The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - The Lure of Small Town Life

Episode Date: June 24, 2024

There was a time when Richard Peddie couldn't have been more urban. He was the chief executive officer of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, responsible for bringing the population of a small town into the Scotiabank Arena most nights of the year. So it's somewhat ironic that Peddie's latest book is called, "Great Small Towns of Ontario," in which he chronicles the qualities that make for this province's ten best.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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He was the chief executive officer of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, responsible for bringing the population of a small town into the Scotiabank Arena most nights of the year. So it's somewhat ironic that Petty's latest book is called Great Small Towns of Ontario, in which he chronicles the qualities that make for this province's ten best. And Richard Petty joins us now here in the studio, and it's great to see you again. Great to see you. Is book number four something like that?

No, it's number three, but now I've started publishing books too, so I've got a couple of those as well. Okay, when did the man who made his living in the biggest city in the country start to turn his attention to smaller towns? I think I, it wasn't small towns originally. It was more, how do you make communities better? And that started when I was in Toronto. I was considering running for mayor, and I started doing a lot of research. I started traveling to the Copenhagens and the Amsterdams and the Berlins, and I started reading and started meeting urbanists, decided wisely not to run for mayor of Toronto. And then I, you know, I bought a, built a house in a little town called Amherstburg. Southwestern Ontario, near Windsor. Just near Windsor. And then my wife and I decided we have

just more we can do in the community, so we opened a bookstore. And then I said, geez, we're doing some good stuff, but what are the other great small towns of Ontario doing? What can I learn from them? You say what I like about small towns is that one can get their arms around them. What does that mean? Well, so I've opened a candy store, a bookstore, a bakery, and a homeware store about to open a small bar. And if I'd done that in Toronto, it wouldn't have broken through the clutter. It might help a little neighborhood. In a little town like Amherstburg or any of these little towns, you do that and you can influence the entire psyche of the town. You say there is a look about small towns. And we're going to, during the course of our conversation, bring up a bunch of pictures from your book. I got to say, it's gorgeous.

The book is gorgeous. The pictures are gorgeous. Sheldon, let's do picture number one here. This is Almonte, Ontario. There's a look. What is that look that you see there in that picture? Well, I can remember this is Mill Street, and I turned off onto Mill Street, and it's in a bit of a climb, and I just said, wow.

This, I think, was the post office. They have three. They've been really remarkable. So many towns have torn down the great heritage buildings. They protected three of them and repurposed. So it's great. And there's a Naismith statue just at the base of that. And obviously being basketball, that resonated with me.

But this, I fell in love with that town the moment I turned into that street. Just for those who don't know, James Naismith invented basketball. He did. Yes, indeed. This is not meant to be a smart aleck question, but you admit in the book you're not a planner, you're not an academic, you're not an elected official. So what exactly qualifications do you have to offer this advice?

Really good question. You know, I did my homework. In my book, I talk about influencers. In fact, Gil Penalosa wrote the foreword. Jennifer Kiesmaat quoted. Jason Thorne, who was planner in Hamilton. So I've met all of those, and I've read voraciously. You know, you start with Jane Jacobs, but you go to Jan Geld.

And there's so many great books that, you know, I've self-taught. Oh, Jane Jacobs, when she wrote Life and Death of Great American Cities, was not a trained planner. Right. She wrote that just... Community activist. Community activist. Your small towns have to have 25,000 population or so

to be considered for your book. Why that number? You know, I say a couple things. Why these towns? Why this number? It's my book. I chose that. Fair enough. Fair enough. Let's Sheldon picture number two, if we can hear cities, big cities need bike lanes.

Do small towns need bike lanes? Well, interesting. All 10 towns don't do anything on cycling. So what are we looking at there? That's just a, that's not a generic picture. But I do think that they should, you know, all the benefits of biking, the health, getting people out of cars. There's lots of reasons to get into cycling. And I was really pushing it because, one, I'm a cyclist and I believe in this. But I thought it was a way for the towns to differentiate themselves. But none of them, it's really resonating. Actually, the one that could be closest to doing a good job on cycling is Amherstburg.

