It’s been over a month since we moved into our new home in the Sifton Centre.
The drive west down Oxford always hits me with a wave of nostalgia when I get to Oakridge Acres, Canada’s First Planned Community and one of my dad’s proudest achievements.
The design of this community was well before my time, in the fifties. My dad had just incorporated Sifton and the economy was in an upswing. Families were getting bigger and needed homes and communities built to last.
So my dad carefully planned out 74 acres worth of retail and residential space. He had put years of his heart and soul into this. Seeing it rise out of the mountain of crumpled sketches and blueprints in his wastebasket made him more proud than he could ever express.
To this day, Oakridge remains one of London’s most sought-after communities with its handsome 3+ bedroom family homes and bustling grocery stores, coffee shops, restaurants and access to the beautiful slice of nature that is the Sifton bog.
At first glance, West 5 and Oakridge Acres are drastically different. The technology of West 5 far exceeds that of Oakridge. But fundamentally, these two communities were founded on the same principles: quality residences, convenient commercial spaces, places to have fun and access to nature, all of which make up a community to be proud of.
The combination of our townhomes, farmers’ markets, coffee shops, parks and our proximity to the Kains Woods Trail gives us the same strong sense of community that is so apparent in Oakridge.
But of course, I can’t help but notice how different West 5 is. Even a little thing like the way the lighting in my new office adjusts automatically to the evening sun as I wrap up another eventful day reminds me of the environmental revolution we’ve undertaken. Everything feels different. The air feels different. It feels like something new.
And this is just the beginning.
