Do you know your neighbours? Do you wave and say hi when you see them outside, or have you become close friends? That answer might depend on where you live.
One third of GTA residents don’t know their neighbours’ names, according to a survey conducted by Nextdoor, an app made for connecting neighbours.
The survey found that 32 per cent of residents don’t know their neighbours, but that number increases for condo dwellers, where 59 per cent don’t know their neighbours.
However, Newmarket is a slightly different story.
A poll on NewmarketToday found that 52.29 per cent of local respondents said, “I know several of my neighbours, we often have friendly chats 'over the fence.”'
Twenty-five per cent of respondents said they wave at their neighbours while outside but that’s about it, and less than three per cent said they don’t have any interactions with their neighbours. Just 20 per cent said their neighbour is their friend and they regularly socialize and help each other out.
Of 456 total respondents, 422 were identified as local. The margin of error is +/- 4.61 per cent 19 times out of 20.*
In an informal door-to-door survey of residents in the Copper Hill neighbourhood, the majority of people surveyed said they know some or all of their neighbours’ names. Less than half of those surveyed said they are friends with their neighbours but all said they would wave and say hi to their neighbours if they saw them on the street.
A similar informal survey in the Environmental Park area found that not only were people less likely to open their door, but those who did respond said they don’t know their neighbours’ names.
In central Newmarket, it is another story entirely. On Timothy Street, all of the residents surveyed said they know their neighbours names and consider themselves friends with all or some of their neighbours.
Jill Kellie has lived on the street for about 20 years. She said it is a very close community and everyone is friendly, helpful and super involved.
“We’re very, very lucky. We help each other a lot,” she said.
Kellie said they have an online group chat for the street, are aware of each other's birthdays, help each other out if anyone needs something, stop and chat when they see each other and socialize together.
“It’s a sense of community and a sense of belonging, being part of something bigger than just yourself,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to be somewhere where I just got in the car and left town everyday and then came back in the evening. To us, it’s really important to feel connected.”
Having lived there for two decades, Kellie was best friends with the people who lived next door, so when the house went up for sale a couple of years ago she was nervous about who might move in. She said to her delight the new neighbour, Suzanne Conner, is “absolutely fabulous.”
Conner moved to Timothy with her two daughters about a year and a half ago from a subdivision in Newmarket. She was attracted by the location and style of house.
“What I didn’t anticipate when I moved was the community that’s here. Before we resided in Newmarket and now we live in Newmarket,” she said.
Conner said her experience in central Newmarket is completely different from her previous residence and she thinks the house style might be a factor in that.
“In the subdivisions, people are in their houses, they come and go to work and they’re not out on the street. I think our front porches really lend themselves and just the design of the street. These houses were designed 100 ago and they were designed for people not to be (inside) them all the time,” she said.
Not only has Conner become close with Kellie but she has also found others on the street to be very welcoming and willing to lend a helping hand. She said around Christmas when she was decorating, she realized she needed fishing line. She asked about it in the group chat and within minutes it was at her door.
“I feel like that’s very old school. That’s probably how my mom grew up but our generation, we’ve kind of lost that a little, so it’s nice to have that back,” she said.
Another recent addition to the street is Jon Hayes, who moved in just under a year ago. He said it didn’t take long to get integrated into the community.
“People were introducing themselves as soon as we moved in and I feel like we know most people on the street by now,” he said.
For Hayes, he said it’s comforting to live in a place where people rely on one another and help each other out.
“It’s great raising kids in a neighbourhood like this, too,” he said.
Hayes’s son, Ben, also said he likes living there. While he said the place they used to live is one of his favourite things, he said, “I like this one probably as much.”
Realtor and central Newmarket resident Darcy Toombs said the neighbourhood is unique.
“It's definitely different than some of the other newer subdivisions, you know as realtors we see that,” he said.
He said the porches, smaller house sizes, and walkability of the area lend themselves to social interactions.
Community "feel" has been an important factor for buyers, especially those who are looking in the central Newmarket area, he added.
“Are they looking for that community? Yeah, I think so. I can think of a number of the homes that I've sold in the neighborhood that that was a big part of why the buyers wanted to live there,” Toombs said.
However, he said this isn’t the case in some of the newer parts of Newmarket.
“They don't know their neighbours because everyone comes home, drives a car into the garage and they don't see them again,” he said of his clients in other areas.
*NewmarketToday.ca uses a variety of techniques to capture data, detect and prevent fraudulent votes, detect and prevent robots, and filter out non-local and duplicate votes.
