Back to the Old House

It hasn't changed much in the 30-odd years.

As I walked along the path that connected Gilbey Drive to Leaver Avenue, I noticed that the path had changed slightly, from when I last walked it. The Merivale Market mall had encroached onto the wooded area and trees seemed to fill in the pathway once again.

Only, it didn't seem so ominous. Not in the daytime, anyway.

In my late teens or early 20s, I had walked along that dark pathway, my eyes struggling to adjust to the darkness—I had exceptional eyesight in my youth and needed only a bit of light. I did carry a small but powerful flashlight on me, just in case I needed to see anything.

I felt a presence along the path. My footfall was silent: I often joked, in high school, that I'd make a great assassin, though I justified that statement by saying that I would only kill bad guys, men (or even, women) who deserved their fate.

I switched on the flashlight and had stumbled upon a conference. A secret meeting. And stumbled is the appropriate word, for had I not turned on the flashlight, I would have tripped over a colony of rabbits, seemingly huddled together to whisper out some nefarious plot.

They hesitated for an instant, surprised by the sudden flood of light. It took them another second to realize that a human was holding the source of that light.

They scattered as though they had been caught in a sting operation and were leaving the scene as quickly as possible. One bumped into my leg: another tried to fight as he fled, biting my pant leg, though missing my leg. I felt the tug on the fabric but that was it.

And then I was alone again.

I saw no rabbits on Saturday afternoon, as I wandered my old neighbourhood, killing time before my photo shoot in a nearby studio. A squirrel or two but no rabbits. It was far too early in the day for them to come out.

Past the tunnel for the water reservoir, I saw a path branch off to the right, heading behind the houses that lined Leaver Avenue. With the autumn leaves gone from the trees, I could see that this path was heading toward Beaver Ridge, a large crescent road that ran around the Skyline neighbourhood. As its name suggested, this roadway marked a ridge that led to one of the highest points in Ottawa.

I took the path, wanting to see where it led.

As it turned out, it ran around the sunken ground that was the water reservoir. Some little pathways also branched off and led to the roadway, but I stayed on the main path and looped back to where I had started on this circuit.

Straight ahead, I could see Leaver Avenue. Across the street would be my old house.

To my right, a new house had replaced one that had seemed very small, compared to the rest of the houses on the street, when I had lived in this hood. It seemed cramped, backing onto the Food Basics grocery store that was in the shopping mall. There was a lot of noise coming from the back of the grocers, as trucks idled and emitted a piercing beep as they backed up.

Standing at the trailhead, the neighbourhood sounded much louder.

There it stood, my old house.

It didn't look different. Not much. It had the same basic colour scheme. The stand of cedar trees was still thriving.

It looked like the owners had added an awning, with a couple of pillars, on the front steps. But that was it. I wondered what the backyard looked like, if the wooden deck my folks had built was still there or if the wood had been replaced with something completely different. Was the old, aluminum shed still there?

I stood there, for a few minutes, remembering past years in that house. Remembering the layout, upstairs and down. The completed basement, with a work area/laundry machines, furnace, and storage; the large rec room, where my siblings and I would hang out with our friends; the spare bedroom, where my older sister lived until she moved out and I took over after her.

The large driveway could hold up to six cars, depending on their size, and we often had three or four parked in it. The garage was reserved for my father's Alfa Romeo.

This was the house where I started writing fiction. It was the house where my Scottish character, Roland Axam, was born.

It was the last house in which I lived with my parents (not counting the time, on DW's and my return to Canada, from South Korea, when we spent a few months, as guests, while we looked for our own home).

Another blast from a truck's air brakes, at Food Basics, told me that this wasn't my home anymore. It hadn't been since the early 90s. And though I had lived in it for fewer than 10 years (before, we had homes on Bowhill Avenue, on Chesterton Drive, and in Kirk's Ferry, in the Gatineau Hills) it is the one family home with which I felt the strongest connection.

I turned back into Gilbey drive, never looking back at the old house. I still have my memories. They'll forever live with me.

Projecting Beauty

Real-Life Dungeon

There was a path that started across the street from my old house and cut into woods, opening into a marshy area before coming out onto Gilbey Drive, which, itself, led out to Merivale Road. It was a dark, creepy path that was unlit and made you want to stay away after dark.

