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Down memory lane by bike

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Along Woolwich where I biked to piano lessons with Mrs Ward and harmony lessons with Mrs Price. Flashes of two wonderful teachers, strict but appreciative, memories clear as day. Mrs Ward wanted me to have her grand piano when she had a stroke and was whisked off to California, but her daughter nixxed that. She wrote a few times and then stopped. Sad. These aging spinsters/ widows can be saints. Keeping involved with young people is the best medicine as you turn gray and start to creak.

First stop -- Woodlawn cemetery to visit mom and dad’s grave. Tricky to find, but success at last. As I leaned in to read the inscription, a young rabbit darted out from the flowers planted there (what are they? Thanks, Anne, as most graves were without tending.) I must have woken it. No other visitors. Or rabbits.

Through Riverside park over the walking bridge to Delhi (I mean the street :). I saluted the Guelph General Hospital where I began life, and the Homewood, where many movie stars have come to dry out, and which is featured in many Canadian novels. I remember skating there once (maybe a myth. Anyone else?).

And suddenly, there’s 113 Eramosa, where Delhi begins, at the end/ beginning of the street lined with trees, that does India proud. (Who named it Delhi?)  It could be a high commissioner’s house during the Raj. The same old homes, staid and dumpy, around it, but all looking fresh and alive.

Unfortunately with a 4-car garage covering the lawn where I almost lost my big toe to the lawnmower.

It is Guelph’s Casa Loma, and much more tasteful. Small is beautiful. It was built by Frederick Briscoe in 1875, remodeled in 1927. What a great Downton Abbey/ Upstairs, Downstairs soap opera it must have seen. The second generation took it over in the roaring 20s. Much the same story.

I bet there are still 80 yr olds who are alive and knew what was up at 113e. It was the centre of high society for 60 years, during grandma's heyday when she played violin on Great Lakes steamers for the Canadian gliterati. You can tell, as it was never closed off, like the Gamble's. People came in their horse and buggies in the driveway. The stables were behind.

Wish I were a novelist.

Then around the corner to Ardmay Crescent and Mrs Cole’s house. Probably my most vivid early memory is barreling down Ardmay with my feet on the handle bars and smashing into the goofy taillight of her 1954 Cadillac with the Martian fins.

In my defense, I had more than a few scrapes and a black eye for my troubles, and the car probably took up half the width of the crescent. I must have been really scared of a beating, but when she came over (or maybe I was marched over to her place), she burst out laughing as if it was just a clever joke. She took a shine to me and invited me on rides in the magnificent ship from outerspace.

Then to Lemon street to peer through the dark trees at Jim Gamble’s gothic mansion. 113e is cheery, bursting with life. The Gambles’ home is definitely haunted. Jim was a prankster (older, failing at school, eventually losing it in drink) and dropped a bucket of water on us from the third floor over the entrance.

Further down Queen st, my father woke me at 2am in 1962 and we walked down the street to watch as St George's school rise like a burnt offering, a genuine 'holocaust', to God via St George. Maybe it was the Gamble's ghost at work.

Going back down Lemon st, north, I passed King George School,a nasty looking, blue and white box, with no windows in the front. It was never my favourite place, with more than a few unpleasant teachers, lots of bullying. The chemistry teacher eventually committed suicide. Gr 7&8, when I was a year younger than the other boys (having ‘skipped’). The frowsy old one was demolished. Cursed.

Speaking of George, I finally found out why Guelph is Guelph.  The name Guelph comes from the Italian Guelfo and the Bavarian-Germanic Welf. It is a reference to the reigning British monarch at the time Guelph was founded, King George IV, whose family was from the House of Hanover, a younger branch of the House of Welf sometimes spelled as Guelf or Gwelf.