And so I make some recommendations on that, whether the politicians will go along with them. Who knows? But I think it'll make a difference in the town. That was my follow up question. How interested so far do you see small town politicians in creating bike lanes? Pretty much zero. Pretty much zero. Pretty much zero? You know, they do some stuff. There's the signs. There's every once in a while a painted. I did not see a protected bike lane. I saw little, you know, they'd have a painted route,

which would end in nowhere. And so then the poor cyclist is, whoa, where am I? So no one's done anything. Sheldon, picture number six, please. We talk about hotels. This is one of the hotels that you and I have both stayed at. Yes. The Sorbera family, actually. Greg Sorbera, former finance minister for Ontario, brought this one back to life. This is the Royal Hotel in Picton, Ontario. Now, the conventional wisdom is if you're going to put up a hotel,

you've got to have a minimum number of parking spots to service the people who... He only has a few behind that. He's only got a few. And your view is you actually don't need to do that? Well, no, no. I think it's where you're at. I mean, that's right downtown. He's lucky enough on his footprint. He has room. I don't think he's got enough parking spots for all his units. I'm not sure about that, but it didn't look like it to me. You know, the hotel that I'm hoping to build in Amherstburg does not have, but we've got parking spots, 350 within a five minute walk. So, you know, I talk about parking a lot in this, you know, parking minimums are a dinosaur. They're a waste of money. They stop so many important things. And, you know, and minimums are a dinosaur. They're a waste of money. They stop so many

important things. And, you know, and that's a big thing with NIMBYs. Like, where are you going to park? No one wants to walk. In Toronto, you know, when I come back to Toronto, I never use my car again. I took the streetcar today, walked to, but I'll bike, a streetcar, subway. You know, And but I'll bike a streetcar subway. You know, they, you know, go walk a little. So why is it in the heads of of so many town councillors that if we're going to put something there, we've got to have enough parking? Well, a lot of them have something called parking minimums, an archaic rule that that that's now getting wiped out across the United States. In Canada, only a few cities are getting rid of them. They have these arbitrary rules that got kind of created in the early 50s with no science. Some ratio, you need one and a half car parking spots for every unit or something like that.

There's no science to that. And that's just something. And then with the NIMBYs, they want that. I have to build a park out in front of the bank. So they don't want to go up against that. And the other thing, town councillors are elected unpopular. They really could benefit from this book. There's more learning in this book. Most of them are not traveled to other great towns or cities. They have not read the books that I talk about here. They probably don't know who

Jane Jacobs is. There's lots of good stuff out there. But so, you know, you get, you've got a job here, maybe part-time, maybe you're retired. You get elected on popularity. It doesn't say you're prepared to run that town. So they could stand to read the book. They could definitely stand to read the book. Let's do picture three here, Sheldon. This is, I mean, heritage buildings, we touched on it, but some of them are truly glorious. This is a heritage building in Cobourg, Ontario, about an hour east of Toronto. And then let's flip it over, Sheldon, to number seven. That's gorgeous. That's Port Hope, Ontario. What do you like about these buildings? Well, it was interesting, and I didn't know it at the start. Nine of the ten towns were heritage buildings, or heritage towns.

I think Colberg has, I think it's a record with four heritage-designated areas. Port Hope has one or two. I think one, but it embraces the whole town is my memory. You know, heritage, there's all kinds of good reasons for it. It's beautiful. It makes your town attractive to come to. People have pride. My bookstore is a heritage building, and my employees like working in it. People like visiting it.

And also, the greenest building is the one that's built right now. You know, because when you tear down these buildings, you're releasing a lot of carbon emissions. And then how you put the building back together, you use a lot of carbon emissions. So the greenest building is those two. Are they not absolute sinkholes for money, though? Well, they can be. Yeah, I spent a lot of money on restoring our 1885 building. But, you know, it was something that I really had to do. I wanted to

make sure it's now designated. We asked for it to be designated. I just thought it was really important to protect it. And then there's the benefits of why doing it. You talk about something in small towns called the third place. What's the third place? Well, in the 1980s, a sociologist came up with this concept. The first place is where you live. Second place is where you work. And third place is where you gather. And, you know, it's safe.

It's accessible. It's friendly. It's often free. And it's just where a place can come together. And, you know, I read those books. And I thought, opening the bookstore, I said, we want to be a third place. I mean, we entertained about 50 little people yesterday at our bookstore. We really, we've done a couple hundred events where we have all kinds of subjects and we bring people in.

It's a gathering place. And I think all towns should have those in their coffee shops. You know, some are Tim Hortons. But it's a place people come and gather. That's good. Why do you think they're critical for communities? I think it's kind of like a canary in the cave. If people aren't intermingling and just staying in their backyard and on Zoom all the time, it can't be healthy. I mean, the loneliness, you know, how many people feel lonely today how many people feel lonely today because they're in front of their phones or their computers.

