There was a time when John Estevez wouldn’t have been caught dead living in a neigbourhood like the Queensway.
This was years ago, when all he could see were streets of what he calls “cookie-cutter” homes lining the streets between Royal York and Islington, from below Bloor to the Queensway, the legacy of rapid post-war development.
“I’d drive through this neighbourhood and you couldn’t pay me to live here because of the post-war houses,” he says as he pilots his blue, racing-striped Mini along the streets he now calls home. He lived in condos on either side of the Gardiner, at Mystic Pointe, where the area was once joined up with Mimico, but the foursquare sameness of the blocky bungalows remained a barrier. That is, until they began changing owners a decade ago. The new owners would either add a second story, expand onto the relatively generous lots, or tear them down altogether.
For Estevez, who owns a building supply business, this was good news, and he eventually found himself a homeowner, though like half the homes on his cul de sac, his postwar bungalow is unrecognizable now, with a wood-shingled second storey and a huge expansion in the back.
“There are still a lot of older people in the neighbourhoood,” Estevez tells me, “but a lot more younger people who can add, change or improve on their home.”
To make his point, he takes me on a detour to home reno icon Mike Holmes’ place — a big modernist makeover on a street full of ranch houses and postwar Cape Cods.
With the sidewalk-free streets full of mature trees and Etobicoke Creek ambling through the neighbourhood, he says that there’s an almost rural feel to the Queensway. The booming Kingsway to the north and the slowly reviving retail strip along The Queensway to the south that are the real brackets defining the area, he says.
The Queensway strip is clearly in transition. Old standbys like the Izba schnitzel house and Ted’s Dairy Freeze are still popular, but Estevez points tomore upmarket places like Kaji, a Japanese restaurant with a pricey fixed menu, and Momo’s, a cozy bistro that features live music on weekends.
The streets that John once couldn’t stand have the feel of a sheltered enclave, just minutes from big box stores and the subway, and from traffic arteries like the Lakeshore and the Gardiner. It couldn’t be more convenient, he says, living next to all these parks and ravines, and “all these wonderful routes to the city.”
