Sean and Rebecca O'Hara were taken aback when they arrived at their new house in west-end Toronto to find a neighbour had dug up their tree.
"I hope you don't mind," the neighbour said. He had moved it to another part of the garden to protect it from getting run over by the moving van. Then he offered to replant it in the original spot.
The O'Haras, who gave up their big house, big commute, pool and yard in suburban Caledon, Ont., for a more compact house and lifestyle in Bloor West Village, admit to being astonished by the congeniality of city neighbours compared with those they left behind.
"I thought people in the city would be more into their own thing," says Mr. O'Hara. "It's the very opposite to what I thought it would be."
The O'Haras were looking for a more lively environment for their three children, who range in age from 9 to 17.
"You buy the lifestyle here," says Ms. O'Hara. "This neighbourhood has a huge sense of community that we were unable to find in suburbia."
For real estate agent Nutan Brown of Royal LePage Real Estate Services Ltd., the circumstance the O'Haras describe is becoming surprisingly familiar. She helped find properties for two other families this summer who gave up monster homes in the suburbs for houses one-third to one-half the size in Toronto. Ms. Brown was struck by how similar their stories were: In each case the parents had grown weary of commuting, consuming, cleaning the pool and driving their kids to friends' houses.
"One family after another," says Ms. Brown, indicating her busy summer. "They all wanted to be in before the school year started."
Tom Poldre and Jane Lawton moved with their two sons from Oakville, Ont., to the Baby Point neighbourhood in west-end Toronto. Both parents work in central Toronto and found the commute draining.
"It was a lot of time on the GO train or sitting in the car," says Mr. Poldre.
The two also disliked the rigid GO train schedule and the search for a parking spot at the GO station in the morning. "When I leave my office now, I'm not saying, 'Oh my God, I've got to get the 5 o'clock,'" says Ms. Lawton.
Mr. Poldre and Ms. Lawton also sought more heterogeneity. "We were interested in their being exposed to different cultures and perspectives," she says of their teen-aged boys. "At both of their schools, there is a lot more diversity."
Now the family enjoys walking to dinner at El Arriero, a nearby Colombian restaurant, which offers more interesting ethnic dining than they typically found in Oakville.
The boys, Karl and Anton, haven't complained about giving up the swimming pool — they don't want to socialize at home anyway. And while they were worried about leaving friends behind, they now enjoy the independence of being able to walk to Bloor Street.
But Mr. Poldre and Ms. Lawton, who had lived in Hong Kong and Singapore before moving back to Canada about nine years ago, also wanted to cut back on their consumption of just about everything.
Ms. Lawton is executive director of the Toronto branch of the Jane Goodall Institute. The institute supports wildlife research and conservation, and Ms. Lawton was finding her ecological footprint increasingly hard to justify.
"We had way more space than we actually needed," she says. "There was a lot of energy being sucked up by our family."
The family downsized from 2,500 square feet to 1,700. Ms. Lawton recalls that for days after they learned that their offer on the new house had been accepted, she kept asking, "What have we done?"
"I was quite panicked afterwards — it was my indicator that I had stayed far too long in one place. I believe in change — that's how you grow. That's how your life stays interesting."
