Lane Changer - Carolyn Whitzman, lanes inspired by mother and grandmother
Carolyn Whitzman and I could have been friends when our respective careers began at the City of Toronto. Instead, it’s only now, 35 years later, that we’ve met, both working as we do in housing. We have lane changing to thank for that!
Whitzman was born 62 years ago in Cornwall, Ontario as the much younger third child of a couple whose marriage was on the rocks. Her mother’s mother owned and operated a menswear store which provided the family with status in the community despite the fact she’d divorced Carolyn’s grandfather thirty years earlier. For Whitzman, though, that status was short-lived. When she experienced her first lane change, it was a step down the social ladder; even at age 5, she felt the stigma of living with her now-single mother in rental housing in Montreal. Not all lane changes are within our control, a theme that’s emerged in many of these profiles, including Carolyn’s
After high school, Carolyn studied at Concordia where she met her husband, David. They graduated and moved to Toronto so he could be in the centre of Canada’s then-vibrant publishing industry. In Toronto, Carolyn took advantage of David’s good income to do a Masters at the University of Toronto, in gender studies. Their 40 year history as a couple exemplifies the art of dual lane changing - one fills the economic gap while the other finds a new lane.
With her Masters, Carolyn took a job in 1989 with the City of Toronto. She worked in the Healthy City Office, a unit following a WHO idea that livable cities come from individual and community health, and that local governments can create the right social, economic, and environmental conditions to make this happen. I took my first job ever at the city a year later, not knowing I was privileged to see the best of municipal government. I’m pretty sure Carolyn felt the same. Her role working to eliminate gender-based violence was doubtless influenced by the 1989 massacre of 14 female engineering students at Montreal’s École Polytechnic. This was a heady time for feminism and Carolyn was in the thick of it.
From a young age, though, Whitzman felt academia would be her forever-career. Age 40 loomed and Carolyn knew the forced amalgamation of Toronto with its surrounding municipalities would water down the City’s progressiveness, so she left her well-paid job to get a PhD. This, despite having two small kids at the time. She knew, however, David could pick up the slack, armed with the MBA he’d completed while she was the higher earner.
Whitzman hoped to get an academic position somewhere in Central Canada but when nothing emerged, she accepted an offer from the University of Melbourne. Now that’s a lane change! Her husband was keen to go. And her kids, I asked? Well, she laughed - at age 6 and 10, they got no vote. The family lived in Melbourne from 2003 to 2019.
To outsiders, Carolyn thrived in the academic world. She got her research funded, wrote books, and met expectations. For her, though, it wasn’t hitting all the buttons she’d expected. To help change the world, she’d need her writing to reach 1000s; instead she wrote for 100s in peer-reviewed journals. At the same time, Whitzman’s mother in Canada was unwell and Carolyn wanted to be closer. Poof - a lane change back to Canada.
This time though she had no plan for income, other than an idea she might do housing policy consulting. The federal government had announced the National Housing Strategy two years earlier so Ottawa seemed the best choice. Carolyn also dreamed of writing a book. In her PhD research 20 years earlier, she’d stumbled on the story of Clara Ford, the 33 year old working-class Black single mother accused in 1894 of the Parkdale murder of a wealthy white man. She wanted to explore issues of class, race, and gender of the time using the Ford story as the vehicle.
UBC Press published the book that resulted, Clara at the Door with a Revolver: The Scandalous Black Suspect, the Exemplary White Son, and the Murder That Shocked Toronto. A few months after its February 2023 release, I heard Whitzman read from it at the Eden Mills Writers’ Festival where I got turned on to Whitzman’s deep-dive into how the media portrayed Clara. Fascinating — worth a read if you haven’t yet! Page-turners like Clara, however, don’t typically appeal to an academic publisher but Whitzman had negotiated a twofer deal: publish Clara and I’ll give you a second book on housing. Home Truths: Fixing Canada's Housing Crisis came out 18 months later: also worth reading, as we navigate the current choppy waters from one end of the housing spectrum to the other.
Writing books in Canada is never going to pay all the bills but Carolyn has two other irons in the fire. First, she wrote Clara confident that someone would buy the movie rights. She even had Janelle Monáe in mind for the lead role! While the movie hasn’t yet panned out, it has been picked up as a musical in the UK, and is likely to find its way to Toronto. Can’t wait.
Carolyn’s second, more predictable revenue stream is housing consulting. She’s fully in that lane as the Senior Housing Researcher and Adjunct Professor at the UofT’s School of Cities. She writes regularly about the ‘missing middle’ of housing including accessory dwelling units (think Chandlerville, my laneway house); subdivided existing homes or newly built multiplexes; or apartment buildings under four storeys. She’s leading a CMHC-funded research project called “Scaling Up Canada’s Community Housing Sector,” studying how different organizations might consolidate assets while maintaining organizational autonomy. The Co-operative Housing Federation of Toronto, where I work, looks forward to seeing the results of this work.
Why was Carolyn emboldened to change lanes from Canada to Australia and from women’s studies to history to housing policy? Her mother and her grandmother taught her two lessons: even a married woman needs to be financially sustainable on her own; and take action if you’re unhappy. Whitzman acknowledges how privileged she’s been with the financial give and take of a heterosexual relationship, but even with that, she’s passed her foremothers’ lessons along to her kids too. They don’t take shit (for long) either!
Regrets? Not really, other than moving from Melbourne required her to leave many close friends behind. She doesn’t rule out a fourth chapter in retirement though - another lane change - that could well have her back on a plane to Australia, at least for part of each year, to reconnect with the all her friends there.
Oh, and the other regret - in 1978, she didn’t practise tuba hard enough before the band trip to Europe. The conductor cut her from the ensemble. That burned, and I suspect, has motivated Carolyn down life’s highway for the last 45 years!
You can get Carolyn Whitzman’s recent books along with an earlier history of Parkdale through UBC Press here: https://www.ubcpress.ca/carolyn-whitzman
Missed previous Lane Changer profiles?
Peter Chandler, how it all began for me
Cathy Crowe, her lane is the street
Marissa Bastidas, same lane, new direction
Pam Hudak, living on a multi-lane highway
Jennifer, crossing lanes from Phuket to pup-minder
Emma Simpson, from taxiway to writing terminal
Jessica Waraich, changing lanes on the career on-ramp
Michelle Simmons, straddling two lanes in her mid-40s
Sybil Chandler (1928-2025), proud to find life’s off-ramp
Faiv Noelle, solo on a global highway
Karly Wilson, waiting aside life’s highway for the next lane
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