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I was apprehensive to return home as I faced a nagging mid-20s feeling that the life I’d made for myself didn’t fit as well as it used to. I still loved my job as a music writer, was happy with the people in my life, and found hints of community at my local haunts in St. Clair West. Despite this, something was urging me to leave. As Kieran and I passed the time until our flight, we fantasized about finding a new neighbourhood in pc28����until he playfully said, “I’d rather live in the east end than the Junction.”

We’d mused about moving before, but this moment became the catalyst for leaving the under-renovated, three-bedroom apartment we’d shared with a roommate for nearly four years. After eight years together, not having our own space — augmented by nights waking up to fights and bass-driven music at the dive bar downstairs  — became less worth the cheap rent.

With prices rising elsewhere on our beloved St. Clair strip, finding a place within our budget became compounded with a resentment I couldn’t place. Kieran’s suggestion wasn’t one I hadn’t considered before, having spent many days off wandering across the Don Valley, but this was the first time it felt like it could be the answer.

I’d been a west ender for most of my life. I was raised in a Dundas West semi-detached, sharing a wall with my grandparents who had lived there since emigrating from Portugal in the ‘70s. I moved around the Barrie area for a few years when my parents split up, but stayed with my dad in pc28����most weekends and summers. When I was 16, he moved back into the house I grew up in, and joked that something kept bringing him to our old street. That became true for me too, as I moved back there in 2016 to study Journalism at pc28����Metropolitan University.

The 2010s were a transformative time for the neighbourhood. Some mom-and-pop bakeries and butchers remain but many have disappeared, as the street became the bar strip it’s known as today. That’s not to say Little Portugal is now void of community — it’s still there, just in different ways. But as these changes happened, it started to feel like somewhere I liked visiting instead of somewhere to come home to.

I left the nest for good when Kieran and I moved in together in 2021, but it didn’t stop the sprawl from following me. Rising rent costs drove people who normally didn’t venture north of Bloor Street to midtown, making St. Clair feel less removed. As my time in Toronto’s tight-knit music scene evolved into a career as social editor at the entertainment magazine Exclaim!, more casual outings felt like networking events. This comes with turning a passion into a job, but when most shows happen in the west end, artsy types settle there and it becomes harder to turn off my work brain. It’s relaxation as an urban sport; like you’re at a party you didn’t feel like going to tonight, but you’re just trying to run to the fruit market in your sweatpants.

As much as these growing pains were tied to gentrification, they were also about trying to find the same beacon that brought my dad back to our family home. My time away in high school made me romanticize Toronto, and though that magic lingered when I returned, it faded with the Honest Ed’s sign and the old streetcars. If this sounds schmaltzy, it’s because it is. So many of the big emotions from that time are capsuled by those weekends at my dad’s, my friends and I and getting off at different subway stations just to see what was there. For me, there is no pc28����if not a sentimental one, and it became increasingly harder to find the city of my youth within the radius of where I grew up.

The hints I might find what I was looking for in the east end were there before we considered moving. Thanks to friends who lived there and my own curiosities, I’d already known the simple pleasures of a Square Boy burger after a night at The Only Cafe, and that if Riverdale Park was packed, I’d be just as happy at Withrow. In hindsight, I mistook the joy these things brought me for novelty. Now that they’ve become commonplace, I know I was feeling the spark that strayed, the glimmers of an old Toronto. 

Our potential new locale being overlooked by our cohort of west-entwined, millennial-Gen Z cuspers came with a few advantages — namely, cheaper rent. With a modest budget, Kieran felt fated to a life of bashing his head on a basement ceiling, but that assumption dissipated once we looked eastward. There’s nowhere in pc28����where you won’t get ghosted by prospective landlords on Facebook Marketplace, but responses became more steady with our new-found focus.

Even when viewing the clunkers — most notably, a likely-haunted, virtually windowless above-ground unit — we used the experience to hone in on the neighbourhoods we liked, taking time to visit local spots and envision our day-to-day lives. It didn’t take long for us to be sure this was the right choice; we found the place we call home in about three trips eastbound.

Nestled on a tree-canopied street in Greektown, we now spin our records and cook meals together in a one-bedroom on the top floor of a charming old duplex. With a bay window our cat Monty loves to perch on, a patio and in-unit laundry to boot, we pay $2,000 a month all-in. It’s still a jump from the roughly $800 each we paid on St. Clair, but feels like a steal considering our goal was to live alone. Most of the places we browsed in the west end that came close enough to meeting our needs were $2,200 plus utilities minimum, which would’ve left us with no financial breathing room.

The subway is steps away, making some of our commutes quicker than before since we aren’t relying on buses and streetcars. We’re near the Ontario Line construction, but our residential street stays quiet enough to hear blue jays chirp. The bustle is just around the corner on the Danforth strip, where there’s no lack of restaurants and remnants of the area’s identity, like the pillars of Alexander the Great Parkette or the vivid colours and cobblestone of Carrot Common.

These hints of whimsy are already obvious to east-end lifers, who are as loyal to this nook of pc28����as my friends are to joking that I live so far east, I might as well take up fishing. Listening a little closer to myself helped me find my place, which was finding what I missed about the west end elsewhere.

The vision of pc28����people form attachments to vary from person to person, but that’s part of what makes this place so special. East or west, there isn’t some secret neighbourhood that will answer all of the city’s problems. But, if you remember what kept drawing you back here in the first place, you might find your lodestar.

Sydney Brasil is a Toronto-based music and culture journalist and Social Editor at Exclaim! Media.