Last night, I was a participant in a dinner-table conversation involving young people and the housing market, mortgage rates, and the costs of purchasing property in heavily urban areas. For instance, I'd heard about costs of two-bedroom townhouses in the heart of Toronto costing upwards of $1 million. For a few hundred thousand more, you can buy a farm. What good is that kind of money on a house? It's not like you can do anything with it but sleep. At least if you're punching out that kind of money on a farm, you can have animals, crops, and actually do something useful, like feed people.
This discussion got me thinking about the development that's occurring in my hometown. Actually, I wrote an essay about the changes in my community last year for my Intermediate Composition class (for my English degree). So, with all of this in mind, I thought I'd share my essay, "My 'Brook" with you.
If you're familiar with the John Mellencamp song, "Rain on the Scarecrow," upon reading, "My 'Brook", you'd understand why that particular song would come to mind as it's of a similar nature to my essay.
My 'Brook
One minute after midnight on January 1, 2000, my hometown, Binbrook, in southern Ontario changed forever as the Township of Glanbrook amalgamated with Hamilton to create the “New” City of Hamilton. Many of my community’s previous ways are no longer, as the amalgamation destroyed them. The city refers to Binbrook’s decade-long over-haul as progress while we country- folk call it a tragedy. How we were is but a memory, and quite the opposite to what we’ve become. Some things have remained the same, though, and hopefully they will never change.
Old Binbrook, as the original community members call it, still remembers how life used to be. Pre- amalgamation, Binbrook didn’t merely consider a neighbour to be a person who lived next door, across the road, or down the street. In the old community, a friend or relative could live on the other side of the township and still be considered a neighbour. At the time, too, you likely knew your neighbours, as our town was small enough in population that most people knew everyone else. There were a few occasions where you wouldn’t know a person, but that didn’t matter because you always knew someone else who did. Walking into one of Binbrook’s businesses, like the village’s small grocery store, and addressing the owner by name, wasn’t uncommon. A phrase like, “I went to Gino’s,” was more likely to be heard than, “I went to Food Town.” Knowing Gino’s employees wasn’t a rarity either as you probably went to school with their children, or they went to school with our parents. We all attended Bellmoore Public School, located on Highway #56, one of two major roads running through our town. Bellmoore was named after Old Doc Bell, who was the village doctor when my grandparents were young, and who was succeeded by his son, Doc Bell, when my mother was a child, and Mr. Moore, who donated the land that the school was built on. When I attended Bellmoore, it had a population of 300. All of the students knew one another, despite grade differences, as you had a class with a sibling, or you knew them from the bus. Since Binbrook wasn’t a multi-cultural community, Bellmoore wasn’t either.
Traffic was so much lighter, too, before amalgamation. You could stare at the road, and see nary a car an hour, and since there were so few vehicles on the road, there were hardly any traffic accidents. Occasionally, sirens could be heard, emergency vehicles would be seen speeding by, and pre-2000, you likely knew the people at the destination. And of course, since Binbrook was a farming community, the fanciest vehicles that would be seen driving on by were bright red tractors and combines, compliments of O’Neil’s Fast and Friendly.
Binbrook had many things, pre-amalgamation, that we didn’t realize we had until they were gone. As Binbrook was a farming community, every field was filled with crops for what seemed like kilometres on end. Once a year, Binbrook would have its Fall Fair, which the Binbrook Agricultural Society had been hosting since 1854 on the only fairgrounds in the community. The community also had one set of traffic lights, which intersect the two main roads going through the heart of the village. As there were so few houses, and even fewer street lights, we had minimal light pollution, and as a result, we had a beautiful, starry night sky. Pre-amalgamation, Binbrook was part of the Township of Glanbrook, where Glen Etherington was our Mayor, and David Mitchell was our Ward, and it had been that way for as long as any Old Binbrook resident could remember. But now that’s all just a thing of the past.
A decade later, and Binbrook is so strange and different from the community it once was, and much of our small community feeling is lost. The equivalent of our pre-amalgamation population is being crammed into the village core. We no longer know everybody like we once did. Gino sold his Food Town as he knew that he wouldn’t be able to compete with the supermarket monstrosity that’s Fortino’s, which had been built just minutes away. Food Town has become Food Market, which is really just an LCBO that sells some convenience store snack foods. Bellmoore is now over-crowded, with portable classrooms taking up space on the playground. A new behemoth of a Catholic school has been built, and plans for a new elementary school to replace Bellmoore are in the works. The city is considering re-naming the new school, and giving it one that’s supposedly more prestigious. Apparently, Docs Bell and Mr. Moore aren’t glamorous enough for Hamilton. My mother jeers that the city ought to rename our entire village while they’re at it.
Driving can be annoying as there is constant traffic, and new streets leading into the new surveys are continually being built. As there are more vehicles than before, there are more accidents, especially at my family’s intersection. Too many people are in a hurry and many more don’t pay attention to road signs, especially to the lack there of. Now, when we see emergency vehicles go by, the people at the destinations are likely strangers. Combines were once the fanciest vehicles on the road. Ten years later, and luxury cars are more common as the new residents can’t seem to go without.
Farms that had been sown for a century and a half, and in families for countless generations, are being bought out by developers. Farmers can’t afford to keep their land as farming no longer brings in enough money. Where crops once grew, houses have sprouted instead, with one of the ill-fated farms belonging to the now-deceased best friend of my great- grandmother. Binbrook’s fairgrounds still exist, but a housing development of the same name has been built directly behind, causing confusion with the new locals whenever mention of the fairgrounds is made. A second set of traffic lights has recently been installed, which royally irks Old Binbrook as we now have to specify which set of lights we’re referring to. Because so many houses and roads have been built, more streetlights line the roads, and now a sky that was once littered with stars has a dim glow as the result of light pollution. The original Township of Glanbrook is no longer as it’s now a part of the “New” City of Hamilton. Glen has since passed on, and Binbrook gets whomever Hamilton votes in for Mayor, which has changed every election. Mr. Mitchell, who had represented Ward 11 for the past twenty-five years, was voted out of his position last election. Life, as Old Binbrook knew it, has been lost forever.
Though much has changed throughout Binbrook over the last ten years, a few things have remained the same. On Fletcher Road, drivers are still guaranteed to get caught behind Old Man Freeman on his tractor at dusk. On warm summer days, the smells of fresh- cut grass and sweet clover still float on the breeze. Wild animals, such as foxes, deer, and Earl the Groundhog, continue to roam freely through the remaining fields. And my family’s fields will never be sold as my mother would never go back on her promise or handshake that she made with the farmers who work our land, guaranteeing calm, cool breezes for us in the spring and summer. But it’s just not the same. Binbrook is no longer what it once was. We can never go home again.
And for those of you who aren't familiar with, "Rain on the Scarecrow":
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