Small town, big dreams

Will growth in Lindsay and Kawartha Lakes overwhelm our sense of community or can we take steps to preserve it?

For almost 120 years, locals and visitors alike have been gathering for food and fellowship at the Olympia restaurant in downtown Lindsay. It is not unusual for the staff to address you on a first-name basis – and if you’re at all a regular, the servers might even know what you are going to order to drink.

Similar scenes play out at the popular Kindred Coffee Bar, a short walk to the west. Here too, the affable team behind the counter seem to call many of their guests by their first names. Impromptu reunions between old friends are not uncommon at the aptly named Kindred, and a short coffee break can easily turn into a good hour or more of catching up.

Both Kindred and the Olympia are surrounded by historic buildings gracing a main street that, with only a few exceptions, retains much of its Victorian charm. Pedestrians make their way along the sidewalk, sometimes stopping to chat. On multiple levels, these scenes are indicative of what we might imagine when we hear the term “small town.”

Take a 10-minute drive to the south, however, and a very different story is unfolding. Highway 7 is being widened to accommodate an increasing influx of traffic, with the ubiquitous golden arches of the town’s second McDonald’s towering above one of the main arteries into Lindsay. Meanwhile, the steady rumble of earth-moving machinery heralds new residential developments on the east and west flanks of town.

Is this the harbinger of things to come? Will Lindsay one day resemble Barrie, Markham, Newmarket, and other communities where sprawl has overwhelmed what were once little towns surrounded by farmland? Will our historic downtown streetscape drown beneath a forest of high-rises? Will we grow so much that we no longer know one another on a first-name basis?

In short, will we cease to be a “small town?”

And how do we define a small town anyway? Is it just about population – or is there something more to it than that? Are those who question the wisdom of growth merely dewy-eyed romantics, rallying around the cry of “not in my backyard!”? Or might they be raising legitimate concerns?

The small town in popular imagination

Lindsay has been wrestling with these questions for decades. An editorial in the March 21, 1956, edition of the Lindsay Daily Post offers some instructive insights about how citizens felt about their small town almost 70 years ago:

“These persons enjoy the personal relationship which exists in a town the size of Lindsay where it is possible to walk down the street and not feel (like) a stranger. They like the idea of being able to get to and from work with great ease…no traffic snarls to fray their tempers and no long jaunts by bus or trolley; they enjoy their proximity to home, and when the season is right, lake or stream; they prefer a smaller place where air pollution (so much discussed today in larger centres) is not uncontrollable; they bask in the luxury of being able to get home for lunch without too much hustle and bustle and they find there is sufficient activity to make for a well-balanced life.”

When that editorial appeared, Lindsay was on the cusp of significant growth. Three years before, outgoing Mayor Charles Lamb was predicting that Lindsay would outgrow its image as a small community: “The Town of Lindsay is no longer a small town…we are now in big business,” an optimistic Lamb told reporters in 1953. “Lindsay is a great town. You can’t stop it from being a city. I predict that in five years the population of Lindsay will be 18,000.”

Lindsay’s population now sits at more than 22,000 – but that figure could double in 10 years or so, as Mayor Doug Elmslie told the Advocate in May. This is “going to start happening, out to the year 2031, where we can expect that the town of Lindsay itself will probably double in size,” said Elmslie.

Growth is inevitable. If we treasure those things enumerated in the Post’s editorial from 1956, what are we doing to preserve and celebrate them – even as we grow in population and geography?

Preserving the small-town look

One of the first definitions that comes to mind when we think of small towns might be an aesthetic definition – what does its downtown core and immediate vicinity look like? For many of us, small towns aren’t filled with skyscrapers and strip malls jostling for space with 150-year-old storefronts.

To ensure that new development doesn’t unduly compromise the look and feel of the attractive downtowns that are heavily promoted in tourist literature, Kawartha Lakes relies on its municipal heritage committee (of which this writer is a member) and heritage planning staff to provide the appropriate guidance to decision-makers.

“The preservation of local heritage, both by municipalities and by local residents and community organizations, is vital to preserving the different places and spaces that define a community as a small town and speak to its unique history and identity,” says Emily Turner, who serves as the heritage planner for the city. “This can include the designation of important heritage buildings and areas, like distinctive main streets and downtowns, as well as telling and preserving local stories and sharing them with both old and new residents and visitors alike.”

