More on street, town, district names: starting with "Liberty Village"

16 posts / 0 new

Tue, 2013-01-22 15:32

lagatta

I was disappointed to have excavated this historic thread: http://rabble.ca/babble/out-and-about/obnoxiously-saccharine-or-pretenti... and seeing that it had been locked.

I suspected "Liberty Village" (Toronto) was a real-estate-promotion aka speculation-driven moniker. Yep.

From the Wikipedia article on the place: Liberty Village is a neighbourhood in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is bounded at the north by King Street West, the west by Dufferin Street, the south by the Gardiner Expressway, the east by Strachan Avenue, and the northeast by the CP railway tracks. The Liberty Village name was introduced as a positive 'brand' by the property owners and developers in the area in conjunction with the City of Toronto. The neighbourhood aims to distinguish itself from Parkdale, which now begins west of Dufferin Street. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Village

Yep, they even changed the boundaries of a "non-posh" district they carved this enclave from.

Though according to the article, the pretext for the district name-change was FAR from posh:

Liberty Village's name comes from its central street, Liberty St. named in honour of a historic prison reform, the initiative of then Provincial Secretary William John Hanna who forced the closure of Toronto's Central Prison located north of the CNE and west of Strachan Avenue in 1915.[citation needed] Before it closed, the Andrew Mercer Reformatory for Women used to be on the site where Lamport Stadium currently stands. The street where the prisoners, when released, would directly walk on to became known as -- "Liberty Street".[1]

By the way, the article has been criticised as reading like an advertisement, and anyone who knows more about Toronto local gentrification and speculation issues is welcome to edit the thing!

There was a similar attempted "Village" renaming here in Montréal, with speculators rebranding "Griffintown" as "Le Village Griffintown"... (Griffintown is an established historical name referring to a lost Irish neighbourhood, and there has been no attempt to gallicise it).

Though of course this thread is open to ALL over-the-top names, not only fakey-posh ones!

Tue, 2013-01-22 15:42

Timebandit Timebandit's picture

In Regina, SK: Harbour Landing.

Yep, on the edge of town, looking out over bald prairie, just off the airport runways.

The developer has some story about how originally the airport was referred to as an "air harbour" but none of the old timers seem to have any memory of that... I, personally, call it "Emergency Landing" because of the proximity to the runway. Sooner or later a crop duster is going to fly into some condos.

Tue, 2013-01-22 15:47

Bacchus

Ahhh Liberty Village. I used to work there and still go there for various clients. Its gone from closing factories with a lot of internet businesses around(its also called porn alley for the number of porn companies there, fewer now tho) and nothing else save a few cafes in 2002 to all posh condos and stores and restaurants now

Tue, 2013-01-22 16:04

lagatta

The Globe and Mail has a habit of citing "Liberty Village" and sending reporters there to discuss the issue of the growing number of single-person households in Canada.

Who all a) live in central Toronto and b) inhabit posh or would-be-posh condos (or at least pay posh mortgages or rents for them; many, of course, are the size of broom closets). And then Margaret Wente opines on how lonely those chicas all must be...

Tue, 2013-01-22 16:05

6079_Smith_W

Timebandit wrote:

In Regina, SK: Harbour Landing.

Yep, on the edge of town, looking out over bald prairie, just off the airport runways.

The developer has some story about how originally the airport was referred to as an "air harbour" but none of the old timers seem to have any memory of that... I, personally, call it "Emergency Landing" because of the proximity to the runway. Sooner or later a crop duster is going to fly into some condos.

Even better: White City

Tue, 2013-01-22 20:31

Summer

I used to live in Liberty Village. I rented a shoebox condo and paid exporbitant rent. And I loved it (the nighbourhood - not the rent). I now live elsewhere because I couldn't afford to buy there ( I couldn't afford anything decent in Parkdale either or "Liberty Village West" as we yuppies like to call it - tongue firmly in cheek). And now I love my new neighbourhood too - even though I'm living east of Yonge street which I vowed never to do.

