My Hometown

MyHometown

Back to Barrie What is that mysterious force that draws people home again?

B

arrie is the town I nervously wandered away from early in the ‘80s, right after high school, in pursuit of knowledge and abundant riches laying in wait elsewhere in the world. And it’s the place I returned to some 18 years later. I never knew exactly what drew me back at the time, but in the eight years since my return, I’ve slowly been trying to figure it out. Just as I had matured during my absence, so too had my hometown. In fact much of the Barrie I once knew now only exists in my memory. The outlying woods and fields surrounding Barrie were once the equivalent of the Serengeti, as seen through the curious eyes of a 12-year-old boy.

Those ravines and overgrown fields were the setting for endless summer days spent catching frogs and snakes, flicking grasshoppers into spider webs, upsetting ant hills, building precariously placed tree swings and forts from materials appropriated from building sites. On occasion, we smoked stale cigars that my stillbest-friend Stan swiped from his dad. And we attempted to wash away the acrid taste with a concoction of gin, rye and various liqueurs purloined in presumably undetected amounts from my mother’s liquor stash, amassed for later consumption in a mason jar. Today manicured lawns, paved driveways and inground pools

amongs seemingly endless rows of new homes have replaced those fields. The turtle pond is now a large, cementlined water reservoir surrounded by a sevenfoot-high chain fence, tucked into the back corner of a subdivision of over three hundred housing units.

NOW AND ZEN The dance the mind does between past and present is never more energized as when driving through the stomping grounds of your youth. Waiting for the traffic light to change at Big Bay Point Road and Yonge Street, I have more than once squinted for a brief moment in the direction of the Zehrs mega grocery store while mentally envisioning the old farmhouse and barn that once stood abandoned and alone at this corner against a backdrop of fields lined with 100year-old maple and oak

trees, evenly separated by field stones piled three or four feet high. At least the wooded areas along the old creek bed itself still exist. But on my first visit in almost two decades, I was taken aback to see that the well-worn paths so clearly etched in my memory were completely overgrown. Even though the number of schools in the area has more than tripled since I left, so few kids made use of the old paths, they disappeared. I guess the appeal of nature and the great outdoors that once held so much sway over youngsters has vanished along with the trails. If you spot a kid with a stick in his hands these day, it’s likely to be a joystick attached to a video-game console. Fun as they might be, virtual games can never replicate the instantaneous adrenaline rush of a young boy’s out-

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Mike Montague and his dog, Moe, enjoy the great outdoors.

door adventure, of which Barrie offered plenty. Imagine for a moment hearing the whistle blast of a freight train approaching from behind while you’re at the halfway point of a 200-foot-long trestle bridge—and having to make a run for it! Thrills like that could happen at any time along our extended route home, back when pop and chips were not staple items in the family kitchen, but the reward for a long, hot walk to the store on a summer afternoon. Changed as it has, Barrie still retains a sense of community unfelt in the bigger cities I have lived in. It’s a friendly spirit that underlies the conversations overheard in our stores, coffee shops and bank lines…an intangible energy that makes it easier to connect and converse with the people around you, who you may not know by face or by name. It’s similar to the connection you might experi-

30 More of Our Canada

ence while on vacation, when you find out the stranger next to you is from your home town or province, and you’re no longer a stranger. In Barrie, you get the feeling that the things we share and have in common are greater than the things separating us at any given moment.

TOWN TO CITY Politically, Barrie can best be compared to a teenage boy, clumsily adjusting to his evergrowing feet and constant need for bigger shoes and longer pants. Growth spurts have taken Barrie from the town of 36,000 I left in 1982 to the city of just over 130,000 today. Those who step up to the task of representing Barrie tend not to be motivated out of personal gain, and typically meet the challenges of our growth with diligence and consideration for Barrie’s roots as well as the image it presents to all who live within and visit her. You are as apt to run MARCH 2009

into a past or present NHL hockey player while buying groceries here as you are to meet your own neighbours. And when you do, the back-and-forth conversation flows naturally because of that unpretentious, all-inclusive Barrie spirit. Like many Canadians we curse the first snowfall only to embrace it the very next day, for we are at the heart of some of the best downhill and cross-country skiing in the area. Our outlying regions are woven together by snowmobile trails taking you hundreds of miles in any direction. When Kempenfelt Bay finally freezes up some time after Christmas, Barrie gains a new backyard and playground for a couple months. The bay—a vast plain of white—is peppered with hikers, skiers and snowmobilers. Hundreds of ice-fishing huts appear almost overnight, hunkered together in mini villages, no two alike in design or colour. In spring, summer and early fall, the same bay plays host to a myriad of sail boats and pleasure craft, moving about in every direction leaving crisscrossed wakes and a horizon splashed with multicoloured sails. Around the bay’s edges, our beaches are busy with sun-seekers and splashing children. And the

waterside paths and parks are active with bikers and bladers, runners and walkers, stoopers and scoopers. On most weekends from spring through fall, festivals alongside Barrie’s shoreline offer up the wafting smells and smokey tastes of great summer foods; live jazz, rock, blues and country music; open-air theatre, fireworks, crafts and antique markets. Some of the finest golfing around can be had on several challenging courses within a ten-minute drive of Barrie. On hot summer nights, the downtown stretch of Dunlop Street takes on a Mardi Gras feel as nocturnal pleasure-seekers attired to attract move between the clubs and bars filling the summer air with cologne, perfume and pheromones until the wee hours. And, in a nutshell, that’s my hometown. to me, there was never a greater time or place to grow up than Barrie in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Much of what I‘ve described here likely applies to other similarly sized cities in Canada, but only one is firmly entrenched at the centre of my personal universe. Mike Montague, Barrie YOUR TURN! Write to “My Hometown” and tell us what makes yours so unique. For more details, see page 64.