postcards

wordless wednesday (summer postcards)

~ carin ~ 4 Comments

Greetings from what’s left of holiday cottages, a dance pavilion, and refreshment booths that once graced the traditional lands of the people of Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nation, a branch of the greater Anishinaabeg Nation, land that’s part of the Williams Treaties, aka, the Whitby shoreline of Lake Ontario!

The holiday resort existed from about 1900 to the 1960s, with steamboats bringing travellers from Toronto for weeks-long holidays, and locals coming by horse and buggy.

I interviewed an elderly man many years ago, who told me he lived near the lake (the old wooden houses of ‘Port Whitby’ are still there) and how as a boy he would be sent to the pier when the fishing boats came in. He’d bring a bucket and a few coins and the fishermen would toss in a couple fish, enough for supper. He said the horses and buggies from town would be lined up and down the street to do the same.

I would love to hear stories also of when the Mississaugas lived on the land, and how it was they (were) ‘moved along’. No dance pavilion for them…

**

A friend of mine has lived here much longer than I have and remembers things being quite wild and woody. Much building since I arrived, but I also remember fields and woodlands running either side of main streets. Many of those fields are gone, but loads are still intact. For now. We’re lucky in that the countryside is still just a spit away, that the town is built around parks and ravines and has a river called Lynde Creek that runs through it, complete with salmon. I feel lucky to be surrounded by farms and (honest to goodness) farmers’ markets and that the lake shore remains mostly unsullied and the downtown, all leafy streets of Victorian era homes and shops, is walkable from where I live and takes me backwards through a century of neighbourhoods, from the 1970s to the 1870s. If you pay attention you can see how the town was layered, neighbourhood by neighbourhood.

It’s funny that we complain about the layering that continues. It’s nothing new, it’s been going on since we built towns and cities. It happens in cities too. It’s called condos. Still, it feels annoying, and whether here or there, the problem is the same, when there’s an imbalance of ‘building’, when too many houses/condos are built without thought to building neighbourhoods.

I have a thing about neighbourhoods.

I’m fascinated by how people live in them, how they make them home, how they adapt, how they’re different, and the same.

I have a thing about small and middle-sized towns, factory towns a lot of them, and those that appear, on the surface ‘to be not much’. Nothing against cities. I had to be dragged away from one. But even in cities, it’s always the less travelled side of the tracks, not the shabby chic side, but the authentically, downright seemingly dull side, the places where crowds don’t go, that I always discover the sweetest surprises.

I’m rambling.

But isn’t that what lazy summer days and postcards… and the sight of old concrete stairs at the beach… are for…

It’s too hot to overthink a postcard. Mostly just writing to say hello.

And happy summer.  (happy rambling too!)

#LoveWhereYouLive

#AndRememberWhoLivedThereFirst

 

♦

Other (not always) wordless friends:

Cheryl Andrews
Allison Howard
Barbara Lambert
Allyson Latta
Elizabeth Yeoman

 

 

 

 

 

wordless wednesday (summer postcards)

~ carin ~ 9 Comments

new pencil case.

new pencil crayons. (but only if last year’s Laurentiens are mostly stubs)

old pencil sharpener.

old compass. (I know! I can hardly believe it either. Also, here’s a link for those who haven’t a clue what I’m talking about. Used for drawing circles on notebooks and binders… & possibly had other applications.)

new eraser. (which will soon be tatooed with sharp end of lead pencil)

miscellaneous pens and pencils from kitchen cupboard near phone.

Hilroy notebooks. (which I WILL SWEAR to keep pristine ALL YEAR)

new binder (which I WILL SWEAR to keep pristine ALL YEAR)

binder paper

new set of dividers

(and in one spectacular year, a full colour metal Flintstones lunch box)

What am I missing??

