Middle-class life isn’t what it used to be. Thanks to a heated real estate market, a strong dollar, new taxes and stagnating incomes, Toronto has become, improbably, one of the world’s most expensive cities. Is it worth it? By Jason McBride
(Illustration by Julien Pacaud; skyline photo by Brian Summers)
Today, an average Saturday, I spent the following: $6 on a round-trip TTC ride; about $17 on groceries from the Wychwood Barns farmers’ market (organic Crispin apples, an olive boule and free-range eggs); $34 on two bottles of wine (one decent, one plonk); almost $20 on the recent Superchunk CD and $11 on toiletries. Lunch was cheap and simple: a peanut butter sandwich, an apple and a few spoonfuls of raspberry yogurt. Dinner was free: homemade rice-and-bean burritos at a friend’s house. On the way home from that modest dinner party, waiting forever for the Dufferin bus, I almost splurged on a cab, but it seemed wasteful. Then I got home and booked a flight to New York on Porter for a friend’s 40th birthday: another $326. There’s also what I spend on my mortgage, property taxes, insurance, utilities, cellphone, Internet, YMCA membership, charitable donations and credit card debt. All of that adds up to roughly $65 a day. So, as a childless, home-owning, not-terribly-extravagant-but-not-entirely-miserly-either Torontonian, this one day at the tail end of 2010 cost me—not counting the airfare, which, for argument’s sake, I’m setting aside as an exceptional expense—about $153.
That doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s about $20 more than what I make every day, after taxes. And it leaves nothing, obviously, for home repairs, clothing, vet bills, investments, medical expenses, birthday presents, savings, recreational drugs, holidays or the kid that Liz, my fiancée, and I have been talking about having this year but which, if things continue in this fashion, we’ll have to postpone having until we get jobs that net us more than $50,000 each a year.
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Toboggans and cross-country skis, woolly sweaters and brisk sub-zero air call for piping hot chocolate. The Leslieville dessert shop Bobbette and Belle has taken the humble cup of cocoa to new, paroxysm-inducing heights. In the mug, extra-brut cocoa powder is blended with Swiss chocolate, full-fat milk and a bit of sugar. Then the house-made vanilla marshmallow on top is blowtorched to order until it’s cloaked in a crisp, bittersweet, golden brown shell that gives way to a gooey interior. It’s an irresistible hit of fancified nostalgia. $4.25. 1121 Queen St. E., 416-466-8800.
Dear Urban Diplomat,
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