It gets them out. They mingle. It's not always good. There's a book, 13 Ways to Kill Your City, that I read. And one of these says, I'm a big fan of coffee shops, but it says sometimes those people in coffee shops can just start spinning it and get angrier and angrier. So it's not always perfect, but any chance you can get people together enjoying stuff, learning stuff, that's a good idea. One of the things you say is that every great small town in Ontario has an independent bookshop. And we're going to show some pictures here. Sheldon, here's number four. This is beautiful. Furby House. Where's that one?

That's Port Hope. That's in Port Hope. That is a beautiful, that, and along with my bookstore, or our bookstore. Flip that over. This is a really pretty bookstore. Next picture, Sheldon? You recognize that place? That's the River Bookshop.

That is the River Bookshop in? In Amherstburg, Ontario. Who owns that? Richard Petty and Colleen. Black Dog Entertainment, actually. Black Dog Entertainment. And again, the significance of having an independent bookshop in a small town is what? Well, I just, again, it was my book, right?

One of my rules was to qualify for this book, you had to have an independent bookstore. And I just, it's, you know, I met all, it's often people that they own that building. In one case, the person was living above it. Or no, they usually lease. And it's important. Reading's important. I keep saying we're really pushing at the River Bookshop, doing a lot of work with kids, because I have this saying that if kids read books, they'll grow up to be better adults. So I just think having an independent bookstore, and none of them have the big bookstores, like Indigo or anything like that. So it's a gathering place. It's an education place.

It's a fun place. And our values are to educate, engage, inspire, and entertain. That's a bookstore. My hunch is a lot of people move from big cities to small towns because they want a simpler way of life. They kind of like the nostalgia that comes associated with small towns. And I guess I'm wondering, are you telling the people who run small towns or who live in small towns, you're doing it all wrong. You need to change. And here's how small towns need to change. There's no doubt that I'm giving them advice. But what am I saying? Protect your heritage buildings. Be dedicated to the arts. Put in bike lanes. You know, address climate change.

The things that I'm doing, I just think, make the towns better. It doesn't fundamentally change it. You know, we opened our bookstore four years ago, and then all the other stores that we opened, and then others started opening. The town has got more popular, busy. People love coming downtown, and it makes a better small town. Are the people who live in the small town already, are they suspicious of a guy who comes from Toronto and says, I'm going to help you? There's a portion that says, go back to Toronto.

Right. I wonder about that. Oh, they exist. There's no doubt about that. But they're the minority. Because now, I haven't done research on that. But anecdotally, I'm in the store all the time and I get stopped all the time. And almost the opening after we chat, I always ask their name and who they are. And they say, thank you so much for what you're doing for Amersburg. That is, I wish I'd kept score so I could move it from anecdotal to analytic that I have a sample size of a couple hundred, because in fact, I've had hundreds of people say that. How many properties do you think you have affected in Amherstburg? As in, just brought back to life, whatever. Okay, so there's now a popcorn store, a great little music store that I talk about in the book where she put in a garage door and she opens the

garage door and she had a big concert out of this little building on Friday night. There's one behind us. We don't have a hotel. We're trying to put one in, but we could stay in another hotel. There's a new hotel going in. She's restored a building. A woman just did a deal to bring in beaver tails. So there's about eight or nine new ones that have come up since we started. Downtown is now walkable because it's pretty and safe, but it has shops. And, you know, people are shopping local. So in a way, it's like a pebble in a lake.

You put the pebble in and the ripples go out. That's a good example. People cotton on to this. They do. All right. Let's, Sheldon, 14 here. Tell us what we're looking at here. This is Alamont with the Mississippi River going through, not that Mississippi.

Different Mississippi. And there's a water course. And it's just gorgeful. And again, if I'm saying the right things, they have a river walk that is the best. A lot of them have walks. All of them were pretty much on the water, which was something I found out afterwards. And this has got the most beautiful water walk. You didn't pick your number one best small town in Ontario. I think you kind of went out of your way to make sure that you didn't. But I mean, let's look here. All right. Coburg, Godrich, Port Hope, Huntsville, Elora, Perth, Almont, Picton, Amherstburg, your place, and Niagara-on-the-Lake. That's your top ten.

Do you want to say what number one is? No, I've stayed away from that, but there's three or four that, they're all special. Did I Like Alamont, which no one has heard of. It's amazing. I ask, have you heard of Alamont? Constantly, no one knows. But it's gorgeous. But so is Port Hope. Allure is beautiful.

