Making It Up As I Go Along #331

Hayward Ave. My old house, #44, is second from the right.

From the Signal Hill walk.

The Battery... at the far right, in the middle of the picture, you can see a person on a deck. This is the private deck that is open for the public when they leave or enter the Signal Hill trail.

MONDAY...
— Lunch at the Rooms. My first time in the monstrosity of a building. Still think it’s in a lousy place but it is a good view and a pretty cool building.
— Hike Signal Hill. Dad goes down the stairs with me. Joins me as far as the narrows. Then he heads back up the stairs while I go around and up through the battery. I am just about dead when we meet again at the interpretation centre. Most of the last 20 minutes of my hike was uphill.
— Supper is in St. Phillips. Fish and chips overlooking the sea in front of Bell Island. Paragliders, boaters, whales all make for an interesting meal.
— See Jim and family for a bit in the evening. Followed by his parents. Gets me home about an hour and a half later than I planned. Oh well.

TUESDAY...
— Busy day. Start getting ready to leave around the house. Breakfast is at Tim Horton’s with dad and Otto Tucker. A trip to see Tom and Millicent before a bit of lunch and then off to the airport.
— I watch The Bank Job on the plane... pretty good movie. And I’m lucky with my seats. To Halifax I’m in the emergency exit seat (lots of leg room). And from Halifax to Ottawa I have a pair of seats to myself.
— Sheila picks me up and I get the car from the office to go home and take it easy.

WEDNESDAY...
— Quiet around the house in the morning with some laundry.
— Work is also pretty quiet as I’m alone after 5:00 comes.
— Some thunder and lightning outside AFIS after dark.
— I watch Gone Baby Gone on the movie network. Really good movie.

THURSDAY...
— Physio before work... the shoulder is improving.
— Work is torture. That is to say, from 9:00 to 10:45, it felt like five hours went by.
— Really tired after work. My thoughts of the gym dropped to a walk at home... and that, in turn, dropped to working the hammy and shoulder and then heading to bed.

FRIDAY...
— Return beer bottles before work. It’s about time. I’ve had those things lying around the house since November. Once I get them to the car I realize that one of the boxes of ‘empties’ actually has 10 full beer in it. Not a bad find on a Friday.
— Work is alright. Pretty quiet and easy going. I’m pretty much alone for most of it.
— Hit the gym for 20 minutes after work. Do the legs and some back work.

SATURDAY...
— A work day at home. Do some exercise and also do laundry and some house cleaning.
— Watch some baseball and a movie in the evening and then the power goes out just before 11:30... through the whole neighbourhood. Avalon... the Perfectly Planned Community... except when it comes to electricity.

A long one...

St. John’s Day

This last trip home had very little to do with St. John’s for me. We spent most of the trip driving around the province, taking it all in over a short period of time... and me with a cold through a large chunk of that.

It was great, with lots to see and do. But it made me more of a tourist than a local and, as a result, there was little to no tugging at the heart strings for me. Little draw, asking me to return home permanently. That changed on my last full day in Newfoundland. It changed on Monday...

The battle is lost. After years of boycotting and speaking ill of it, I am caving in. Today I go to the Rooms.

The Rooms is a massive building that sits at the crest of the hill that holds the St. John’s downtown core. Being such a big building, and being located at the highest point of the downtown area, the Rooms sticks out on the St. John’s skyline in a manner similar to if you had plopped the CN Tower or the Empire State Building into my historical city. A skyline that went centuries virtually unchanged, changed in a big way.

I never liked the way the Rooms came to be. When it was originally slated to be built, people complained... and the city basically said “tough”. Then, on excavation of the site, they discovered the well preserved remains of an old military fort. They always knew the fort had stood on the site, they just assumed that the remains of it were pretty well destroyed. With good remains, there was talk that maybe the Rooms should be moved, that the fort could be rebuilt as a tourist destination. It could be like the one in Halifax. Something to add to the historic element of the city.