I knew the Guelphs fought the Ghibellines at the time of Dante. Dante was among the supporters of the White Guelphs, and in 1302 was exiled when the Black Guelphs took control of Florence. John Galt, Guelph’s founder, was a novelist, friend of Lord Byron, and of course a fan of Dante, hence the name. The wave of Italians came only much later, so the name has always intrigued me.

Am so glad John F Ross CVI didn’t pave their track and put artificial grass in the football field. The scrappy, slightly pebbly track is much better for knee and hip joints than pavement. Toronto Central Tech is up the street on Harbord St, and just did the artificial turf number. It’s everywhere now in Toronto. As if we don’t have enough pavement suffocating poor mother earth here. This is not Turtle Island, it’s Pavement Island.

It was fun going in the side door, peeking in the auditorium, the gym. The music room is now a teachers’ lounge. I see the assembly hall is now the Fox auditorium. Our benign highschool dictator keeping us in line. I wonder if Carol or Jim can remember him sternly chiding us during morning announcements? I searched and found out that John Ross was a noted teacher in Guelph. The school felt good; well managed and the students well behaved, oblivious to the storm raging in Toronto over sex education.

I stopped in at Anne’s but they are always on the move. So off to Guelph lake, where I found a spot where locals build a campfire and leave a nice lawn chair for community use, so was able to relax on the shore in luxury. Then the long haul to Eden Mills via Eramosa.

The best way to learn the terrain, directions, and get the feel of a place is walking or cycling with a map plus the odd question, to keep in touch with locals (asking directions is always a good excuse to say hello). Forget the cell phone and google map. We are turning into helpless baby automatons. .

I missed our farm completely on the way in to Eden Mills, where I paused on the town bridge and remembered the house where Mrs Metz, our wild young American Jewish-princess French teacher, lived on the second floor overlooking the river.

She materializes, waving to me from the window, reminding me how she pushed us grade 13ers to excel. She had me play the Grieg concerto 3rd movt for our class, and convinced me to apply to Oberlin (near Cleveland). We were sure we saw a flying saucer, lying there on the river bank one summer night. She was not beautiful, only 5’, with a loud, deep, New York, very Jewish voice. Always making fun, with a sharp wit. Her energy and self-confidence made her compelling. It’s wonderful how some teachers really played an important role as models.

I returned along the same road, now remembering the steep twisty road leading to the sharp 90 degree turn in the road where the old country schoolhouse used to be. Why did they tear it down? And throw up a fake-brick clapboard shack? Biking along, I saw the neighbour’s farm where I rode a horse for the first time (it took off at a gallop, but I didn’t fall. I was too shocked to be scared and I guess it figured I was ok.)

Biking is perfect speed to keep the momentum up while leaving you time to recall. Linh (Postcards from the end of America (2017) agrees:

The speed and protection of a car prevents you from being anywhere except inside your car, with what’s outside rushing by so fast that each face, tree and building is rudely dismissed by the next, next and next. Like television, the private automobile was invented to wean us off our own humanity. From each we’ve learned how to amp up our impatience and indifference towards everything, and with life itself. Anything that’s seen through a screen or windshield becomes ephemera, with its death nearly instant.

Of course both Linh and I are writing on a screen :)

My brain clicked in: there was the pond where Jim almost drown, and the laneway up ahead on the left to our farmhouse. I turned in and rode up the lane. Spectacular, but sadly, now paved, the maples draped over it, so close you could feel them. In expectation, I rode up to the house. Was that it? It looked like a parody of Tara in Gone With the Wind. but done lovingly, sort of covering the old stone. The barn was now a 3-car garage (plus the one in the house). Another four car family. (We had no garage, though two cars.)

I sighed and rode down the asphalt lane, relishing the moment, remembering walking down its earlier gravel (and getting a spanking), and began the long haul (now very tired) back to Guelph. I cycled past the old folks home built in one corner of the property, and mulled. Why don’t I go back and just hang out a bit? That place is sacred for us. Such a shame Bob and Sharon never experienced life there.