It's more than a gorge. Niagara-on-the-Lake, I mean, wins all the prizes. I mean, it's got three theaters and it's got history that goes back hundreds of years and something like 11 hotels. It's a monster. I almost didn't put it in because it's so clearly special and big. And now they're wrestling with, you know, crowds that are huge and parking issues. But all 10 are worth visiting. Well, let's put these pictures up of Niagara-on-the-Lake because I know you didn't pick it as number one.

But let's face it, most people think I shouldn't say that. It won the award, I think, last year for best in Canada. Yeah, I mean, why don't you cycle through these, Sheldon? This is, you know, beautiful shot. This is Main Street. Main Street, Niagara-on-the-Lake, for sure, with that beautiful Campanile, as they say in Italian, that beautiful clock tower right in the middle of the town.

You know, horse and buggy. I mean, it all looks very special. Wine country. To get there, you get, you know, there's numerous wineries. And, you know, Picton, Amherstburg are all having wineries being developed around them. But they're well ahead. Beautiful hotel there. That hotel is, yeah, world famous hotel.

And is that it? We got any more pictures? That's the last one. Yeah. So it's pretty, I know you don't want to pick one, but it's pretty hard not to say Niagara-on-the-Lake. I'm not going to say that. You're not going to say it. What needs to happen, do you think, in this province for more of this to take place? More investment in small-town Ontario, more people thinking

differently about small-town Ontario, more people considering the possibilities of small-town Ontario? of small-town Ontario? We've got to protect their heritage. Bill 23 that's been coming in in January really endangers heritage properties. That's not great legislation. But I can tell you the legislation on heritage properties has been around since 77 or something.

And so they've all had a lot of time to do it, but they haven't done it. And so now they're vulnerable. So there's that. And you know, it's going to take, in Detroit, Dan Gilbert, who owns Cleveland Cavaliers, went in Detroit, bankrupt, first American city to go bankrupt, major American city to go bankrupt. And he stepped in with a vision. And Detroit's on a roll, but it took someone. He's a billionaire though. He's a billionaire. So Detroit's on a roll, but it took someone. He's a billionaire, though. He's a billionaire.

So I did well financially. I'm definitely not a billionaire. But I decided, Colleen and I decided to step in and invest in this town. So it needs people. It needs leadership. And I'd like to see that come from council. I think I met some great mayors. I talked to pretty much all of the mayors, some great mayors.

They're there. They've got to be champion. They have to be bold. They have to do their homework. They can't just listen to the loud naysayers. And then it helps if there's people like myself and Colleen that come in and say, you know, we're going to get behind this town. How do you split your time now in terms of Amherstburg versus Toronto?

Pretty much probably 80-20 Amherstburg. But when I come back to Toronto, I eat in a great restaurant every night. You do. So you really can't turn your back on the big city. No, no. I love the diversity here. These towns tend to old, and they're incredibly white, like 93% white. I was on the subway coming out here.

It's so diverse, so many different people. And the restaurants reflect that, and the people reflect that. And it's got the arts here. The art art gallery i'm a member of the art gallery i'm at the rom i mean there's just so much in big cities so i'm really fortunate that i get to enjoy both 50 years from now what do you want amherstburg or for that matter any other small town in ontario to look like i want it to kind of look like the same as it looks now um you know protected i like to have all these buildings, these heritage buildings protected in there. It was so great that Alamont kept all of theirs. Amherstburg, though, had a town hall and a big hotel, and they were all torn down. They've lost so much. So I'd like to see them protected. I'd like to see them have bike lanes. I hope that they and the whole world has addressed climate change so that we exist.

You know, I just, I think they can still be pretty special 50 years from now. Because most, I suspect a lot of people think it's too big for one person to do. But I guess your example is one person can get in there and make a difference. Yeah, and now I'm getting all kinds of help. My next door neighbor, Dan Jimmes,

is doing a big rib fest this week, and Laurie Barrett behind me wants the concept of retiring a street. She's championing closing a block of a street, which is, you see closed streets all through Europe. Montreal, the mayor of Montreal's done that. So there's people stepping up and it gives me comfort that we're not alone. Good stuff. It's a beautiful book and people should take the summer if they can. Take the summer, go around, visit lots of small towns. You know, it's a travelogue. A big part of it, 90 photographs, and it is a travelogue. And it's kind of timeless, but I think it'll be pretty relevant for a long time. Excellent. Great small towns of Ontario. And it's brought Richard Petty to the big city,

right in the middle of the big city, to talk about it. Richard, good to see you again. Always nice to be on this show. Thanks. The Agenda with Steve Paikin is made possible through generous philanthropic contributions from viewers like you. Thank you for supporting TVO's journalism.