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.

The End of a Cool Era

I remember when Merivale Road used to be only two lanes. But it must have only been for a short period.

When I was four, I learned how to ride a bicycle. I was living in the garden homes between Chesterton Drive and Bowhill Avenue, behind what was then the K-Mart Plaza, which included a Dominion grocery store, a TD bank, a Living Lighting store, Giglio's barber shop, Gow's Chinese take out, and a Brewer's Retail.

I've written about this old neighbourhood before, with some aerial shots from 1976 for reference.

Across the street from this shopping plaza were single-unit homes, which were separated by the two-lane Merivale Road. I remember riding my bike along this street, which, in 1969, didn't see much traffic. It wasn't the bustling thoroughfare of consumerism that it is today.

When the road widened to four lanes, a few years later, but still before the field was cleared for where the Merivale Mall now stands, my friends and I would have to look both ways and run across the street—often holding hands—to get to a little convenience store, Darly's, where we would spend our allowance on candies, chips, and pop, or buy either hockey or baseball trading cards.

I never watched either sport but all my friends collected the cards, so I did too.

There were two other places, further north on Merivale Road, where my parents would take my sister and me for an occasional treat: one was the Red Barn, a fast-food chain that preceded McDonalds on this strip; and, further up, where Merivale would bend but you had to make a left turn to get onto Clyde Avenue (today, you just have to stay straight, where Merivale meets Lotta Avenue), there was our ice-cream favourite spot: Dairy Queen.

Image: Google Maps street view.

This was not a Brazier Dairy Queen, meaning you couldn't get burgers or fries, or most other hot eats, though you could get a chili-cheese hot dog. It was the cool treats that made it popular and upon which it focused.

Also, for the longest time, it was only one of two DQs in Ottawa that kept its old signage. In the 90s, it eventually updated its sign, leaving the shop at St. Laurent Blvd. and Hemlock Road the last of the nostalgic holdouts.

Image: sfgamchick, via Openly.

My family loved going to the Merivale Road Dairy Queen. My favourite treat would be a green Mr. Misty Float—or as my dad called it, "a Mr. Misty with a blob on top." It was a lime-flavoured drink with vanilla ice cream that floated above it. I would let the ice cream melt and stir it into the drink, and sip it through a straw.

Ah, to be a kid again.

In my teens, my friends and I would often ride our bikes or walk to the DQ. Often, we'd grab a burger at Harvey's, which was further up Merivale, at Baseline Road, and then go to DQ for dessert.

Ah, to be an easy-going teen again.

As I got older and had my own car, we'd make the DQ almost a weekly summer event. Because this DQ wasn't a Brazier, it was only open from about the end of March to the end of September. But every time we went, there was always a long lineup that almost turned into a party scene. My friends and I would almost always run into someone we knew, and chatting it up with people made the lineup seem short.

DW and her best friend still like to build up and joke about a time that we went to DQ, when DW and I were just starting to date. While I was driving us to the spot, DW and her friend talked about what they were going to get, and then asked me what I was going to get.

Casually, I said, "I'll probably get my usual." In my early 20s, my usual was simply a chocolate milkshake, but in my response, they both let out an "Ooh!" as though my usual had suddenly become a great mystery.

The both laughed when, at the counter, I ordered my shake.

"We thought you were getting something extravagant," DW said.

Her friend started to mock me, saying, "I'll have... my usual..." dropping her tone at "my usual," making it sound seductive.

Every time they recount this story, the "my usual" part gets more and more exaggerated.

Even to this day, I roll my eyes when they start to tell this story again.

It was only the other month, as I was heading to the Merivale Photography Studio, just a few doors down from the DQ, that I noticed that the sign was bare of the DQ logo, that the words Dairy Queen were cut out from the sides of the building that has stood there for about 60 years.

At first, I didn't think much about it. After all, it was before the ice-cream shop normally opens for the season, and I thought that perhaps they were updating the sign and the lettering on the building. But last week, at the end of April, when I drove by the DQ and no one was there, I was curious.

DW and I were meeting a friend for dinner at Alirang Korean Restaurant, a few doors away, where a Dunkin Donuts used to be, long ago. After dinner, the three of us walked to the DQ, and DW and I realized that we were face to face with the end of an era.

A sign informed us that it was closed. Inside, not only did it look deserted, it looked abandoned. The menu board was missing its panels that listed all of the treats. It looked like appliances had been pulled off of the walls.

There would be no Mr. Misty Floats, no chocolate milkshakes.

After about 60 years, the Merivale Road Dairy Queen is dead.

I wonder what will replace it. Will someone tear it down and build something new? Will somebody occupy the space and run a shop with take-out windows like this DQ did?

Because my photo club always has something going on at the photo studio, nearby, I'll keep an eye on the lot at the bend in Merivale Road, where it intersects with Clyde Avenue.

Away

I miss my girls.

