Welcome to The Shwa

It has become so easy to knock the old girl down.

I go to work and I have to hear my redneck buddies from North of 7 razz her. I go back to the old neighbourhood in Toronto and I hear the jokes. Whitby snickers, Ajax feels just a little bit superior.

The small towns like Bowmanville and Uxbridge are more than happy to send their citizens down here to work. But they wouldn’t want to actually live here. Even Hamilton … okay, Hamilton doesn’t say much, actually. But they get to make fun of Buffalo.

Try googling the ‘Shwa’ (or if you’re feeling adventurous, the ‘Dirty Shwa’), and you get all kinds of offensive posts from the bizarre to the ridiculous. Sorry, nothing sublime here, unless you consider this ‘definition’ from the Urban Dictionary to be a backhanded compliment:

The city of Oshawa, Ontario, a city east of Toronto.  Known for its car and truck factories and the largest crack deals per capita in Canada.

I’m going to assume that the trolls who contribute to Urban Dictionary and other similar online sites are outsiders, but I can’t be sure of that. My friend Cindy, who works in economic development for the City of Oshawa and would know this, has told me more than once that when it comes to self-flagellation, we are often our own worst enemy.

Oshawa residents, if they’re not crapping on their fair city themselves, are perpetuating the myths about the downtown, the south end and everyone who lives in between.

Enough already.  Promise me that if we survive the End of the World today you’ll stop dumping on the Shwa.

Oshawa is a great town filled with outstanding people. I know a whole bunch of them. I’ve been here since 1994 and the city has changed dramatically since then. When I got here it was a whitebread, burgers and pizza kind of place, with the spectre of The Motors shutting down looming over us each day. It was also one the largest cities in Ontario without a university of its own.

Nearly 20 years later Oshawa is a booming, cosmopolitan, shawarma and sushi kind of place that still makes damn good burgers and pizza. GM’s footprint has shrunk over the years but it still produces great cars and we welcomed our first university a decade ago, with UOIT bringing with it new ideas, new visions and a wealth of intellectual capital.

Welcome to my Oshawa. It's a helluva great town.