So (the bike’s advantage) i stopped and turned around. It was uphill, but that just increased the sense of pleasure I would feel wandering down the lane again, memory lane. As I left, I took pictures, one with Dorothy Kerr’s white house peeking through the trees, where my first friend, Mariann Kerr, lived.

Turning onto hwy 7, with gigantic trucks hurtling past,  i saw our maid’s home, Mrs Logan, her son Bert also a friend. I suddenly realized ... we had had a maid! Just like in Hollywood movies. She was wonderful, along with another of mom’s helpers, Mrs Mcgill, who laughed at me for refusing to clean out a garbage can with maggots in it at 113e. She poured water in and dumped them, and told me to grow up.

Suddenly, on the left, the Guelph Penitentiary (penitent ie, to reform, not just punish), where Carol worked as a guard. But it had no name, just 735 York St. There was a pedestrian gap in the fence, so I sailed through and went past a beautiful lake

to a solemn sign basically saying ‘we’re watching, so get out.’ The actual prison was still way up the hill, out of sight. What a priceless gem this is. I bet many thousands of men (ok, far from all) reformed, thanks to time on this idyllic island of sanity. Let’s hope it’s not hijacked by developers. I heard that it was being dusted off, but am not sure of its fate.

My last excursion was along the new Speed river bike path and Galt park, where the old train station was, with St George’s church and the pedestrian path arching over the river. I had to make a beeline to the crossing before the freight train took control. Too bad about the cars.

I read the ‘heritage’ placque about Galt and decided to go hunting for the dirt at Wikipedia.

John Galt (1779–1839) was a Scottish entrepreneur, adventurer and novelist, with his novels set in the Industrial Revolution, friend to John Byron. Together, they traveled to Byron’s newly independent Greece soon after its independence from the Ottomans in 1821. He then became the first superintendent of the Canada Company (1826-1829) that surveyed and sold lots on 1.1m acres of land ‘acquired’ from the Chippewa First Nation by the British government.

To attract settlers, they built infrastructure, schools and mills, much like real estate agents today, except they get our municipal govts to do the dirty work. In 1829, he was recalled to Great Britain for mismanagement of the Canada Company, and was later jailed for failing to pay one son's tuition. His sons left for Canada in 1834, Alexander later became one of the 'Fathers of the Confederation', and Canada's first Minister of Finance.

So what was this gadfly really up to? A pyramid scam -- for hungry settlers eager to seize native lands -- gone wrong? He got a huge tract of the Grand River ‘concession’, the finest hunting and farming land in Ontario, land that was given by Queen Victoria to Iroquois chief Joseph Brant* in 1784 for his support of the British and Canadians during the American revolution,

He found Guelph in 1827 but was sent packing due to mismanaging the business. Hmmm. Another one of Canada’s stellar colonial appointees, many of them confidence men on the lam in Britain.

The down side of staying in the British empire. But after my harrowing experience with US justice and spying, give me a parliamentary democracy over a republic any day. The native tribes saw this and stayed with the British, as they were seeing already how even more vile the Yankees were.

Another plaque there is of Guelph's Progressive Conservative MP (1968--1973) Alf Hales, commemorating his interest in water issues with the memorial trail. Another vivid memory from my early teen years was having lunch with him and my father Alf. Fancy silver cutlery and a waiter dressed like in the movies. They seemed like bosom buddies, but then you can see how charming this other Alf was. It must be in the name.

3:55pm. Finally some real food. A shwarma from a Pakistani fast food place on MacDonnell, by the Go station. Guelph has quite a multicultural face now. It’s a refreshing change from the even more multi’cultural’ but increasingly violence-prone Toronto, which is becoming more and more an urban jungle.

On the 2 1/2 hr ride home (25 mph on average), we were soon in an endless maze of suburbia. I twigged and asked the Chinese driver ‘what’s this town?’ He was bored and indifferent (no one wants to know anything anymore!), but looked and we realized Acton. Why did it ring a bell? Carol tells me, "there was a tannery there and it stunk every time we traveled through." No stink now, except for car exhaust.