Over the years, trees were thinned and the path received a top coating of crushed gravel, making the path a bit more inviting. The marsh was cleaned up and made into a bit of a water reservoir. At about the midway point of this path, a concrete and metal water access point was added, providing a sewer drain from Merivale Road to the reservoir.

As the reservoir tunnel stands today.

It was hard, as a teen, to resist checking it out.

My friends and I were into playing the game Dungeons & Dragons, or D&D, as most gamers called it. We started playing it in our early to mid teens and continued into college and university, with some of my friends continuing the game even today.

I stopped playing, for the most part, when DW and I started dating. Not because I had lost interest in the game but because I started doing other things and seemed to never find the time, though I did join in on one or two games in the early 2000s.

But in my teens, when I lived on Leaver Avenue, in the Skyline area, my friends and I were thick into D&D.

With the sewer at the reservoir, we told ourselves it looked like the entrance to a dungeon, something that we needed to explore. All we needed was a light source and some weapons, just in case.

We borrowed a large flashlight from my house. I also had an old hockey stick that I had fashioned into a long sword, complete with a hilt. Because I was the only one equipped, I was told that I'd be leading our group, with my torch in my left hand and my sword in my right.

There was a concrete platform above the mouth of the sewer tunnel. While the mouth was covered with an iron grate, a metal hatch on the platform was unlocked. We opened the hatch and descended.

The flashlight wasn't needed for the first 10 or 20 metres, but once firmly down the tunnel, I switched it on, only to find that the batteries were weak and the torch didn't throw much light. It had been a dry period, weatherwise, and so there was only a trickle of water on the floor of the tunnel and we could easily step on either side of it.

"Would we get to Merivale Road?" one of my friends asked.

"What should we do if we get to a junction with other tunnels?" asked another.

I was just hoping we wouldn't encounter rats or larger rodents. My "sword" had a pointy end but it wasn't sharp, not that there was much room to swing it.

We got about 50 metres down the tunnel when two things happened at once: the flashlight went out and we heard a very loud noise, like rhythmic clanging of metal. The sound was all around us so we had no idea where it was coming from.

There was only one thing to do: run away.

Because it was pitch black in front of me, I turned and headed toward the light from whence we came. I moved at high speed, pushing my two friends out of my way and leading the way out.

So much for experience in playing D&D, when the most heavily armed person would protect the ranks of the weaker—or in our case, the unarmed.

The hatch was opened, when we reached it, which was also surprising, as we had closed it behind us, so that passers-by wouldn't know anyone had gone inside. But apparently, our voices carried out the mouth, alerting some neighbourhood kids to our presence.

They stood at the top, laughing as my friends and I reached the hatch. Apparently, in my haste, I had either stepped on a friend's foot or stabbed at him with my wooden sword, as he had a nick on his ankle that was bleeding, and he said it happened as I bolted past him.

We never went in the tunnel again.

Typically, I was brave and took danger head-on when we played D&D. But when it came to real-life dungeons, I was chickenshit.

I'll share more memories of my old neighbourhood on Thursday. Stay tuned.

The Old Neighbourhood

I didn't abandon DW. I just walked away.

DW has a habit of falling. Sometimes it's because she isn't looking where she's going or is moving in the dark: like, the time she went to our basement without turning the lights on, and tumbling down the stairs, breaking a bone in a foot.

I installed light-sensor bulbs the very next day.

She also fell down a short flight of stairs while looking at her phone while walking in Toronto's Eaton's Centre. Luckily, she only suffered a bruised knee.

The other weekend, we were with some friends at a VR room in the Merivale Mall, fighting reptilian pirates, and DW really threw herself into the game. So much so that she fell, twice, stepping over obstacles that weren't really there.

Two falls, landing on the same knee.

She was in a lot of pain but pushed through it, continuing on through the rest of the week, only feeling the pain if a cat jumped on her legs or if she accidentally applied pressure to specific spots. She had bruises but she bruises easily.

And then, on Friday, while playing pickleball (she's in a league), she fell on that knee, once again.

On Saturday, we got our usual early-morning grocery run at Costco but her knee was really sore. So she called our doctor's office (yes, they're open on Saturday!) and was able to see a doctor within an hour. We completed our shopping and headed straight to the doctor's office.

The doctor deemed that there didn't seem to be any ligament damage but ordered x-rays for DW. The closest imaging centre was on Clyde Avenue, near Baseline, so DW and I drove home to put the groceries away and then headed to the clinic.