City council said, once again, “tough”. And so a building that had been billed as something St. John’s sorely needed... a place to house an art gallery, museum, and historic archives... trumped actual history... the old fort was covered once again.

For years after that, I’ve spoken down about the Rooms. My interest in going was pretty much nill. But today I go... for lunch.

The Rooms is actually located about a ten minute walk from where I last lived in St. John’s. So I suggested parking the car in my old neighbourhood and strolling over to lunch. Mom, being as close to royalty that our family has, looked down upon the idea of a pre lunch walk, and offered to drop me off. Dad, being one to always show that he’s still got it, decided the walk sounded good.

So we pull onto Hayward Avenue and stop by the old basketball court there. Dad and I get out and mom drives away. It’s like some sort of drop off in the mafia movies. Where the mob boss has a frank talk to a couple of the lowly guys and then just pulls over where ever the car may be, and tosses them to the curb. The car peels away and the lowly guys are left in an almost alien neighbourhood... vulnerable and alone.

After the first few steps, the feeling changes from abandonment to returning home. The neighbourhood hasn’t changed much in the last five years. And the pangs of missing something, which I never felt back in my childhood home of Wedgewood Park, come in waves.

The narrow street, the packed in row houses, the sound of a city buzzing around us... I walk along wondering how it would be to live here again, and how it would be had I never left.

I look at my old house. Little has changed. A mailbox that used to be between the outer storm door and inner door has been moved fully outside. And everything else is pretty much as I left it. Even the number 44 that dad and I bought at Canadian Tire and screwed on next to the door remains. Not that one should be surprised that an address number remains standing after five years. I mean my parent’s number 53 has been on their house for some thirty years and there’s no fanfare for that. And Stonehenge has stood for millennia and... well... okay, bad example. That one is considered one of the Seven Wonders. But the point is, even though I knew that the numbers bought at Canadian Tire and screwed on by my dad and I some five years ago would still be there... it still struck me to see them there.

We continue our walk to the Rooms. Cutting through the streets of my neighbourhood. Reminding me how it is still as it was when I would go walking late at night in the quiet. Or during the day to go shop for CDs downtown. I look down a street and see an elderly man come to his front door shirtless. He just goes to get his mail and he’s hardly the kind of body type that should be seen in public without a shirt... but in this neighbourhood, it just feels genuine.

We cut through a pathway that’s a shortcut off the streets. Downtown St. John’s is full of such paths. Places where the driver here from the suburbs never knows of. Only a pedestrian comes across them. We get a view of the back yards of a dozen of the homes most only ever see from the front. Garden paths and maintained greenery... even dad comments how he’d never guess it to be here.

We finally reach the Rooms. And aside from the bulling that went on in its construction. And how it sticks out like a sore thumb compared to the rest of the city, it’s a pretty cool building. Unique architecture can’t be totally bad. I mean we live in a world now where cities are becoming more and more cookie cutter models, each like the one before. Box stores galore.

The Rooms can never be confused with a box store.

Inside, there’s an openness with zig zagging stairs getting you up the levels. From the fourth story, you can look down to the main foyer. And the view from the restaurant is spectacular. St. John’s truly is a beautiful city.

Sitting in the Rooms restaurant, looking out at the harbour, my afternoon plans are made for me by the power of the view. The sun glistens off of Signal Hill making it more glamorous than any spotlighted Las Vegas Casino or hotel. You don’t need neon signs to draw people... just let it sit there majestically in the summer’s sun.

Dad decides to join me. So a quick trip home for some water and sweets for him, and a change of shirt for me, and we’re on our way.

From the parking lot, it’s a quick hop over the stone wall and you clamber down the dirt paths to the steps. Within seconds, you’re gone. Beyond the cars and photographing tourists. You twist and turn down wooden steps and along craggily rock faces. Where old time British soldiers once patrolled. You look out to sea, seeing the familiar Cape Spear off in the distance. It’s more brilliant today than I’ve ever seen it before. You can even see the line that is the white picket fence that leads to the old, historic lighthouse.