*Thayendanegea or Joseph Brant (1743–1807) had acquired the 'six miles' tract along the Grand River from its source north of Guelph to Port Maitland on Lake Erie. His idea was to lease the land to white settlers, but this was reneged, forcing him to sell the tract for peanuts in perpetuity.


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  • Hamilton is a biker’s paradise. Even the inevitable ribbons of death (Hwys 403 and 407) slicing through it haven’t killed it. It is disparaged as Hammertown/ Steeltown for its attack of rust-beltitis in the era of ‘free trade’ (not). It’s kind of dreary, compared to Toronto or even its twin Burlington, which Maclean’s dubbed Canada’s shiniest new urban paradise (maybe true if you are a car addict), but that is in fact its cachet.

    Its heyday was a century ago (but then that’s true of all colonial Canada), and it is not a high tech hub, but it has the Niagara Escarpment and its stagnating economy means no massive high rise condomania. Its working class ethos is served by its NDP MPPs and MP, and the affordable Chedoke Civic Golf Course smack in the centre of the city.

    Incredibly, to reach the first of the fine bike trails I traversed, the Chedoke trail, you ride right into the course and walk up the hill to the clubhouse, where the trail begins. I watched some very working class guys tee off, the first beautifully (each your heart out Trump), the second hooking dangerously, evoking stentorious FOREs.

    The trail edges gently up along the escarpment and eventually arrives at the ominous 403 with a rickety wooden bridge over the incessant hurtling death machines. Down the steps and walking up a steep hill, I was sweating and paused as a jolly fellow climbed the hill proudly, though he was going so slowly, I was sure he would fall.

    I hadn’t (yet) got lost, and casually took Jeff’s directions to a waterfall, as Hamilton is also nicknamed ‘city of waterfalls’ (100+). Mistake. Ignoring my diligently prepared left-right-lefts, I ended up on a hill longer than any in my experience, fortunately with a bike lane. Even slowing down, I would soon reach a kind of terminal velocity, requiring total awareness, as manholes flashed by and would have bumped precariously.

    Finally, nearing the bottom, Tiffany falls (not the one Jeff had intended). As throughout the day, the other visitors were Indian in saris, with a dottering matriarch inching along over the rocks.

    A ‘ribbon falls’, a graceful ribbon falling gently (most of the time), named in honour of Dr Oliver Tiffany, who emigrated from the upstart United States in 1796 with his brother. Oliver was born in Massachusetts and studied medicine at Dartmouth.

    Ironically, it was the father who was a rebel. Both sons were not impressed with the coup or whatever, and like tens of thousands of Loyalists, they migrated to British North America, hopeful that their father’s sins would not condemn them. Canada welcomed these ‘draft dodgers’, especially doctors, so Oliver was ‘granted’ a hefty tract which included the falls. He practiced medicine 40 years and is a founding father of Dundas-Hamilton.

    Much as Oliver’s moral values appeal to me, refusing to be a part of what was already shaping up to be a cruel and racist society devoted to money and genocide, I wonder if he would join Canadians today in at least honouring the people whose land the Crown stole for him? His land was right outside the border of the ‘6 mile agreement' granted Joseph Brant, the head of the 6 Nations (Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Caygua, Seneca, Tuscarora) for resisting the Yanks during their revolution, sticking by the Crown.

    How generous, giving the natives some of their land back. On paper. Within a decade, the 6 miles on either side of the Grand River were being whittled away, leaving only a tiny reserve just south of Brantford (thanks for the name, Queen Victoria). Oliver was not part of that theft, just the general seizing of land where the natives were few and guns many.

