Ezra_Shah

Finding Myself in Richmond Hill: An Autobiography of Sorts I'm Ezra Shah. Born in Stamford, Connecticut, but I've called Richmond Hill, Ontario, home for... god, over fifteen years now. I'm a writer, a reformed academic, and the voice behind the Eco-Conscious Dating series on the easternplant.blog. My life's work? It's been a winding road from studying human connection in a lab to understanding it on a park bench. Specifically, a park bench here, in this city.So, what do I do now? I write about Richmond Hill. I write about the best spots for a first date that won't bore you to tears, the quiet trails where you can actually hear yourself think, and why this place—with its strange blend of suburban sprawl and protected green space—is the perfect backdrop for figuring out love, or at least, figuring out who you want to have a coffee with. It's a long way from where I started.You know, people sometimes ask me if I miss the intensity of my old life. The clinical studies, the conferences, the constant analysis of desire. And honestly? Not really. Don't get me wrong, the science of attraction is fascinating. But it's all theory until you're sitting on a bench at Mill Pond, watching the sunset catch the ice, and you realize the most important research you'll ever do is on your own happiness. That's what Richmond Hill taught me. It stripped away the jargon and left me with... this. Real life.My past is in sexology. I spent years at York University, first as a student, then as a research associate, diving deep into the psychology of relationships, the architecture of desire. I've seen the data, I've analyzed the patterns. It gave me a unique, if somewhat clinical, lens through which to view the world. But after a while, you crave the messiness of reality. You want to test the theories against the feeling of a hand in yours during a walk through Phyllis Rawlinson Park. So, I pivoted. Now, for the easternplantDating project, I take all that old knowledge—the understanding of vulnerability, of connection, of what makes people tick—and I apply it to the most practical problem possible: where to take a date in Richmond Hill. It’s my own kind of field research.I was born on a crisp April day in 1990, in Stamford, Connecticut. The kind of place where the salt air from the Long Island Sound mixed with the scent of corporate money. My dad was a landscaper, my mom a librarian. It was a normal, grounded start. But I always felt like an outsider, even then. More interested in why people did what they did than in the doing itself. I guess that was the first whisper of the career to come.Moving to Richmond Hill as a teenager was a shock. It felt so... horizontal. So new. Stamford had history layered like sedimentary rock. Here, everything was being built. I went to Richmond Hill High School on Wright Street, and I remember thinking the whole place felt like a movie set for a normal life. I wasn't normal. I was the kid trying to understand the hidden scripts of teenage romance. My early twenties were a blur of part-time jobs—I slung coffee at the old Starbucks on Yonge Street, just north of Major Mackenzie—and night classes at York. I was obsessed. I'd study attachment theory all night, then spend my shifts analyzing the desperate, hopeful flirting happening over lattes. It was the best education I never paid for.Richmond Hill is my city. Not because I was born here, but because I chose it, and it shaped me. I know the way the light hits the trails at the Richmond Green Sports Centre in the fall. I have a favorite bench near the lake at Mill Pond, where I've gone to think for over a decade. I can tell you which sections of the Oak Ridges Moraine are perfect for a contemplative solo hike, and which little cafes on Major Mackenzie are quiet enough for a real conversation on a second date. I've lived in a condo near Yonge and Elgin Mills, and now I have a small house a few blocks from Lake Wilcox. The change in the air as you get closer to the water... it's one of those small, perfect things. It’s a city of surprising quiet, of green spaces carved out against the press of the GTA. For someone who spent his life studying the noise of human interaction, it’s become the perfect place to listen to the silence.