Standing on the stern of the Ward’s Island ferry on a recent sunny summer’s day, Grant Oyston gazed back at the Toronto skyline, one of his favourite sights in the world. He has spent 13 years so far trying to make this view his own.
Today, the 34-year-old technical sales consultant continues his long quest to land one of the coveted island properties and live there full-time. After more than a decade on the Toronto Island purchasers’ list, he has already been offered one house and lost out. Now, he waits.
According to the Toronto Islands Residential Community Trust website, the list is capped at 500 names; members pay an annual $50 renewal fee to stay on the list. Even though 15 to 20 drop out every year, it’s not uncommon for people to wait decades for a house to become available; only 70 homes have been sold since the list started in 1994. “When a house and lease come up for sale, the Trust usually sends offers to the top 150 to 250 people on the list,” the website states. “Buyers are normally found within the first 100 names, but on occasion properties have been bought by numbers as far down as 196.” They sell an average of one to two houses per year. (The Trust did not respond to a request for comment.) Pricing is based on an appraisal of the construction cost of the building. There is no haggling; if one person doesn’t want it, the city moves onto the next.
In 2013, Oyston’s mom saw an ad in The Toronto Star announcing the opening of the list. In those days, the city only opened it when a minimum number of spots needed to be filled (now, it opens every two years in October).
Oyston’s interest began with his visits to Centre Island as a kid. But it wasn’t until he started going to his high school’s end-of-the-year island trip that he really began to yearn for a life on the islands. “Imagining what it would be like to stay overnight, after the last ferry, in this idyllic, beautiful place, and to see the sunrise over the skyline the next morning?” he says. “That’s when the idea of living on the island really started to take hold.” There’s a lottery draw to get on the list — and Oyston, then 21, was picked the first year he applied.
Soon, many of Oyston’s friends began pestering him for updates on his list progress, so in 2017, he began posting annual announcements on Facebook. Now, roughly 100 people from all over the world follow his progress every year. He debuted on the list in 2013 at #487, then moved into the 300s come 2019. Over the next five years, he moved up another 66 places. Many people have told him that his update is now an annual tradition for them, too: “I realized how serious people were when I started getting messages of concern any year an update didn’t materialize at the usual time.”
Over the years, his love for the islands has only grown. He bikes around, stopping for the occasional dip or to set up his hammock and read; he’s even traversed them on skis in the winter. The several hundred homes and their residents remain a favourite. “The residential community, to me, is a huge part of what makes it special: this small group of determined people are the caretakers of the islands’ longstanding spirit of independence and contribute a creative flair,” Oyston says. It’s sometimes been fashionable to complain about the privilege of the island residents and the costs of providing services on the island, according to Oyston, with some wanting them converted to parkland. “But the islands have a unique and resilient cultural heritage all their own, with their own traditions and festivals,” he says.
Last August, the call finally came. A newly renovated house on Algonquin Island was up for sale: $1,004,244 for the house, $90,931 to lease the land. “I’d been told that it’s rare for a home to be offered past the top 250 people, but this was a larger-than-average house, and I suspect many people near the top of the list may now be retired, and not looking to move into such a big house,” Oyston says. He also had to face the possibility of contending with the unique quirks of living on the island in the socially active years of his mid-thirties versus the potentially sleepier decades of his sixties or seventies, from leaving every party early to catch the last ferry home to the lack of pizza delivery. Even finding a mortgage lender willing to work with island buyers took dozens of emails and phone calls. He went for it anyway.
In the end, the house went to #254. Oyston was heartbroken, but he has hope, even if he hasn’t budged from #331 since last year. To Oyston, the islands exemplify what makes Toronto special, Toronto at its best: a community that cherishes its green space and waterfront, he says, one of fascinating people living together harmoniously, not dependent on cars, and safe and welcoming to children and animals. It is, he feels, “the idealized Toronto that Toronto can aspire to be — a tiny utopic vision of Toronto’s past, present and future.” He plans on staying on the list as long as it takes. “Every year I live in supreme fear of forgetting to send in my annual renewal fee,” he jokes.
And if his dream comes true, Oyston wants to throw a week-long housewarming party for all the people who have been cheering him on for years — maybe decades, by that point — celebrating together, how he is home.