    Conservationhamilton.ca thoughtfully provided a map which looked perfect for guiding me back on my pursuit of the Dundas Valley trail, which is smack in the middle between Dundas and Hamilton, with dozens of squiggly red, green orange, purple and blue ribbons. I followed Wilson Street looking for a BT (bike trail) marking. No luck. Suddenly i was being directed into McMaster University and headed for downtown Hamilton. Hmmm.

    I turned around and spied two cyclists going up Wilson and figured I better try to catch up. Maybe they were headed to these trails. Fortunately one was a plucky but not very fit woman, slowing down her partner, so I was able to catch up to them just as they were turning off the road into a huge, freshly asphalted parking lot,unattached to anything, built to use up some leftover asphalt? Whatever its real purpose, it served mine, and I hailed them. Mark looked at my map and refused to believe that I’d just come from Tiffany falls. ‘We’re going that way and you came from there,’ Mark pointed at the opposite end of Wilson.

    Peacemaker Lynn pulled out her phone and google-mapped where we were, As they were headed for Old Ancaster Road, my direction, they offered to show me the way.

    We proceeded on a pokey little road without cars, an old road with cracks, my kind of road. ‘I’ve lived here ten years and still get disoriented,’ admitted Mark. Like St Catherine’s, Hamilton-Dundas has the escarpment as a backdrop, so roads zigzag, abruptly change names, and then change back with ‘west’ or boulevard added. There were NO markings for the trails, but a very condensed map I photocopied from ontariobybike.ca was useful. In fact, if I’d just ignored friendly advice, I might have avoided the detours, but I’m on an adventure, right? And seeing things as a local.

    So - surprise, surprise - Mark’s left-rights led me in the wrong direction, but less wrong than the Dundas map. After ending up back on Wilson, I retraced my steps and somehow ended up on the Dundas Valley trail through a backdoor. The maze of trails are more for mountain bikes, but I had a bumpy bit of fun and finally got to Ground Zero and the Hamilton-Brantford rail trail. Though I despise these rail trails after 5 or so minutes, this was a welcome no-brainer, and I sailed along the wooded lane back to the Chedoke Civic Golf Course. Too far, the day is young, so I backtracked and found Cootes Paradise (Thomas Coote, a British Army officer during the American Revolutionary War), which was on the Ontariobybike route, so I figured -- paradise must be scenic.

    It was 4-lanes, but clearly a scenic drive, and not much traffic, even a bike lane. Biking along, I suddenly realized what was so restful -- Hamilton is devoid of bilboards! No Coke, McWhatever. Here there were only tasteful banners hugging the light poles, advertising ‘Engineering for your health’, 'Social studies searching for solutions for a Bright Future for us all'.

    Deja vu, Soviet Union redux. Ads strictly public service: ‘Study, study, study! V I Lenin’. Cool. There wasn’t much of a view, but a break was long overdue, so I pulled off at Hydro One, a dull but spacious and empty lot with some trees and a disintegrating picnic table. I found an abandoned portable cooler (no lid, removed the TIDE laundry soap and DRANO) and propped it up as something to lean back on as I munched some protein bar, had a toke, and vegged out.

    My chaise longue was facing something called Dundas FSB, which had since moved and the building, an anonymous red brick blob, was abandoned, but, what the heck, it was like installation art for late capitalism. (FSB is an insurance firm (fsbgroup.ca) though not even Wikipedia offers a suggestion of what FSB means (First Somali Bank?).) A cricket was inspired by the glorious sunshine to sing, a turkey vulture wheeled overhead. The collapsing picnic table gave the scene a Norman Rockwell touch. A perfect moment.

    I already knew York Road up ahead, and how it becomes Old York Road, another biking treat, winding, up and down, north of Hamilton, skirting downtown and leading me to Aldershot GO station. I was relying on Google map for the next leg, which hopefully would lead me to the station. Yes, Plains Road, a jag, a pass under the dreaded 403 to Waterdown Road and home.

