URBAN VS. SUBURBAN?

"Once upon a time, more than three decades back, this newspaper employed a reporter named Tim Padmore.

Padmore was a scientist by training but a writer by choice, gifted in transforming the complex issues of a new-fangled thing called environmentalism into highly readable stories.

He was the quintessential brainiac nutty professor, spirited and perpetually dishevelled, often sporting breakfast in his beard.

He was different, too, in that he commuted to South Granville by bicycle, usually showing up for work red-faced and sopping wet from a downpour.

Padmore, you see, lived with his young family in Richmond, where he built a funky house and liked to do good for nature, then something of a novelty this side of the Gulf Islands."...