There are, then, guardrails built into the planning process to ensure that this aesthetic definition of the small town is kept at the forefront of decisions around development. Still, a designated downtown streetscape does not a small town make. So how else might we define the term?

Connection and Hospitality

For many people, as that 69-year-old editorial suggests, a small town is not something that can be defined merely by pointing to population statistics or even the picturesque appearance of its main street. It is rather something more elusive and intangible – a sense of connection, perhaps, or belonging that is not always obvious in larger communities.

Kristy Gordon grew up in Bobcaygeon and later relocated to Toronto, where she enjoyed a great career in the publishing business. Life in the big city had its advantages – but Gordon eventually felt that something was missing, something that her urban lifestyle wasn’t satisfying.

“Every day was the same,” she recalls. “I got up and went to work and came home. I lived in an apartment with a cat. I didn’t even know my neighbours. I had work friends and a few friends from university but that was it. I didn’t really do anything that mattered, I had loose connections to people and while there was always a restaurant or a bar or a show to go and see, what was really the point?”

Looking for a change, Gordon went into teaching and ended up on the faculty of LCVI in Lindsay. “It might not offer all the diversity and excitement of a big city, but I think that what we have is just as important and it’s not until you are older that you realize this,” Gordon observes of her adopted hometown. “We have the safety of knowing our neighbours. This is a place where you can put down roots and develop connectivity and those things become precious as you get older.”

For Victoria Shepherd, hospitality is a powerful indicator of what constitutes a small town.

“For me, a small town is a place where people are friendly, traffic is patient, and there are all manner of delightful things going on,” says Shepherd, who in 2025 was hired as the general manager of the Academy Theatre. “I think there will always be growing pains – increased traffic, higher real estate prices – but I think and hope that the reason Lindsay is growing is that those unique qualities make this small town so inviting.  I think small towns have a reputation for being welcoming and this will be a huge foundation to keeping Lindsay so special even as it grows.”

Shepherd is trying to ensure that the theatre will continue to embody those small-town traits. “We are doing this by creating a welcoming space for everyone in the community, by offering discounted rental rates to high schools and not-for-profit community groups, and by producing shows that offer opportunities for our community members to participate in, both on and offstage,” she says.

Change and Uncertainty

Despite the efforts of Shepherd and others to ensure that these intangible qualities of small-town life aren’t lost in the vortex of growth, others are worried.

For Penni Holdham, her concerns revolve around both the dilution of a small-town aesthetic and what this might mean for quality of life. “I do very much hope that Fenelon Falls does not morph into some version of Newmarket with no backyards or spaces for kids to play at home,” says Holdham of her community. “This commitment (on the part of developers) to mega-mansions with two-car garages and no open space is so not the scene of a rural community.”

Increasing traffic is another concern among those who value small town life. One of the qualities of small towns enumerated in that 1956 editorial is the fact that they are especially well-suited to pedestrians: “They like the idea of being able to get to and from work with great ease…no traffic snarls to fray their tempers and no long jaunts by bus or trolley.”

The Advocate spoke with Vicky Kiegelman, a resident of Barrie who grew up in Lindsay. She has watched over the years as Barrie has grown in all directions. For her, downtown Barrie has become almost too busy for those who enjoy strolling. (In fact, some estimates have Barrie’s population expected to jump to nearly 300,000 by 2051.)

For Gordon, the retired teacher, she is not Pollyanna about the city growing larger. “It’s so important to the life of a small town to have growth,” says Gordon. “But uncontrolled growth can lead to many problems and those we are starting to see. Population growth without growth of infrastructure is a problem.”

A small town still?

Back in downtown Lindsay, the clatter and rumble of heavy equipment engaged in highway-widening work and the cacophony of traffic on Kent Street takes a back seat to the sweet din of conversation in the booths at the Olympia, and the tables at Kindred, as friends gather to relax in public.

Such places are necessary to sustaining our understanding of what it means to be a small town, observes Richard Gauder, co-founder of 100 Men Kawartha Lakes.

“The essence of the small-town feel is rooted in connectedness, a sense of belonging, and a close-knit community where people know and rely on each other,” he says. “We need more ‘third places’ – not work or home. People need to proactively get involved both in their neighbourhood and the town.”

If we can manage to do this – as a municipality, as businesses, as cultural institutions, and as individual citizens – then we may yet hold fast to a small-town vibe well into the future.