Reflection on Growing Up in Orléans

I was looking through comments on the community association Facebook group, and I wanted to address some comments. There are a number of people who seem to be of my parents’generation who have a vision of a quaint Orléans that was idyllic to raise a family. I thought it would be good to reflect on growing up in the suburbs. Was Orléans in the 80s and 90s indeed a great place to grow up, and, if it was, are the elements that made it so still present today.

Growing up, there were a number of kids around my age on my street, and we would often play outside. It was mostly the neighbour’s kids who were a bit older than me. I remember switching between the two brothers as my best friend on the street, depending on how our interests evolved and aligned at different times in our lives. I remember us biking to parks as far as Marcel Bériault (they had a rare splash pad) by ourselves (not sure what age), and, when we were older (13ish?), walking to an arcade near the current Royal Oak to play pool. I also remember the adults congregating in a neighbour’s driveway in the evening to talk and have a drink while thekids played outside. Overall, life on my street was pretty good when I was growing up.

Today, I have kids, and I have to say that things have changed. My kids do not have kids living next door. They are not able to simply walk out of the house, ring a doorbell, and have someone to hang out with for a few hours. Most of my neighbours are retired couples, older families, or households with no kids. I grew up during the echo of the Baby Boom at a time when Orléans was new and filled with young families. Now, young families are in Avalon, Fallingbrook, or the city’s exurbs. The kids in Orléans do not live in Convent Glen Orléans Wood. You can see it in the data. The concentration of children living in Convent Glen Orléans Wood is only 15.5% compared to 22.8% in Avalon and 18% in Navan-Sarsfield. That’s a lot fewer kids for my kids to play with, which means they’ll have to go beyond their front yard to socialize with other kids. Another thing that I don’t see is adults socializing with neighbours. Having kids who play in front of the house brings out parents who socialize there. There are a lot fewer eyes on the street than there were when I was a kid. It used to be that one or two parents could socialize while watching the kids from several different households, taking turns. Today, if your kids are playing outside, you are looking after them, and, since there are often no kids around, you have to play with them. It removes many opportunities for unstructured play that is not only more enjoyable for the kids, but also much better for their development. This also puts a lot more stress on parents. Life in the neighbourhood is now a lot worse than it used to be when I was a kid, so kids have to go further to spend time with their friends and require a lot more parental involvement.

Since kids now have to go farther to find friends, it is increasingly important that transportation becomes kid-friendly. This is why I was upset when people in Manor Park tried to prevent building sidewalks, citing that they did not need them when they had kids. The situation has changed. Kids need to be able to go further to meet their social needs, and that requires, at a bare minimum, sidewalks on residential streets. This is exacerbated by the fact that vehicles are becoming much bigger and more dangerous for kids. While our roads are safer than they were 20 years ago, this is due to better infrastructure that was not present in our community when it was built in the 1980s, and to automated speed enforcement, which was removed in 2025 by the Ford Government. Since the roads are not safe for kids to get around on their own, parents are forced to drive their kids everywhere, which adds even more traffic to our streets, making it less safe for the kids. We need to break the vicious cycle. When I was a kid, my parents had no problem with me roaming around Orléans on my bike. Today, parents have good reasons to keep their kids at home, especially since they have things to do at home, and kids can’t safely roam around our neighbourhood. Even if it wasn’t about safety, parents can risk having their children taken away if they let them have the freedom they need to have a healthy social life. So today, kids in Orléans are more likely to be on their screens than experiencing the world like we did in the 80s. 

If we want to make Orléans as great a place for kids as it was in the 80s, we need to do two things: increase the number of kids, and make it safer for them to get around. To increase the number of kids, we need more places for young families. This means that older couples who are overhoused but want to stay in the community they love need housing options that better meet their needs, such as condos. We can also build denser housing, which could be bought by young families who are now looking for more affordable housing elsewhere. It has to be denser since we do not have room for more single-family homes in our neighbourhood. We also need to develop a transportation system that is safe enough for our kids, so they can visit their friends without relying on their parents to drive.

I grew up in Orléans in the 80s, and I understand when older people say that it was a great place to raise a family. I disagree with their conclusion that Orléans needs to stay the same. The world has changed since Baby Boomers raised their children here, and we need to adapt our community to address that change.