You look into the valley at the base of Signal Hill. Where, in the 1800s, a quarantine hospital once stood. You imagine the soldiers carrying stretchers of the sick through the Battery and over the narrow paths of the hill... one false step and stretcher, the sick, and soldiers could all fall tumbling down the cliff face and into the ocean.

Dad and I stay at the base of the hill for a while. Watching a ship come in and just allowing the place to be... and us to be with it. And then we part. Dad to return up the stairs to get to the car again and drive part way down to the interpretation centre... where I’ll meet him after completing the circle of the hill.

I walk along the Narrows. Where a path only wide enough for one has been all these decades. Where chain link is bolted to the cliff face in order to keep people from slipping off into oblivion.

There’s no place in Ottawa that captures the history of nature and people together like Signal Hill does. Maybe it was walking these trails as a child that peaked my interest in historical and cultural geography in the first place. After all, that’s the study of how people and the environment impact each other. And Signal hill combines the natural environment with the human element more perfectly than any place I know. I mean really, name me another place that is so popular with the general public yet still is wild enough that there are no fences keeping you out of any particular place and the only thing there to protect you from slipping and falling a hundred feet down a rock face is a chain railing that’s bolted straight into that very rock face!

And you exit the paths onto a private patio deck. Really it’s true. You finish the walk around the hill. You leave nature behind and enter the urban. You get into the Battery (which is the name of the small community at the base of Signal Hill) and have to walk across someone’s deck. It’s part of the deal. You even have signs there to tell the tourist that it’s okay, come on... you didn’t take any wrong turn.

Sometimes the home owners are out there on the deck, lounging in the sun. And they’ll give you a hello and a smile when you pass by.

Through the Battery, I decide to turn back up the hill to take the paths up to Deadman’s Pond rather than walk the street to the Battery Hotel where I can continue to follow the road up to dad at the interpretation centre. Taking the paths means I am cutting distance but increasing vertical challenges. And by the time I reach Deadman’s Pond, I’m sweating and huffing like a marathon runner. Well... more accurately, I’m sweating and huffing like a couch potato who’s been thrown into a marathon and told, “here... run it!”

It’s at Deadman’s Pond where I make another decision. I can round the pond and head to the roadway that will lead me gently to the interpretation centre... or I can scale a large, rocky hill to do the same.

Visions of grandeur develop. I picture cresting the hill and looking down upon the interpretation centre thinking that it’ll be a spectacular view. And I’ll be there at the top, silhouetted against the sun as the conquering hero returning from battle. Trumpets will announce my achievement and I will amble down the hill, returning the civilization... a hero.

That’s what got me up the hill. Halfway up the rock face, where I have to use hands as much as feet, or else risk toppling back...and no chain link is bolted anywhere for my safety, I begin having other visions.

I picture my body being found several hours later, all crumpled in a heap at the base of this hill right next to the pond named Deadman’s. And people will wonder what happened. They’ll say how I’d been on this hike hundreds of times and was always so careful that I could never come into harm here. My niece’s children will try to research the pond, wondering if it was indeed named after me... as in it is I who is the dead man.

I continue up the hill, not thinking of the trumpets but thinking I can’t look so stupid as to die here. At the crest of the hill... at the lowest portion of the crest... nowhere near any peak with no silhouetting of any kind going on... I stop. I stop and sit for a rest. Breathing hard with slight dizziness between my ears and wobbliness within my legs, I rest for a full five minutes. Dad can wait a little longer.

And so I continue, down the other side of the hill and beholding the grassy meadow bordering the interpretation centre. I fail to see dad’s car and, for a minute, fear that my journey is not complete... that I’ll have to continue on up to the top of Signal Hill once again... but when I round a corner, I see the car, and dad pulls out to meet me partway in the lot. I open the door, grab my spare shirt, and pant “give me a minute.” as I strip off, leaving my chest as white and bare as that old man I saw some two or three hours earlier, as he was getting his mail.

This is my last full day in St. John’s. And St. John’s has never been so alluring... so beautiful... so home.