Toronto is such a big city. As someone not originally from here, I really like the way that it has so many different little neighbourhoods. And Liberty Village is a distinct neighbourhood from Parkdale, just as it is from King West. Of course the real estate industry is helping it along and there's a huge does of marketing involved. But I actually think it benefits the city as a whole. it's nice to feel like part of a neighbourhood.

Tue, 2013-01-22 23:35

jas

I suppose we could be thankful it's not called "Freedom Village".

Wed, 2013-01-23 01:00

Bacchus

Its all fake now. Fake Irish Pubs, fake little boutique stores (besides dollar stores oddly enough) and the neighbourhood feel is draining away. When its not during the day (busy with workers at all the various businesses) its dead during the weekend while all the yuppies are away and who never socialize with anyone else there

Wed, 2013-01-23 07:17

lagatta

Perhaps they are at the "Distillery District" during the weekend?

Its a shame, when I look at photos it looks like a good integration and re-use of old industrial buildings (as does Distillery). But when it is all fake, no neighbourhood feeling, no roots, all that becomes nothing but a façade.

Wed, 2013-01-23 10:54

#10

Catchfire

I think this was mentioned in the Vancouver gentrification thread, but one of the old working-class neighbourhoods in East Van, Hastings-Sunrise, has been renamed "East Village" by the city. Puke.

Wed, 2013-01-23 12:11

#11

lagatta

Hastings-Sunrise is a far more distinctive name.

Have they renamed the Downtown East Side yet?

Having been to Vancouver exactly once for a very short time, working at a conference (fly-in, fly-out) alas I know that area mostly by the negative descriptors always associated with it in the bourgeois press: "seedy", "notorious", "decrepit" etc. I'm sure speculators are attempting to rebrand it.

Here condo-builders have rebranded the historic working-class East-End district Hochelaga-Maisonneuve as "HoMa".

Wed, 2013-01-23 12:24

#12

6079_Smith_W

It has been awhile since I lived there (and I was over in east Van), but do they actually get sunrises in that part of town? At the very least they are on a north slope, and I don't think they have any view of the horizon.

Wed, 2013-01-23 14:49

#13

Bacchus

lagatta wrote:

Perhaps they are at the "Distillery District" during the weekend?

Its a shame, when I look at photos it looks like a good integration and re-use of old industrial buildings (as does Distillery). But when it is all fake, no neighbourhood feeling, no roots, all that becomes nothing but a façade.

I totally agree. I thought retaining the factory building look would make a great integration but it really hasnt worked. Plus most of the offices/business that were there are leaving because the rents are now increasing 10 fold from when they moved in.

Wed, 2013-01-23 15:49

#14

Catchfire

lagatta wrote:
Have they renamed the Downtown East Side yet?

Well, not as such. But I was in a meeting with some rabble folk yesterday whose office (from which the city is evicting us!) is in what used to be considered squarely in the DTES. Across the street, over the past year or so, a bunch of high-end restaurants have sprung up. On online review/reservation sites, these restaurants are listed as being in the Gastown area! (Gastown in a much ritzier neighbourhood towards the water, replete with cobblestone streets and tourist shops.) So it's not so much that the DTES is being renamed (although that could come!), its borders are just being eroded.

My neighbourhood has a bunch of names that come from various rebranding attempts -- Fraserview, Mountainview and the most recent: Little Saigon (because of the high number of Vietnamese Restaurants, I suppose). It's also referred to as Fraser/Kingsway or on the outskirts of Mount Pleasant. Talk about identity crisis!

ETA:

Quote:
Here condo-builders have rebranded the historic working-class East-End district Hochelaga-Maisonneuve as "HoMa".

Oh god.

Wed, 2013-01-23 15:53

#15

lagatta

Yes, especially given that Hochelaga was the name of the Indigenous settlement located on the island of Montréal. We need more, not fewer, Indigenous names and physical reminders of the first peoples who occupied our island.

Fri, 2013-01-25 09:58

#16

Boom Boom

I live in Kegaska, the westernmost community in Côte-Nord-du-Golfe-du-Saint-Laurent municipality, with a population of mostly anglophone settlers from Anticosti Island. Its name derives from the Innu word quegasca, first recorded on Franquelin's map of 1685.