Because I had scheduled to be at a photo shoot at a studio that is near the imaging centre, I grabbed my gear, just in case we would be at the clinic for a long time. (By the time we were out of the doctor's appointment and had put away the groceries, I had almost two hours before my photo shoot.)

When we arrived at Merivale Imaging, we learned that they were fully booked for the day. But they also have a clinic in Kanata, and DW was able to pre-book an appointment, but only had a half hour to get there.

"You take the car," I said. "I'll stay here." I gave her a kiss, told her to let me know how things went, and stepped out of the car.

I didn't abandon DW. I simply walked away, heading toward the studio where I would be due in about 90 minutes.

The photo studio is located near Merivale Road and Clyde Avenue, not far from the now-abandoned Dairy Queen. It's also practically in my old neighbourhood, where I lived from the early 80s until the early 90s. It's the house where I finished out high school, attended Journalism School at Algonquin College, and lived until I moved out on my own, eventually living with DW.

The first thing that I noticed, approaching Merivale Road, where it curves at the old DQ, is how it seemed that things had changed, and yet other things stayed the same. The Dairy Queen is still an empty shell, with the signs gone and parts of the building itself boarded up.

Will they tear it down or will somebody renovate it and open it up again?

Across the street, past the building that hosts radio station Jump! 106.9 FM, the vacant and overgrown lot where CTV station CJOH had stood for decades, before it burned to the ground and moved to the Byward Market was a sad reminder of days gone by. I used to cut through the parking lot, on my way to and from Algonquin College, often running into weatherman J.J. Clark, whose reputation was now as burned as the station in which he worked.

Just the drive to the entrance reminds us of a building once being here.

It seemed that the field where CJOH once stood has grown even larger. Only an old building that once held a Pop Shoppe and fish market stands, though it's questionable how well any business is currently faring. Establishments have come and gone over the decades.

Passing Alirang Korean Restaurant (a mediocre spot that is worth a pass, BTW), which originally housed a Dunkin Donuts, I arrived at Gilbey Drive, where I would cut along a path that led through a small wooded area to get to my house on Leaver Avenue.

That path has changed, starting at a park that occupies some space behind the Calvin Christian Reform Church. The path meanders a bit to allow for the Merivale Market shopping mall, which didn't exist back in the days that I lived in this neighbourhood, and this is where I'll stop my walk of my old neighbourhood for now.

Walking along this path, I was filled with memories. Coming out on the other end, I could see my old house, seemingly unchanged over the decades.

I had too many memories seeping out of the recesses of my brain, too many to share in one post. Tomorrow, I'll share the story of some D&D friends who turned chickenshit in a dark tunnel.

Stay tuned.

Catching Up

When the Paddlefolk and I took our kayaks along the Barron Canyon, in early October, I already had it in my head that it would be the last time that I'd take my 360-degree camera with me. I knew—or rather, I felt—that it wouldn't be the last time that I took my Delta 12.10 kayak on the water, that the weather would hold out and I'd get at least one more paddle under my belt for 2024.

It was my last paddle video, not my last paddle.

DW, our Paddlefolk, and I went out in our kayaks one more time, on Muskrat River and Muskrat Lake, near Cobden, Ontario. The fall colours were still vibrant and it was a nice paddle.

A few weeks ago, I shared a few photos from that outing but I had taken quite a few. I didn't have my 360-degree camera with my but I had my smartphone, and captured lots of photos that day.

One of the things I've learned with my new smartphone, which has three lenses, is that it takes fairly decent telephoto images. But in a kayak, there's the added challenge of the movement on the water.

As we followed the northern shoreline on Muskrat Lake, I noticed a farm on the southern shores, and so I broke off from my group and moved to the middle of the lake. I didn't want to cross the lake entirely, as that would have put me more than half a kilometre from everyone else.

With the wind pushing me in the middle of the lake, I let myself drift while I got out my phone and aimed at the farm. There were trees in the foreground, so I waited until there was good spacing between the trees, the barn, the silo, and the farmhouse.

At 10-times magnification, I took this shot.

I had to paddle hard to catch up with everyone, who had decided to turn back. When I finally caught up with DW, she asked me where I went.

"I saw the potential for a photo, so I pursued it."

That's all she needed to know. If we're walking down the street and I have my camera on me, she knows not to worry if I suddenly stop, and she continues on her way, knowing that I'll eventually catch up.

If I stop, I stop for a reason.

Happy Friday!