Introduction
We almost didn’t end up here. Twenty years later, I still think about what my life would have looked like if we hadn’t.
That’s more personal than most real estate posts get. But Bullock isn’t just a neighbourhood I know as an agent. It’s the place where I rebuilt my life from scratch. And before this post is done I want to show you something about it that most people who have lived here for years have never found.
Not even me. For a long time.
I’ll get there. But you need the backstory first.
Starting Over
I was going through a divorce. Two kids. The home I was leaving was too large and too expensive for a newly single dad who just needed to land somewhere solid.
Three bedrooms. Affordable. Close to my kids. That was the whole list.
I looked at a lot of places to rent. Most of them were fine. None of them felt like anything. Then I found a cozy bungalow in a neighbourhood I had driven past plenty of times but never really thought about. Three bedrooms. Large private backyard with a pool. A price that made sense for where I was.
Bullock.
Starting over is hard. This place made it feel possible.
The House I Could Not Buy
After about a year I knew I wasn’t going anywhere. I went to my landlord and asked about buying the bungalow.
No. I came back a few months later and asked again. No again.
Before I tell you how that played out, I need to take you back. Because to understand why I was so determined to stay in this specific neighbourhood, you have to know what that first year had already done to me.
I was outside constantly. Walking to the two plazas nearby. Riding my bike to Main Street Markham. And the GO train. I still remember hearing the horn from inside the house, jumping on my bike, riding five minutes to the station, and boarding the train with time to spare. No parking. No sitting on the 401. Just a horn, a bike, and a short ride.
Being outside meant meeting people. Stopping for conversations that had nowhere to be. I grew up in London, Ontario where I knew my neighbours up and down the street. I knew who belonged on the block and who didn’t. That feeling of being known, of actually belonging somewhere, I hadn’t felt it since I was a kid.
Bullock gave it back.
So when the landlord said no for the second time I wasn’t going to pack up and try somewhere else. I called my neighbour, who happened to be a real estate agent. He helped me find a house two blocks away. Same layout. Same neighbourhood. Roughly half the cost of the home I had left behind.
My downstairs neighbour liked what I was doing so much he decided to come with me. He became my tenant. I ended up in the right neighbourhood, with a built-in community, and someone helping carry the mortgage.
The Bonfires
The backyard at the new place was big. The kind of big where you forget you’re in the middle of a city. Back then small bonfires were still common in Markham. I lit one. A neighbour came over. Then another.
That became the thing.
Real conversations around a fire. No agenda. The kind where you learn someone’s actual story, not just their name. The same feeling I had always wanted from a street was now happening in my own backyard.
Something else was going on around this time that I genuinely did not see coming. I’ll come back to it. But first I want to tell you what the next couple of years looked like, because it changes how you read the rest of this.
Two years after buying I became a real estate agent. I went on to learn every neighbourhood in Markham and the GTA. Good ones. All of them worth knowing. But none of them ever felt the way Bullock felt. Every time I thought about why, I kept landing on the same answer. It is a neighbourhood where life happens at a human pace. You walk places. You see the same faces. You know who belongs. That is rarer than it should be.
Which brings me back to what I promised.
Not long after I settled into the new place, I started a new relationship with the person who would become my wife. We updated that 1950s bungalow together. We made it ours. A few years later we expanded it to give us more room.
What started as a place to catch my breath became the foundation of a whole new life.
What Bullock Offers Families
For families making a move, Bullock covers the practical list without compromise.
Direct access to the 407 and Highway 7. Main Street Markham nearby, with the kind of walkable character most suburbs can’t manufacture. Two plazas for daily errands without getting on a highway. The GO train for anyone commuting into the city.
The homes are mostly postwar builds. Bungalows, raised bungalows, and splits from the 1950s and 60s with some newer infill. Solid construction, larger lots, and prices that tend to be more honest than some of the flashier Markham neighbourhoods. That is not a compromise. That is a value play.
But here is what no listing will ever tell you.
The Part I Missed for Twenty Years
In 2021 we bought again. Still Bullock, but now south of Highway 7. I thought I knew this neighbourhood completely. I had lived here for years. Sold homes here. Talked about it with clients more times than I can count.
Then we went for a walk in the park behind our new house.
We walked from our backyard into the trails of Milne Dam Conservation Park and just kept going. We crossed McCowan once and that was it. The rest was forest. Real forest. The kind where the city disappears completely.
We walked all the way to Unionville on the trail. Then we turned around and tried the other direction.
That is where this neighbourhood showed me something I had completely missed.
A heron standing still in the river. Water that was alive with birds and movement. Cedar forests along the path. A small waterfall. Cliffs that stopped us both mid-step. And then coming around a bend, the backside of the Sherwood-Amberglen homes rising above the ravine. The trail kept going toward Box Grove and we only turned back because we ran out of daylight.
I had lived in Markham since 1996. I had been a real estate agent for years. And I had never once walked those trails.
Parks and green space almost never make it into listing descriptions. They are not a bedroom or a bathroom. But they are the thing that makes a neighbourhood feel larger than it is, quieter than it should be, and more valuable than any feature sheet suggests.
For Families Thinking About Making the Move
If your current home isn’t working anymore, whether it’s the space, the schools, the commute, or just the feeling that you’ve outgrown it, Bullock is worth a serious look.
Large lots. Walkable streets. A community where people actually know each other. Everything you need within reach. And trails that will genuinely surprise you.
If you want to talk through whether it makes sense for your family, I’m easy to find. No pitch. No pressure. Just a straight conversation.
