Memories of home

I look around at suburban sprawl today and I feel very fortunate to have grown up in small town with diverse geographic features.

We can start with one of the houses we lived in. It had a very old separate garage that was barely holding together. Every visit inside was a journey into mystery of what old-timey object you would find. It had rhubarb growing wild along the south wall. Just pick it and eat it I did.

If you followed our road north one block the pavement ended and residential street turned into swamp, complete with standing pools of water breeding tadpoles and frogs. Frogs and crickets made for a symphony of summer sounds.

Further north, the residential streets backed onto woods. We had woods! Actual majestic stands of trees with inviting paths to walk. The canopy providing great shade from the summer sun.

We had train tracks running northward and westward out of town, that beyond our commuter train station at the end of the line was barely used by the odd freight train a few times a week. These tracks, especially the ones heading west parallel to the shore of Lake of Two Mountains, made for convenient, although not quite comfortable walking paths to summer cottage communities and beaches along the lake.

Yes. Actual beaches with sand. Even our own town had a rough but usable public beach (El Rancho) until the property was sold to someone who built a flood wall and a homestead in its place.

Of course the real attraction was the Lake of Two Mountains, which was the meeting of the Ottawa and St Lawrence rivers at the south end, but at our north end emptied into two rivers on either side of the island of Laval, Prairies River and Riviere des Milles Illes, which had its source right at our town.

Our river had great fishing for a time, with perch, pike, sunfish, dore, bass, steelheads, sturgeon, catfish and eels. The water was not very clean, so you couldn't eat the fish, but I'm told it's much better now that they've stopped dumping sewage into it. Of course, the down side of living next to a river at the confluence of two great rivers from Ontario was spring flooding, which still occurs today.

My favourite experiences in the river involved illegally crossing the train bridge that connected Laval Ouest and Deux Montagnes and stopping off in the middle of the river at an Île Boisée (I didn't even know it had a name at the time). It was a fantastic place to get away, light a small fire or enjoy the cool breezes coming off the lake. Some braved the water separating the small island from a bigger island, Île Turcotte, a densely forested island where you could party and few would know. In the peak of summer, if the water was low enough, you could practically walk a stone path between the two islands.

I look around at the sterile suburbs and wonder aloud at how boring it must be. I am also grateful that I happen to live in a neighborhood close to the Bow River, that has some of the same ecosystems that I grew up with.