Maybe Oshawa is in the middle of nowhere?

Does anyone want to let the author of this article know that only a small amount of people that work at GM actually make up the population of Oshawa, that there are many commuters from the city, that UOIT has spread and is expanding it's University Campuses to the downtown core and that students can still afford to rent a room for approx $300.00/month less than what they would pay in Toronto, that Oshawa still offer's affordable house in beautiful areas as opposed to its Western and Northern counterparts of the city where a townhouse can run for 1.2 million? I could go on...

chume@thestar.ca
"What if Jann Arden was right? What if Oshawa really is in the middle of nowhere, or close enough that no one can tell the difference?

Let’s be honest, unless you work for General Motors — or as it used to be called here, Generous Motors — there aren’t a whole lot of reasons to visit the “City that Motovates Canada.”

Despite Mayor John Henry’s earnest, if predictable, response, Oshawa is one of dozens of towns in southern Ontario and beyond that have little to offer those who don’t live there. Once you’ve gone to the mall — the largest in Ontario east of Toronto — checked out Parkwood, Col. Sam McLaughlin’s house and garden, and the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, you’ve pretty well done Oshawa.

Incidentally, Parkwood, which was given to the Oshawa General Hospital after Sam McLaughlin’s death in 1972, is lucky to be standing. Over the decades, it seems the estate is threatened with demolition and partial destruction every time the hospital decides it needs a new wing or a larger parking lot.

Perhaps that makes sense in a city so dependant upon the automobile. But it doesn’t make for much of a tourist draw.

For most of us, of course, Oshawa consists of little more than several kilometres of green metal fencing along Highway 401. That and a few signs along the road are all that distinguish Oshawa from the mindless sprawl that now extends east from Toronto through Pickering, Ajax and Whitby to Bowmanville, where it mercifully, though only temporarily, ends.

Truth be told, there’s an Oshawa everywhere you turn — generic mid-size towns that resemble one another right down to the logos of the chains and franchises that define the suburban landscape. The homogenizing effect of Tim Hortons, McDonalds, Shoppers Drug Marts and the rest is felt as strongly here as anywhere.

Even the small town’s usual tourist trap, its historic centre, has been buried beneath years of “growth.” Instead, Oshawa has plastered its walls with lurid murals glorifying the past it has so meticulously destroyed.

As for the Oshawa waterfront; don’t ask. Last month, when Conservative Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced the Oshawa Harbour Commission would finally be granted Port Authority status, it likely killed any chance of revitalization. Around the world, Port Authorities are recognized as obstacles to city-building. Jane Jacobs once called them “the single greatest impediment to a revitalized waterfront.”

Even without Ottawa’s heavy hand, Oshawa has made enough mistakes of its own. One of the most damaging came in 2002 when the University of Ontario Institute of Technology was constructed on a remote site in the north end of Oshawa. The decision to build there rather than downtown, where there’s no shortage of empty sites, continues the suburbanization of a community at the very moment when urbanistic thinking is required.

And as for the Oshawa GO station, where Arden was thrown off the train, it is a nasty and cheap-looking box surrounded by an ocean-sized parking lot. A cold, dreary and depressing place, its message to commuters is one of indifference bordering on contempt. Freight gets better treatment than human passengers, and not just in Oshawa.

Does all this mean Oshawa is nowhere? The answer, of course, is no. Let’s not forget that it forms a big part of the much ballyhooed Greater Toronto Area, where, our masters assure us, the future of the civilized world will unfold.

Technically, that puts Oshawa at the centre, if not the middle, of somewhere. But it more feels like the middle of anywhere, which is the same as being in the middle of nowhere."