“This is the heart of Toronto,” says Jean-Pierre (JP) Boutros of Ward 16 Eglinton-Lawrence, where he’s a candidate for city council. “It’s pretty much the geographic centre of the city.”

We met in Eglinton Park, a few blocks east of Yonge at the southern edge of the ward along Eglinton. The park is somewhat similar to Christie Pits, the sand excavation yard-turned-park on Bloor, as this was formerly the Pears Brickyard, established in 1885 until the City of Toronto purchased it in 1926, converting it to parkland. Beneath here is buried Mud Creek, meandering southeast, underground, until just before the Don Valley Brickworks where it makes a brief appearance.

“This is our commons,” says Boutros of the biggest park in the ward, a place that produces more soccer and hockey players than building materials now. More common, public spaces is something he thinks the ward needs more of and says if elected he’d fight to save the green space by the Bannockburn School in the northwest part of the ward. Like a number of schools in the city, the Toronto District School Board has declared it surplus and wants to sever the property and sell off the yard.

“We can’t get it back once it’s sold, it’s absurd,” says Boutros. The Ontario Municipal Board will decide on the matter this fall.

The ward consists mostly of single-family homes and is rectangular in shape, bounded by the 401 in the north, Bathurst to the west, with Yonge and Eglinton rounding out the east and southern sides. Avenue runs through the middle. The edges, in particular Yonge and Eglinton, are experiencing rapid intensification, especially with the new Eglinton LRT line coming.

“I see Yonge and Eglinton as the next Yonge and Bloor in twenty years,” says Boutros. Indeed the intersection seems two-thirds under construction right now, the one and two storey buildings giving way to a density more fitting for an area on major transit lines. An advocate of mid-rise, especially along Eglinton, Boutros says he knows change is coming, but wants to make sure it’s managed well.

Boutros is running in the ward vacated by councillor and Karen Stintzformer mayoral candidate Karen Stintz, who he also worked for as an advisor during her time as chair of the TTC. Since leaving her office he’s since come out in favour of the LRT plan for Scarborough, rather than the subway she supported.

As we walk down Yonge towards Eglinton, Boutros says he’d like to see more grocery stores here. With loads of pedestrians, and more coming, the area could use more services like this. At Montgomery Ave. historic Postal Station K will become part of a new residential development, its façade preserved with the rare royal cypher of King Edward VIII, as it was designed during his brief reign in 1936.

This corner of the ward, as built up as it’s becoming, is “like Leslieville” to Boutros, as nearby house lots here are 14 or 15 feet wide, a downtown kind of narrowness, with some residents living here 40 or 50 years and young families coming in who can’t afford the larger houses to the north and west.

Cute streets with little homes near big streets with big buildings that are getting bigger, it’s a typical mix found all over Toronto. At one time this was called uptown, but now Yonge and Eglinton is Toronto’s midtown as North York City Centre has come into its own at the north end of the city. Midway along the spine of tall buildings running up Yonge St., Ward 16 is a good place to feel the beating heart of Toronto, a place forever changing and becoming.

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