Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2009, 6 2487 Participant: But yeah, that’s where I sit and watch TV and I eat all kinds of nonsense. It’s really a bad place, um because I’m not out exercising; I am just watching TV… Interviewer: Okay. How do you feel sitting here, how do you feel in this area? Participant: Um, it’s funny because you would think it would be a negative feeling. But it’s such a relaxed feeling; it really is home in that way…It’s just so comfortable. I don’t worry about anything there; it’s my little corner of the world. Within her spatial story, she describes her habitual itineraries through the microgeography of her home. Routines of comfort conflict with her consciousness of heart health in diet and exercise, problematizing long established spatial practices. The TV is a focal point for some of her itineraries; she can view it from her kitchen, as she collects snack food, or from her livingroom sofa. The everyday locations of home and neighborhood became spaces of ambiguity and struggle while participants sought to change their health behaviours. 3.3. Place and Access to Health Resources Toronto participants described easy access to a wide variety of health resources such as gyms, family doctors, cardiac specialists, and health promotion programs. A higher concentration of health resources is typical of larger cities. Some participants spoke of being able to reach most destinations by walking or taking public transit. However, many also remarked on the lack of parks or green areas in the city. They traveled some distance to natural settings for exercise and for the stress release they associated with beautiful parks or out-of-town retreats. Those with higher incomes could afford to pay for exercise equipment or health club fees, but then had to make appropriate space for use of these resources in their homes or crowded schedules. One man showed us a photograph of his cluttered garage: “It shows where I buried my treadmill…If you look closely, you can see the dust on it…” Torontonians with lower incomes could not afford such resources, however, and some participants found the city did not easily yield space for safe exercise. One man had lost weight by establishing a new habitual practice of jogging through his neighborhood. He explained the perils of running or biking in the city: I find some times running—I don’t know what it is but… there is a definite percentage of population who, for some reason, just don’t like us. And if they’re in a car, and if they can somehow cut you off [when you are] either running or on a bike, they’ll do it. An elderly man proudly showed us a photograph of himself working out at an upscale gym. He had immigrated to Canada in his later years and did not qualify for sufficient public pension funds to support him in retirement. He was employed fulltime at the gym, where he was allowed to make full use of the facility for his own fitness—after a day of cleaning floors, laundering towels, and tidying change rooms. This form of access was precariously based on his continued ability to do physical work, because he could not afford to pay membership fees.