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Rebuttal:Million-dollar piles and the path Trailhead was inadvertently blazing, July 18:

Thanks, columnist Kelly Egan, for putting me squarely into the camp of “bitter old bastards.”

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I’m a lifelong Kitchissippian who doesn’t own a car. I’ve walked and cycled this area for decades and know my neighbourhood very well. I know where the short cuts are, where to pick raspberries, and that the man in the hat on the mural of Tivoli’s exterior wall is based on a real person.

I’ve been witness to the changes Kitchissippi has undergone in the last 20 years, ever since Mountain Equipment Co-Op moved in. Soon after that, store owners started complaining about increased rents. Today, many of those independently run businesses are gone.

Then the steel-and-glass houses arrived, often with two houses replacing a single home. The new houses are not unattractive, but they bear no resemblance to our red-brick past. I thought the city was supposed to ensure that new developments kept in character with the neighbourhood, but nowhere in Ottawa has this been more ignored than in Kitchissippi. Instead, the city hides behind the theory of intensification.