♦♦

(greetings from the last century)

♦

Other (not always) wordless friends:

Cheryl Andrews
Allison Howard
Barbara Lambert
Allyson Latta
Elizabeth Yeoman

wordless wednesday (summer postcards)

~ carin ~ 11 Comments

Long before digital anything… when dinosaurs still roamed the earth and water bottles were not yet common (or even invented?), I sat in the courtyard of an ultra swanky hotel in southern Florida. Service was abominable. We waited ages and ages for an initial glass of water, never mind the wine and the meal. Polite questions did no good. The attitude of staff was even worse than the service. But the courtyard was beautiful and it was a perfect southern Florida night, i.e. not too sticky or buggy, so we stayed and waited and waited and waited for our meal. Given all that time on my hands I decided to make a few notes in my travel journal, just personal notes (this was before blogs, before the internet, truly the dark ages it was). Something about the act of pulling out a notebook and writing caught someone’s attention and before we knew it the manager appeared at our table asking if there was anything he could do for us. Well, we’re waiting for our meal, we said… And just like that, presto bongo! our meal followed. The manager returned (several times) to ask how the meal was and was there anything else  he could do. No, no, we’re fine, we said, and he said well, maybe after we’d eaten we’d like a tour of the hotel because he’d personally love to give us a tour of the hotel. Um, okay… we said, a little confused. The wine and dessert and tea were comped and the tour was comprehensive and complete with much ass-kissing, which neither of us could understand… until we realized he thought I was a food writer. Because, apparently, who else would write in a journal?

This was before the days of taking pictures of meals and sharing every food experience, when the power of print via pen and ink had clout.

Like I said, it was a long time ago.

~

(Southern Florida, ’90s)

 

♦

Other (not always) wordless friends:

Cheryl Andrews
Allison Howard
Barbara Lambert
Allyson Latta
Elizabeth Yeoman

wordless wednesday (summer postcards)

~ carin ~ 11 Comments

A guy playing guitar next to a basket of chanterelles, which to this day I regret not buying. The next day I go back, no basket. So in my broken french I ask if there will be more and he shrugs almost sadly and says something like ils ne sont pas mes champignons, madame….

The expression on the fish monger’s face when I enter his tiny shop, wave at the air and say (enthusiastically):  mon nez est tres joyeux!

The woman at the b&b whose english is on par with my french (which makes me so happy) and where, after determining that I do not mind that my room has only a shower and no tub (this alone feels like it took the better part of twenty minutes), I receive la cle  and decide this tiny quirky space with a bougainvilla covered porch, tivoli lighted tree and room with a tiny humming fridge and a most magnificent view of the parking lot is so very much better than the place the tourist office recommended, which, instead of bougainvilla on the porch, had three grouchy old men sitting in rockers.

My dinner of smoked salmon from the fish monger, which I eat on the rocks at the beach as the sun sets.

The older woman, swimming in the cold water of the harbour — pure joy — and the way, ten or so minutes later, she’s joined by another woman and they hold hands, jump and bob about in the waves.

A child playing at the shore and the slant of late day sun on his face.

The rosehips I pick and bring home to mix with calendula and borage flowers for tea.

The food, everywhere. (I vow, again, to improve my french if only to be able to at least order a meal without feeling like an eejit in this kingdom of cuisine.)

The long fields of long Kamouraska grass.

A tree outside the museum, covered in knitting.

This patio on the water, and that one… hidden in a garden.

The bakery!

The small lights of a boat across the river pose questions: where has it come from? where is it going in this dark night? The best guess is that it’s coming for dinner.

The curious note I make in my journal — cafe avec caffeine, et sans caffeine. Curious because I don’t drink coffee.

And this, copied from somewhere…. dans la vie, il n’y a pas de hasards, il n’y a que des rendez-vous.

 

(Driving back from PEI, September-almost-October, 2015)

♦

Other (not always) wordless friends:

Cheryl Andrews
Allison Howard
Barbara Lambert
Allyson Latta
Elizabeth Yeoman

wordless wednesday (summer postcards)

~ carin ~ 11 Comments

 

Cabins and cottages I have known. Some I have loved.

