Interview on October 18th @ City Hall

This interview was done on October 18th, 2011.  The assignment was to interview anyone you wanted and write a story with tht person incorporated into it.  I thought that with all the new developments going on within the city of Pickering, I thought the best person to ask was the mayor himself.

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Pickering, Ontario has seen some drastic changes over the last eight years because our present mayor Dave Ryan knows there is more to come in our city’s future.

“Roughly a million people are suppose to come into the GTA over the next 25 years, and we are going to get our share of that.”


And he’s right. Approximately 60,000 people will be moving to Pickering, making it a challenge on the mayor and council to make room for everyone.

“We are already seeing people moving out of the condominium development in Toronto and moving into single family homes.” With all the growth that has happened to the west and the north of Toronto, Durham Region is the next place for growth to happen, the mayor is expecting it.“Pickering is the first municipality in the eastern region, so we know that this is the growth area for the next decade.”


Responsible growth is the first layer to this Scarborough born mayor’s two main points to his platform. He and his council are working on figuring the best way to help those future residents. “What that means to us is that we have to find a way to best manage that growth. What built form is that going to go into; residential lots, single family homes, semi detached townhouses? What portions and responsible housing are they going to want?”


A much known example of this is shy west of the downtown core, on Bayly Street. The new “San Francisco by the Bay” condominium and town home community is in production, but not everyone agreed that this was “responsible growth”. “The toughest issue we have dealt with is trying to get the city to agree with what we feel would benefit them. When we started to build the ‘San Francisco by the Bay’...not everyone thought that was responsible growth.”


Business development is the second layer to Dave Ryan’s platform, which he says is a major component to responsible growth. “The real job of this council...is going to bring jobs to support those new residents. It doesn’t make any sense to have 60,000 people move in and not be able to employ a good portion of them.” Ryan added, “If people have to leave Pickering to go and work somewhere it puts a huge strain on our infrastructure, a transportation structure in particular.


To help with this future problem, council has helped local businesses expand. Dave Ryan doesn’t want to see history repeat itself. “We had a company in the office towers on the corner of Liverpool and Pickering Parkway called ClearNet. They told the council at the time that they needed to expand and if we couldn’t do it, they were going to move.” At the time Pickering didn’t have the money to expand, so the company moved, and years later they turned into Telus. “Imagine the business development we should have had if they stayed in Pickering.”


Mr. Ryan never stops thinking about his own family when he’s changing the once unknown town. “When I’m doing what I’m doing here in the city, thinking about growing it and thinking about the things that are needed to be done, I quite often find myself thinking about what that’s going to mean for my grandkids and the future generation.”