Have you ever been to Chatham, ON?

[Denscity]

Originally Posted by JHikka

I obviously wasn't going to bring it up in that thread but we had a thread on the Canada forum recently about a crane falling in BC. Don't think anyone complained about that.

A crane falling in BC doesn't belong in the national section either.
Nothing involving just one province or even worse like this thread just one city is national.

[jonny24]

Originally Posted by urbandreamer

There's a car for sale in Chatham I kind of want: is it worth driving 2 hours just to check it out hmm.

What I liked about the area between Chatham, Windsor and Sarnia is it feels American. Like Doug Ford, Trudeau etc are just useless distant fools. People are so friendly, loud and outgoing, especially in Windsor and Sarnia. Poor people drive older '90s American cars. I saw some cars I'd forgotten about: Mercury Villagers!

Not even just poor people, there are just a LOT of older cars still on the road, many in excellent shape. I spend a lot of time in Sarnia with my wife's family. You can almost feel the proximity to Detroit just from driving around town and seeing all the cars that people are obviously proud of.

The milder winters probably help too.

[flar]

Originally Posted by Blitz

^ There is definitely an influx of Toronto people moving to the extreme southwest and I'm not that enthused about it to be honest. As urbandreamer said, this part of Ontario just feels different than the rest of the province and that's the way I like it. Don't need a bunch of Toronto folk barging in.

As much as I sometimes get frustrated by certain attitudes down here, I don't want it to change too much. The entire Sarnia to Windsor area feels like home to me.

[Taeolas]

Been to Chatham quite often actually. My Dad's parents and brother lived there for decades (at least since the 90's) until their deaths, and my cousin still lives there with his family.

I suspect Chatham was part of the reason I went to UWaterloo ultimately, since I had familiarity with the South-Western Ontario style while growing up, and I'd have family 'close' while at Waterloo.

As others have said, I've always felt Chatham is a nice sleepy town, that's a bit rough from age and economic hardships through the years. It doesn't really feel like a city.

I think in many ways it suffers a similar problem to Sydney Cape Breton; it has a large area but its central core isn't really dense enough to support it yet.

Improved rail connections to Windsor and London/KW/Toronto would certainly be a boon for it; hopefully that would be the impetus for Chatham to densify a little more while not losing too much of its "Large town" charm.

[MolsonExport]

Trudeau loving Libtards

give us a break, will you?

[ssiguy]

The nice thing about Chatham is that it is not only near the 2 warmest lakes in Ontario but also some really nice towns and villages with some great architecture and tons of interesting history.

All the towns seem to be going thru a true renaissance but the key thing is that they had really good bones to begin with. Of course the very notable exception is Wallaceburg which seems to just continuing to die a slow death. It has so depopulated and the "downtown" is so run down and decayed that I am not sure they can ever do anything to revive it.

[flar]

^^Wallaceburg has stabilized over the past couple years, housing prices are up and retirees are moving there from London and the GTA.

Strangely, fast food places are proliferating like mad, they now have McDonald's, A&W, Wendy's, Harvey's, Domino's, Little Caesars, Pita Pit, Subway and Tim Horton's all within a few hundred feet of each other. About half of these just opened in the past year or so.

[Blitz]

Originally Posted by flar

As much as I sometimes get frustrated by certain attitudes down here, I don't want it to change too much. The entire Sarnia to Windsor area feels like home to me.

I feel the exact same way. The culture can be frustrating but the realness and the generosity of the people make up for it. I think the economic hardships over the years/decades/generations builds a strong sense of community. Like you said, it's just home.