Would you like white sugar, brown sugar or Stevia?

When Eva James opened the door of her Liberty Village condo Tuesday afternoon, she paused for a brief moment before answering her neighbour standing in the doorway.

“Sure,” she said, shrugging her shoulders at the stranger. “Would you like white sugar, brown sugar or Stevia?”

On Monday, Star columnist Edward Keenan wrote that Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch was dead wrong about Toronto when she said, “I would never go next door and ask my neighbour for a cup of sugar. It just wouldn’t happen.”

Was Leitch right? Do Torontonians lack such a sense of community that they wouldn’t lend their neighbours a cup of sugar?

After hearing from outraged readers, the Star decided to launch a very unscientific investigation to find out if this was true.

On Tuesday, I roamed the hallways of my Liberty Village condo, knocking on the doorways of units belonging to the many young professionals that populate the enclave in the west end, asking for a cup of sugar.

Sure, some were wary opening their doors in the middle of the workday, but all of them offered a cup of sugar. Those that didn’t have any offered Stevia instead and in one case, a handful of packets of sugar.

(The only resistance I encountered was with condo security over concerns that I was going door to door, selling stuff.)

Knocking on more than 10 doors in my condo building, and later in Leaside on the street where former prime minister Stephen Harper lived, I was met with friendly smiles (even those who were sick welcomed me into their homes) and offers of as much sugar as I needed.

Maybe living in a condo means you won’t get to know your neighbour as well as you would in a small town, but it doesn’t mean they won’t offer you a cup of sugar — or a packet or two — when you need it.