Winter returns - yay!

One doesn't usually cheer the return of winter, but in this winter of 2021, a winter for the ages, it's welcome. 

Since Karen and I came out of quarantine at the end of January, the weather has been spectacular - some sun almost every day, few really windy days and minimal snow. Today is another beauty: bright sun, light breeze, -7C on its way up to -2C. Everything is sparkling.

I got out for a run and was able to get around my usual route along the river paths. It's slightly over 5K and traces the outlines of the forks of the north and west branches. 

For much of February, there was enough snow, ice or slush on the paths that I stayed away from them, especially the south side of the west branch. But today, they were all mostly bare, except a couple of spots where I had to go carefully because of ice. The hill up to the Wharncliffe St. bridge was slippery too. I had to hold on to saplings and tree branches to haul myself up it.

If the weather holds, I'll get out for another sunny walk this afternoon to run errands (and, yes, probably take pictures).

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And I did, at one, when it was still brilliantly sunny. It was partly errands, partly my regular afternoon camera ramble. Not much to show for the latter...

One Richmond Row on the right - the building that twists

The old and the new: St. Peter's Basilica reflected in lobby window at One Richmond Row

Albert St. just south of Prince Albert's Diner

As I was going to the Rexall at Oxford and Waterloo, I wandered over into Old North with the idea of photographing some more of my "places." The family lived at 863 Colborne St. from about 1953 to 1958. Clearly, I wasn't feeling very inspired as the pictures are a bit of a yawn.

The first one is of Fire Hall No. 4, the focus of many a neighourhood lad's dreams in those days when little boys were very apt to say they wanted to be firemen when they grew up. The fire fighters used to sit out in the little porch to the right of the garage door. 

If you were really lucky, they might invite you in to have a look around. They wouldn't dare do that nowadays, I'm sure. It was probably against regulations even then, but at least nobody would have worried about being accused of pedophilia. I was eight when we left the neighbourhood. Our house was most of a long block down Colborne, with St. James St. to cross to get to the fire hall. I can't imagine a parent nowadays allowing their eight-year-old to roam so far unsupervised.

As I walked on to the little bungalow where we had lived, it occurred to me I could have taken pictures of any number of other houses in that block between St. James and Grosvenor. This is the house where the girl ran a comic book rental agency. You paid a nickel or something and got to take home a couple of old comics she'd tired of. 

And there's the house that Curt Day lived in, whose foster mother, Doris, won a radio contest for locals with the same name as somebody famous. This is the house where the kids had a rink in their back yard in winter and where I first skated and played hockey. And this is where Nancy Fairs, the teenager I had a crush on, lived. 

But I only took the one picture of our old house.

Places, buildings, have always triggered memories for me. This is a place I lived for almost five years when I was very young, the place where my sister was born - well, where she came home to after she was born. And the place we left from to go to Australia and came back to a year later. Momentous times.