Both are away at college and university. Both are following their passions: one, pursuing her love of games; the other, living her dream of being a musician. I couldn't be happier for either of them.

We keep in touch regularly. I send them text messages, asking how they're doing. I occasionally send them pictures of our cats, as the kids miss them, too. We have FaceTime chats where DW and I find out how they're getting on and whether they need anything. One lives in residence, just down the hall from the cafeteria, for which she has a meal plan, and she tells us what she likes to eat and what she dislikes. The other lives in residence where she has to prepare her own meals with groceries that she has to buy from a grocery store, a couple of kilometres away.

When she's busy with an assignment and forgets to eat, we order food for her and have it delivered. We stay on a chat with her to make sure she knows when the driver is arriving, so that she can go down to the lobby to pick it up. DW will order her breakfast at a Tim Horton's that is across the street. Our daughter just has to walk over to pick it up.

At home, it's a lot quieter in the house than it was over the summer, when both girls were living with DW and me. I miss them when I stop and notice the silence.

When they headed off to their respective institutions, they said that they would not be coming home for Thanksgiving, and a piece of my heart broke. So DW and I made plans to celebrate the upcoming holiday in Toronto. My parents will be joining us, as my younger sister also lives in Toronto and they thought it would be nice to have us gather together for a nice dinner.

I miss my girls, but we'll be together again soon.

Father's Day, 2012.

Branching Out on Their Own

I like to think that I have good taste in music.

I have shared some of it with my friends, and they have liked what I have introduced to them; some have even thanked me.

I'm talking about the friends I've recently introduced to artists like Hawksley Workman and Sam Roberts, or to bands like Metric.

In high school, I was the first of my friends to be into Led Zeppelin (first of my friends in elementary school, actually) and Peter Gabriel, to which my old friends still groove.

My kids have benefited from my music tastes, as they also like these bands and artists. My youngest loves Sarah Slean, and couldn't get enough of her on Canada Day. She is always listening to her music and has two autographed posters in her bedroom.

But my eldest daughter has branched out and discovered new music, and both of them listen to a pop-music radio station on a regular basis. That's okay. I feel that I've laid down enough roots and introduced them to music that they will take with them and keep for the rest of their lives.

When I was young, growing up in my parents' home, I was subjected to their musical tastes. Some, I didn't care for, like Roger Whittaker and Nana Mouskouri. But they did listen to Cat Stevens, who I still love, Neil Diamond, John Denver, Simon and Garfunkel, and ABBA. While I never had a lasting affinity for Denver, I still sing some of his songs from time to time in the shower or while cleaning the kitchen.

I branched away from most of this music when  I discovered Led Zeppelin and became close friends with my older sister's boyfriend, Keith H—, who introduced me to Alice Cooper, B.T.O., Yes, and Strawbs (although that 60s band never stuck with me).

While my daughters, for the most part, have listened to the music that I play around the house and have gone to live shows that my wife and I have taken them to, they are not limited to only that music. As I said, they listen  to the pop stations and have come to know music that has not been brought into our house any other way.

I suppose that as we try to break out on our own, we go in directions that run against the flow of our parents. That is something that our eldest daughter has done recently, and she's taking our youngest with her.

My kids are becoming head bangers.

I don't use that term in a derogatory way: though my kids didn't understand the reference, I'm sure that it is still used to describe those who listen to heavy metal and hard rock.

Lately, my sweet, adorable girls are listening to the band, Three Days Grace.

I remember hearing this band a couple of years ago, and I dismissed them out-of-hand because it's simply not to my taste. I like classic rock bands and alternative rock, but I'm not a fan of hard rock. I never listened to Iron Maiden, or Black Sabbath (though one friend always played Ozzie Osbourne's old band when I went over to his house), or any of those other metal/hard-rock bands.

To me, it almost all sounds the same.

For my wife, every hard-rock band these days sounds like Nickelback. I think that's harsh.

Over the weekend, as we were driving around town, my eldest child handed me her MP3 player and asked me to connect it to our car, so she could listen to her favourite rock band. Being open-minded, I consented.

To their credit, Three Days Grace does not sound like Nickelback. While they have those classic hard-rock guitar riffs and heavy base, there is some talented guitar playing. The lyrics of many songs were thoughtful. I listened to her music without judgement or without the urge to turn it off (something my parents would have done after five seconds in a similar situation, when I was a young teen).

When the album finished, my daughter asked me what I thought of the music. I told her that it wasn't bad, but it wasn't to my taste. I wouldn't stop her from listening, I wouldn't mock her, I wouldn't put her new-found band down.

But I look at my sweet daughter, I just can't picture her as a metal head. I've seen her in her room, reading a Percy Jackson adventure, listening to the instrumentals of Sarah Slean's Land and Sea orchestral songs. It's as though she's become another person.

Which is probably how my folks felt when I went from singing along with Sweet Caroline to cranking up the Immigrant Song.

Eventually, we all branch out on our own. I'm just glad they haven't embraced country music.