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Guy Anderson, president of the Leslieville Historical Society, doesn’t see the neighbourhood’s changes as a bad thing, as long as the area’s history can be preserved.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail

Last spring, the iconic Weston bakery – which for decades had perfumed Leslieville with its yeasty yellow loaves – ceased operations. In a narrative turn that has become familiar to the city's dwellers in the past handful of years, the Eastern Avenue site is destined to become home to a mixed-use building containing some 260 residential units. It's one of an expanding bevy of condominiums the scrappy east-end community has seen in progress or recently completed of late; the neighbourhood is densifying, as neighbourhoods will. This change is coinciding with efforts by some local residents to grab hold of memories from the past.

"There seems to be a sincere desire to know where Leslieville came from, and the history of the area in which they live," says Guy Anderson, fourth-generation Leslieviller and president of the Leslieville Historical Society, which hosted its inaugural meeting in October. Around a dozen area residents were in attendance for this first gathering, where they discussed ways in which they would celebrate the area's past by disseminating stories and designating historical landmarks with new plaques. With the intensification of area development, preservation is at the top of many people's minds.

But change isn't necessarily seen as a harbinger of doom by Mr. Anderson and company, or a cabal of local business owners who are welcoming the demographic shift. Steve Reynolds, who has lived in Leslieville for nearly a decade and has owned and operated Ed's Real Scoop ice cream shop for the past six years, is optimistic about the influx of new residents.

"For a business it's great to have more people in the neighbourhood," says Mr. Reynolds. "The only fear would be, and I'm sure a lot of business owners share this, is fear of rent increases. But the city is always going to be growing and changing and you have to evolve with your neighbourhood."

Mr. Reynolds doesn't see the transition as particularly jarring. It's been gradual, and hardly alarming. While he's lived in other areas around the city, it's Leslieville that's always felt most like a unified community. Residents are open and friendly, and the faces are familiar. While the increase of new dwellers is likely to change that small-town-

within-a-city feel, Mr. Reynolds is optimistic about the area's warm character staying true.

Doug Tiller, owner of Queen East's Mercury Espresso café and a bar called Hitch, bought a house in the area nearly eight years ago and his young son has been Leslieville born-and-raised. While he will attest to the area's vibe having changed since he set up shop and residence in the area nearly a decade ago, he chalks it up to a rise in young families.

"When you get tired of the bars, you move east," Mr. Tiller says, suggesting that Leslieville is turning into a destination for thirty-something professionals as opposed to its west-end counterpart in gentrifying grit, Parkdale, which he suggests appeals more to twenty-something bohemians. Leslieville is where you go to settle down, buy a house – occasionally even affordably – and start a family.

Mr. Tiller notes that he's heard whispers of the neighbourhood's gentrification, but he doesn't necessarily see that as a negative development. "I wouldn't like to see it littered with chain stores, but I like that it's getting more restaurants and bars."

Besides, Mr. Tiller is quick to point out, Leslieville has still definitely got a ring of sweat around its collar. While the people moving into the neighbourhood might represent a more yuppie class than the denizens of old, the area is still home to an economically diverse populace that's hard to come by elsewhere in the city, thanks in part to houses kept within the same family across multiple generations. Plainly, he says: "It's not Rosedale or the Annex."

Still, not all east-enders are viewing Leslieville's growth through rose-tinted glasses. Carly Maga, who recently moved from Queen and Logan west across the Don River into Cabbagetown, says she noticed a change in scenery around the time that a local watering hole was priced out of its Queen East digs in early 2013. Her boyfriend, an area restaurant server, had begun noticing that his regular customers "were no longer interested in having the kind of relationship he used to have with them," a contrast to the congenial rapport he'd observed in the past.

"And I was no longer interested in living in a crappy apartment because it was surrounded by fancy new sandwich shops," Ms. Maga says. The charm that had once appealed about the neighbourhood seemed to have been lost.

But the members of the Leslieville historical society would likely disagree. Mr. Anderson points out that his meetings have drawn residents both new and old to the area, representing a variety of professions (Mr. Anderson himself works in banking) and age groups.

"Some of the formative events of Canada's history happened in Leslieville," he says, citing specifically Alexander Muir's writing of The Maple Leaf Forever, which took place in the area and catalyzed the trademark leaf as an early national symbol. It's a history that everyone can appreciate.

And, though change is undeniably at hand, the neighbourhood's ties are strong. "There are different businesses, but the people are still the same," Mr. Reynolds says. "It still feels like home to me."

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