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For some commuters, the dream job in Toronto balances the dream retreat in the country, and they will spend a lifetime bridging the gulf between the two. Gary Pattison loves the country store he and his wife Lillian Oakley-Pattison operate in northern Hastings County, but he also loves his jobs in Toronto, where he is principal horn for the National Ballet of Canada Orchestra and second horn for the Canadian Opera Company Orchestra. Skilled musicians do not give up those kinds of jobs easily. From home to Toronto it’s a three-hour drive, longer if there’s snow, but he’s been doing it for 31 years two or three times a week. He has an apartment in Toronto to give him shelter in the big city. The practicality of a daily commute to Toronto peters out somewhere east of Cobourg. It’s possible, but it eats up a great deal of your life. Municipalities just beyond easy commuting distance to Toronto play up their attractiveness as an alternative place to live – always mindful of the fact that you’re living “two hours from Toronto” (a bit of a stretch). The trick is to reverse your thinking. Instead of wondering how you can keep your TO job and live in paradise, you simply decide you ARE going to live in paradise and find ways to make it work. Your lifestyle defines your work, not the other way around. So it was for Richard Johnston – he thought. Currently he and his wife Vida operate a winery called By Chadsey’s Cairns near Wellington, Prince Edward County, but followers of Ontario politics may remember him as the MPP for Scarborough West and a contender for the leadership of the provincial New Democratic Party in the 1980s. When a heart attack knocked him down in 1984, he decided he had had enough of politics. Raised on a farm near Peterborough, he had al-
ways wanted to return to rural living. After politics, the road to the country wove its way through academia and led to the presidency of the First Nations Technical Institute (FNTI) on the Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory east of Belleville. Here was his opportunity. He and Vida bought a 250-acre farm near the south shore of Prince Edward County. Grapes and vines and wines were nowhere in his
Instead of wondering how you can keep your TO job and live in paradise, you simply decide you ARE going to live in paradise and find ways to make it work. head until the FNTI relationship dissolved. Now he was faced with the classic professional’s dilemma: stranded in a beautiful house in the country with no means to support it. “There was not much possibility of finding a way to make a living here,” he says. Then Centennial College in Scarborough offered him the presidency. He accepted on condition that the post would be temporary and he did not need to move from the County. The same year he accepted the presidency, he planted 20 acres of grapevines. The winery is now up for sale and Richard, 71, is more than ready to retire. He knows exactly where
he’s going: to a little stone cottage in the village of Lonsdale, northeast of Belleville, miles away from the Ontario Legislature, academia and grapevines. Usually new entrepreneurs are younger. Check out the website for the County of Hastings and you’ll find a section titled “I Left the City”. It’s a collection of filmed interviews with 30-ish entrepreneurs who have started an odd collection of enterprises in the small towns and rural communities of eastern Ontario. Alysha Dominico and her partner operate a company called Tangible Words. It’s a marketing consulting company, similar to one they had owned in Melbourne, Australia. But the two Canadians decided to return to their native land and open a new business here. Unable to choose between locating in Toronto or in Ottawa, they chose a lakeside cottage north of Belleville. To their delight, the company works quite well from the lakeside. Through the Internet their clients can be anywhere – and they have no plans to move elsewhere. Kasey Rogerson, tourism development co-ordinator for the County of Hastings, says the county gears its entrepreneurial appeal to people who have perhaps grown up in the area and gone to the city to gain experience. Now in their 40s or 50s, they want to return to their roots and spend their lives in a quieter rural neighbourhood. “Early retirees are among them, looking for easier work to do and maybe opportunities to do volunteer work.” Hastings is still relatively unknown to Metro dwellers because it has not enjoyed as much media publicity as has been bestowed on Prince Edward County. The vineyards and sunny beaches of the County have sparked numerous Toronto media stories, and the County in return is trying to build on them to attract “small-scale entrepreneurs and creative economy-based businesses.”
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