    Just as I was approaching the crossing, a grim Grand Order of Israel cemetery. NO EXIT. What?! Are we in the West Bank? Clearly what Google suggested did not exist. A bit like Google whiting out the West Bank Wall on its maps. (It seems I took Snake Road by missnake.)

    What to do? Fortunately I always leave at least 2 hours for these snags. (I used up all two and then some, this time.) Along comes a super-cyclist, whizzing down the hill and disappearing. Follow the cyclist! I plodded after him in the opposite direction of the GO station, figuring there must be a crossing the other way.

    There was! And I was back in gear. Yes, Plains Road but this time West (?), over the 403 ribbon of death, and getting closer to home. But wait! What are those white things in what looks like a large pond? I suddenly realized I was going right through the RBG (Royal Botanical Gardens) on this 4-lane mini-expressway.

    The sun wasn’t that low. I should stop in. Then, a Timmy’s materialized! Much as I loathe these franchises, they are central to our car culture. And I’d run out of water. So I got a scone and a medium coffee, drank a bit, and risked propping it in my carrier, hoping to enjoy it in the RBG (though the Tim Horton’s patio actually looked across the busy road at some trees. Thank you, Tim.).

    The RBG was the highlight of the day. The whistful, late afternoon sun, recapping the approaching winter, though still warm, sunny, with gusts of wind. I walked my bike down into the sheltered valley, an ‘oak savannah’, a relatively open forest of oak, the natural formation before the colonists came (and cut down all the oaks). They are trying to reconstruct the original setting, which was rare in North America and now only preserved in conservation lands.

    It was full of families, leisurely strolling, walking through the swamp (excuse me, ‘wetlands’), reading the very readable soundbytes about urban sewerage captured and processed by Mother Nature, providing a home for waterfowl and indigenous plants, all monitored by a newly green city.

    I stopped to watch two young girls offering sunflower seeds and a stray cheerio to chickadees. We waited.(NEVER wait for a bird to do what you want!) As I lost patience, suddenly a tiny black-white vision darted in and dashed away with its prize. ‘It took the cheerio, not the sunflower!’ she enthused. ‘A junk food chickadee,’ I made the girls giggle, and carried on to see the swans.

    As I climbed a hill (please, the last one!), it was nice to see 4-5 people leisurely climbing the deserted road from the gardens. What a nice reversion of things to a human scale, I thought. Suddenly, HONK! A car-bot was affronted: how dare you hog MY road. I almost laughed, it was so stupid, silly, insulting. One women instinctively responded, sorry. I thought: NO! That a-hole should be sorry for being an a-hole.

    I was aiming for the 5:31pm train to Toronto, figuring it was maybe 5:15pm. I headed straight to platform 4, came out of the elevator to see a train. Toronto? Yes! It was already 5:35pm and it just happened to be late. What a fillip. The train announcer kept apologizing very loudly  for being late. Ha, ha.

    I sat and sighed. And overheard an old codger (not me, a really old codger!) loudly reminiscing about WWII and hearing the German planes over Norwich. ‘They came from Norway (no!) to bomb the west … no, I guess, the east coast.’ Ha! I’m not the only one who mixes up east and west, invariably goes the wrong way, has to learn from his own mistakes. A rather pathetic, ageless, obese fellow in the next seat shouted at the codger: I think China should invade the US and get rid of that moron Trump. Hmmm. Through the mouth of babes. Mr Codger asked, ‘Trump? Who’s that?’ Ahhh, the bliss of ignorance.

    What a relief. No flat tire, no accident. Lots of wrong turns, misdirections, misfollowing directions, but 50 kms in 7 1/2 hrs. Not bad. And all the misdirections, Jeff, Mark/ Lynn, Google, conservationhamilton.ca merely made it more unpredictable. Leibnitz said it all: God is good. Therefore, the universe that God chose to exist is the best of all possible worlds.*


    Gottfried Leibniz, Discourse on Metaphysics and Other Essays (1686).




















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