger cities, but then that’s what happens when you are in the middle.
It’s what we say, if you don’t like it, move to Calgary and don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
[QUOTE=alice_in_wonderland]
In terms of smaller towns, Prince George, BC is pretty shitty. The new university has helped a little, but it’s still mostly a town of lumber jockeys that drink too much, get in fights and kill each other.
[/QUOTE]
Don’t forget their four pulpmills!
[QUOTE=Spoons]
I lived there for many, many years, and I also noticed the problem Sunspace spoke of. At one time, Toronto was happy just to be Toronto (or at least, Not Montreal). Then it decided it was “world class.” And that led to Toronto’s problems.
I well remember the civic debates and the “if we only had _____, we’d be world class for sure” arguments. You can fill in the blank with the large project or thing of your choice: an opera house, a new arena for the Leafs, less traffic in the downtown, more high-end retailers to squeeze out those silly little neighbourhood shops. After each objective was achieved (or not, leading to endless squabbling between interests both inside and outside of City Hall), Toronto still wasn’t happy because _____ wasn’t as good as New York’s. Or Montreal had more of it. Or Vancouver, Chicago, or London would have done it differently and undoubtedly better. It seemed to me to be cyclical: the more Toronto asserted it was “world class,” the more it had to prove it in some way, which was ultimately not good enough when compared to other cities, which meant to soothe its ego, Toronto again had to tell itself it was “world class,” and so on, over and over.
IMHO, it wasn’t just civic boosterism that dragged Toronto down. It was civic boosterism coupled with a constant comparison to places that Toronto wished to be. In other words, it wasn’t happy being Toronto; as Sunspace notes, at some point–and the mid-80s, as he suggests, is as good a point as any–it started wanting to be someplace else.
I don’t think Toronto is the worst place in Canada though. I still get back to visit from time to time, and I always look forward to going. There have been many changes; some of which I am glad to see, and some of which I’m not–but overall, things seem to be improving on the comparison front. Perhaps Toronto is finding that being Toronto isn’t so bad after all.
[/QUOTE]
I think you guys may be remarking on an era I was too young to experience in the same way - in the mid -80s, I was way more interested in getting laid and stoned than in city hall politics. 
All I can say is that right now you don’t see that “attitude” in actual reality very much - at least, not from real-live Torontonians. You get way more “Toronto thinks it’s New York!!!” from people who don’t live there, to which many people who do live there would reply “huh?”.
I don’t see Toronto as being “dragged down”. It has lots of problems to be sure, but many of those specifically mentioned (street crime, pot grow-ops) are hardly unknown in other large Canadian cities, and Toronto’s is hardly among the worst statistically speaking.
[QUOTE=Weirddave]
[sub]Note: I’ve actually been to Toronto, and it’s very nice. The natives really do seem to think that their city is on par with NYC though, which is laughable. They have no idea how much they’re NOT NYC. And not just in the good ways. [/sub]
[/QUOTE]
Interestingly, I went to University in New York, and moved to Toronto from San Francisco… Toronto is not exactly NY, but it ain’t far off… So to this ex-New Yorker, I’d say it isn’t so laughable… :rolleyes:
Sydney, NS was a pretty unpleasant place, but considering it’s the only town in Canada I’ve been to (not counting the Halifax airport), I may not be the best judge.
Still, I was a bit put off by being sick the entire time I was there, and the locals giving me knowing looks and saying “Oh, that’s just the Tar Ponds.”
[QUOTE=Sunspace]
I think it’s pronounced more like “Ess-Kwai-Mo”.
[/QUOTE]
Close. It’s “Ess-Kwai-Malt”.
[QUOTE=Ultraviolet]
I see Regina was only mentioned in passing. I’ve never been there, so I can’t really comment, but I was surprised to read a recent article News & Analysis | Yahoo News Canada that really made it sound like hell. Can anyone who has visited or lived there comment?
[/QUOTE]
That article was incredibly one sided. The writer didn’t get into any of the ways that the North Central community itself is working to turn things around, never mind the initiatives the city and province have to make North Central a better place to live.
Pickle Lake, Ontario, where people lay drunk in the street: Pickle Lake Low
Oh, well, if that’s a criteria for worst town/city, then I have to nominate Saskatoon, where I more than once saw a drunk lying in the street (okay, that one guy was just on the sidewalk, but close enough, eh?)
I would be surprised if drunk people laying in the street didn’t happen in 90% of the towns in Canada at some point, and I really think it is actually 100%
It’s really a matter of degree (proportion of fall down drunks to total population) that brings Pickle Lake into its own as a place for pickled people.
[QUOTE=Ice Machine]
I’m surprised no one has mentioned Windsor. It’s usually the city I hear of but I’ve never lived there, only passed through. Folks from Detroit seem to think it’s an improvement from their side of the river.
[/QUOTE]
I just moved back to Toronto from Windsor after finishing my degree there at the end of last summer.
Where to start with Windsor?
The crumbling automotive plants and the above-average unemployment. Out of my graduating class of 10 environmental engineers, 50% of them have moved away for a job because if you don’t want to work in Detroit, you’re not going to find a job. The downtown strip has 30+ bars and that’s the extent of the Windsor nightlife. Good luck trying to find something else to do. The area around the university is pathetic and without a car you’re cutoff from the rest of the city, it’s a 30 minute walk to anything half-decent with respect to a grocery store or restaurant. The pollution from Detroit stinks and the 19 year olds who cross the border to drink aren’t worth the trouble. They should shut the border if you’re under 25 for weekends.
This thread should’ve been around last summer, I would have had more complaints. I hated my time in Windsor and would never go back.
Oshawa also sucks. The only good thing about it is that I passed my final driver’s test there, I just had to watch out for the super slow on- and off-ramp speed limits.
[QUOTE=Muffin]
It’s really a matter of degree (proportion of fall down drunks to total population) that brings Pickle Lake into its own as a place for pickled people.
[/QUOTE]
Ah, okay then. Calgary during Stampede week might put us back in the running then (you know an event that has beer and champagne at the breakfasts is a serious piss-up).