What's in a name?

A recent conversation with an old friend got me thinking about place identity. He grew up in Brockton, which is a rough-around-the-edges West Toronto neighbourhood with a large Portuguese population. I had been spending some time in the area, taking pictures and exploring its colourful streets of short blocks, small lots and houses built right to the sidewalk.

When I mentioned my recent wanderings to my friend, his response was, "Brockton? What do you mean? I grew up in Parkdale." His house was at the upper end of the historic subdivision of Brockton, on the eponymous Brock Street that forms the north-south axis of the village and a good distance from the proverbial tracks which separate the neighbourhood from Parkdale. His response made me wonder how many residents would identify their neighbourhood by its historic name and how many would tend toward a larger attractor, like Parkdale, or Bloor West.

This is perfectly understandable. Beyond the city's printing of Village of Brockton 1888 on the major street signs, the name is not in common usage. Although Brockton was parceled out from the same land as Parkdale, it was intended to be a residential area for the working class who toiled in neighbourhood factories. As such, it lacks a grand (if faded) thoroughfare like Queen St. and many of the cultural institutions that have strengthened Parkdale's identity. Over the years, of course, Parkdale acquired quite a different reputation from its putative, genteel aspirations, but I'll save that for another post. Suffice it to say, Brockton never really established itself in the city's collective mind, nor perhaps, among its residents.

The irony is that Brockton is physically more identifiable than many other neighbourhoods. Kevin Lynch called this the 'imageability' of a place: how well it was visualized and mentally mapped. In this regard, my street, near Roncesvalles Ave. in west Parkdale, looks a lot like many other Edwardian streets in Toronto. It is very long and contains a mix of modest and more commodious middle-class houses, and in the summer the canopy of maples and oaks forms a leafy corridor. It is a lovely street, but it could be almost anywhere south of Bloor St. between Spadina Ave and High Park. Brockton, on the other hand, has small lots and truncated, crooked little streets. The railway tracks that bound its south end inform the block pattern, creating odd-shaped lots and undefined spaces. Many of the houses were built on speculation, but it often requires a keen eye to discern such developments, as the ensuing years and owners have drastically modified them. The influence of Portuguese ownership is everywhere, with angel-brick, wrought iron, stucco and tiles adding an eclectic palette absent elsewhere in Toronto. Narrow laneways crisscross the neighbourhood, and many contain small dwellings or converted industrial buildings. And because the lots are small, the houses are built close to the property line, giving the built environment a presence and providing a sense of enclosure. The human scale dominates and the resultant urban spaces are at once surprising and intimate.

So what's in a name?

A recent poll to select one for another West Toronto neighbourhood points to the fact that many people indeed take such matters seriously. Realtors have known this for a long time, and the efforts of the South Junctioners or Trianglians, or whatever they ultimately decide to call themselves should not be mistaken as a project of artificiality. On the contrary, like our own names, the moniker we choose for our place of residence is highly associative and deepens our connection to where we live. The neighbourhood might have nothing to do with Sir Isaac Brock, the hero of the War of 1812, but it has everything to do with those little lots and short blocks laid out as the Village of Brockton.