Paradise Stolen

[osoab]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=qZM6TJ4Cvb0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=qZM6TJ4Cvb0

Anyone got a clue on the island?

[Neuro]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=qZM6TJ4Cvb0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=qZM6TJ4Cvb0

Anyone got a clue on the island?
Could it be Jekyll island? http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jekyll_Island,_Georgia

[osoab]

Could it be Jekyll island? http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jekyll_Island,_Georgia

Nah, not a big enough population center. 20 minutes from 6 million. You would be looking at the Northeast Coast imo. But there is also a lake, so it is inland island.

[Dogman]

Maybe on one of the great lakes?

[Cebu_4_2]

Has to be near NY according to the congested pictures. Very good video.

[expat4ever]

These a couple photos at the 1:20 ish mark that say Toronto Island on them.

[Neuro]

These a couple photos at the 1:20 ish mark that say Toronto Island on them.
You have good eyes. Have a cigar! :)

[JohnQPublic]

I did not see that. The Fire Department sign says Ward's Island.

https://www.google.com/search?q=ward%27s+island&biw=1366&bih=696&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=a6PTVJmFE4i5oQTe34KoAg&ved=0CDEQsAQ&dpr=1

[Neuro]

I did not see that. The Fire Department sign says Ward's Island.

https://www.google.com/search?q=ward%27s+island&biw=1366&bih=696&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=a6PTVJmFE4i5oQTe34KoAg&ved=0CDEQsAQ&dpr=1
At 1:25 there is a photo from 1911 That says Toronto Island New (Lanes?) at the top, at the bottom it says Toronto Archives...

Ward's island is a part of Toronto islands, which apparently is North America's largest car free residential area...
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto_Islands

[Dogman]

At 1:25 there is a photo from 1911 That says Toronto Island New (Lanes?) at the top, at the bottom it says Toronto Archives...

Ward's island is a part of Toronto islands, which apparently is North America's largest car free residential area...
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto_Islands

Highly likely this is the location, one of the two community's (bunches of houses) , no cars allowed.

https://www.google.com/maps/@43.6297323,-79.3548963,1145m/data=!3m1!1e3

[Neuro]

Doesn't seem very likely many will be able to raise their children in this paradise. As you need to wait in line about 20-40 years to be able to buy a house, if you fit their profile...

Published on Oct 17 2009
Daniel DaleSTAFF REPORTER



Always wanted to buy a house on the Toronto Islands? Now, sir or madam, is the time to act. Just send $110 to the Toronto Islands Residential Community Trust between Nov. 11 and Nov. 25, win a lottery in which your chances may be no better than one in 10, and wait 20 or 30 or 40 years.

You do plan to be available in 20 or 30 or 40 years, don't you? Good.

In only a few decades, you'll have earned the right to be Kate Tucker. Now Number 101 on the trust's 500-person purchasers' list, she still dreams of an island home; even at age 52, she'd consider settling for an ugly or unkempt island home. But the yearning is less burning than it used to be. No use, the technical writer and her husband have decided, fixating on a fantasy still distant after 15 years of waiting.


"We're not holding our breath any more," she says. "But we plan to stay on the list, and we plan to live on the island before we die."

She pauses. "Hopefully."

There are 31 list vacancies to be filled this year. The last time the trust held a lottery, in 2007, 375 people applied for 47 vacancies.

If past patterns hold, many of this year's applicants will be the creative types for whom the island life has always held a particular allure. They will all need the optimism and the patience of a struggling artist.

The top 150 people on the purchasers' list get the first chance to submit applications for available houses on Ward's Island and Algonquin Island. The highest-ranked person to apply wins; under the tightly regulated system imposed in the 1990s, there is no competitive bidding. Because three or fewer houses typically come available in any given year, because fewer than 20 people per year drop off the list, and because no-windfall-profits rules keep prices low – the average house goes for less than $250,000, land lease included – the winners of this year's lottery may not get an island house until the 2040s or 2050s.

On the other hand: in the 2040s or 2050s, they can get an island house.

The whipping winter wind is cold, the lake between home and the grocery store an inconvenience, many of the houses more or less glorified cottages; island life, residents say, is not for everyone. For many of them, however, it is nearly utopian: only 10 minutes from downtown, yet a car-free oasis of neighbourliness.

There are 262 homes on the islands. The community phone book is organized by first name.

"This is the best of both worlds. You're right downtown, where you've got entertainment and work, but you have a cottage lifestyle," says Ian Rankin, 58, who joined the list at Number 110 upon its creation in 1994 and now lives in a 1,000-square-foot house he unexpectedly succeeded in obtaining, at Number 43, in 2007.

Globe and Mail reporter Margaret Philp, an island resident, died of cancer in September. During her illness, fellow islanders prepared the juices on which she subsisted, cooked her meals and sometimes stealthily did her laundry.

"You get to know your neighbours," says Rankin. "You have to get to know your neighbours: you share the ferry with them every day."

Raised in such a charmed environment, the children of island homeowners are frequently loath to surrender to the urban indifference of the city. They too, however, must wait years on the list if they want to buy island homes of their own. The old-timers rarely leave, in part because the price regulation reduces financial incentives to sell and more importantly because they cannot imagine living elsewhere.

"I've got pictures of me in my diaper, sitting on my grandmother's porch," says near-lifelong resident Elizabeth Amer, 71, a former Toronto councillor whose grandparents came to Ward's Island in 1919, when it was a tent community. "And If I live long enough, I'll probably have a picture taken in my diaper sitting on this porch."

Tucker, meanwhile, will continue her wait. An island renter for over a decade before she and her husband "gave up" and purchased a house in the city in December, she has already submitted four or five unsuccessful applications.

Some island houses go for more than $400,000, some for as little as $30,000. Given the chance, Tucker says she will consider bidding on anything she can afford.

"I always used to say: I'll buy a tool shed, I'll buy a closet. I want to live on the island."
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