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It's hard to imagine now, with Don Mills sitting in the middle of the sprawling Greater Toronto Area, but its strong sense of community was born out of isolation.

When Canada's first planned community was developed 55 years ago, it sat in the middle of nowhere.

It was up to the new residents, especially 1950s moms home with their children every day, to lift their manufactured neighbourhood to a higher ideal.

The community responded to the challenge.

For example, residents organized carpools, often several a day, to take children to swimming lessons in downtown Toronto.

Mimi Fliess, wife of Don Mills' main architect Henry Fleiss, and Betty Fitzpatrick, whose family bought the Fliess home, share happy memories of raising their children in the tight-knit neighbourhood.

"It was the place where nobody ever locked their home. If one mother wasn't home, the kids would go and walk into another home," Mimi Fliess said.

Henry Fliess said Don Mills' landscape and architecture helped foster its sense of community.

Don Mills established a new standard of wide front lawns, which helped create a sense of openness. Other neighbourhoods had narrow lots so the houses appeared crammed in beside each other.

"The idea was to make it contemporary, to have a lot of openness to the outside, with large windows to relate to the garden and bring the outside in," Fliess said.

The architect also said the layout of the homes was designed so family members always had to walk through common living areas to get to anywhere in the house.

And kitchens were built at the front of the houses so mothers could oversee their children playing outside while they were cooking, Fliess said.

Terry West, president of Don Mills Residents Inc., said the community is very much defined by its geography.

"One of the things we have going for us as a community, we have natural borders."

Wilket Creek acts as the western border; Eglinton Avenue is the southern boundary and York Mills Road is the northern limit.

The eastern border is the Don Valley Parkway (DVP) from York Mills to Lawrence Avenue, at which point it becomes the Don River south the Eglinton. However, residents on the east side of the DVP consider themselves as Don Mills members.

"This community has extremely well-defined borders, which probably no other community in the city has. You go to the Beach, where does the Beach start and where does the Beach end?"

Don Mills can thank its planners and visionaries for mapping out an overall design of quadrants with schools, churches and green space.

But the devil is in the details.

What some see as a means of championing a sense of community, others could view as a fanatical doctrine of conformity.

Early restrictions dictated almost every element of the community's look. For example, roofs could only be certain colours and backyard fences were prohibited.

"It was planned to the nth degree," West said. "No question it was controlled."

But a testament to Don Mills' sense of community is the fact that countless children who grew up in the neighbourhood have returned to raise their own families, he said.

While Don Mills' expensive housing prices have kept home ownership out of the hands of many new immigrants, the community has become much more multicultural than in its early days.

Sam Lee, president of the Korean-Canadian Association of the Greater Toronto Area, said 35,000 to 40,000 Korean-Canadians call Don Mills and Willowdale home, the largest concentration of the cultural group in the city.

There are many reasons why Korean-Canadians find Don Mills attractive.

"The first reason is the good schools in Willowdale and Don Mills," said Lee, a widowed father of twins in Grade 12.

"It's a good atmosphere first of all in terms of safety. It is a safe community that has a fine view, nice parks, a good area."

Lee also pointed to Don Mills' reliable transportation system as an attractive quality.

"My children love this area very much. I don't know about their future, but as of now, they love this area and they are going to stay."

Ward 25 (Don Valley West) Councillor Cliff Jenkins said Don Mills has changed from its early days when it attracted families buying their first homes.

"Don Mills is a relatively affluent area of the city compared to some. It is not like a starter-home environment," he said.

But its sense of community has remained strong, said Jenkins, pointing out there are 15 active community associations in his ward alone.

"I think the identity existed from the beginning. I think (community founders) Macklin Hancock and E.P. Taylor's vision, they had a central part in the plaza with schools around it and all these public facilities around it and the plaza focused everyone geographically inward," he said.

"It certainly works in many respects. The parkland integrated with the community works wonderfully."

Businesses, as well as residents, are strong members of the community, Jenkins said.

"It's a tribute to businesses in Don Mills that they feel part of the community."

Author Lorne Miller is writing a community memoir about Don Mills based on interviews with residents. The tapestry of stories he has heard are rich, including a Montreal family greeted by Hurricane Hazel just hours after starting their new life in Don Mills to tales of Canada's best skiers, such as Steve Podborski and Nancy Greene, training at the Don Mills Ski Club.

A strong sense of community ran through Miller's interviews.

"There was a sense of pioneering that was different than most parts of Toronto," he said.