 

The one room cabin up highway 11 ten thousand years ago that we arrived at by flying over the top of hills with my dad yelling hang on, here’s another one!  then laughing like crazy as I screamed from the backseat and my mother in the front held on to her cat’s eye sunglasses with one hand and her Sweet Caporal with the other. My dad’s cig was between his lips the whole time. We found the place by luck and chance after thinking it was fine to go on a summer holiday without a reservation anywhere. We ate radishes and rye bread for our supper and listened to the rain fall.

The place on Oxtongue Lake where we went a few years in a row and I met an older girl named Lucy who I thought wanted to be friends with me but really she just wanted an alibi for the hours she spent with a rather slimy fellow who worked on the property. I was reading Archie comics in those days and my idea of a good time was getting up before anyone else and taking the rowboat for a spin. Some things don’t change…

Where we used to stay with friends on Rice Lake but too many people kept dropping by and the dock always needed to be fixed.

The surprise of a place on PEI that I swear is magic.

The other place on PEI with a view of everything.

The one near Leamington where they left baked goods and fresh fruit on the table for our arrival and where rooster song woke us in the most cheerful way. I’d always assumed waking-by-rooster would be jarring. It’s not.

The place near the farm in Ganonoque where flies covered the insides of our windows BUT we *did* get to see the pigs fed each evening. Plus there was a canoe.

A friend’s cottage up north where no one dropped by and the dock was fine.

The haunted one near Bobcaygeon, which, apart from that detail, was brilliant.

Two in Nova Scotia:  one, on the Cabot Trail that I barely remember except it was an A-frame and we only stayed a night because it was better than sleeping in the car and who would have thought there weren’t a hundred places to choose from on that route? And the other, also a late night find I can’t remember where exactly but in a town so small everything was closed at 5 p.m. The owner of the cabin made us a sandwich. Such kindness.

The place I spent a day each year visiting people who had a paddle-boat and ate marshmallow fluff straight from the jar.

The one on the land in B.C. that is tiny, ancient and decrepit and was once home to a family of five, who travelled on foot through god only knows how many kilometres of thick forest, up and down hills to get to *town*. And back. It’s not actually habitable but we camped near it and I liked imagining the family’s life, the Okanagan people before them, the life of the land.

Yours…?

♦

Other (not always) wordless friends:

Cheryl Andrews
Allison Howard
Barbara Lambert
Allyson Latta
Elizabeth Yeoman

wordless wednesday (summer postcards)

~ carin ~ 9 Comments

Having a wonderful time on the shores of Lake Ontario where I’m happy to say the powers that be finally decided to invest in a bunch of beautiful garbage bins!

Nothing makes my heart sing like rubbish in a bin.

(and no, those bits on the ground are not rubbish, also not snow) (likely mud)

(Whitby, 2017)

 

(click on pic… this one looks much better enlarged)

 

♦

Other (not always) wordless friends:

Cheryl Andrews
Allison Howard
Barbara Lambert
Allyson Latta
Elizabeth Yeoman

wordless wednesday (summer postcards)

~ carin ~ 13 Comments

Where nothing is fancy, everything is good, the toast is plain and buttered just right, the sausages, exactly the way you like them and the eggs — when you say you’ll have them over m’easy,  a phrase you invent on the spot, they understand — the staff have been there for seven hundred years and could work at the fanciest restaurants in the world and show them how it’s done. Among other things, they call you hon  the correct way and when they ask how things are they actually give a hoot. And that orange slice! And the packet of peanut butter. Mint tea in the silver thing that leaks and well-thumbed newspapers stacked on benches for anyone to read. The young woman, slightly stoned or wanting to be, who comes in and orders a juice, drinks it down quick then says she forgot her money and would it be okay if she went to get it. Staff says sure, hon, you do that. And while she’s gone they take her empty glass away and there’s something in their face that says they know she won’t be back but that’s okay, that’s the way it is sometimes. And then the young woman comes back, with her money, and orders another juice. It’s that kind of place.

(P.J.’s, Whitby, ON)

 

♦

Other (not always) wordless friends:

Cheryl Andrews
Allison Howard
Barbara Lambert
Allyson Latta
Elizabeth Yeoman