A Trip Down Memory Lane

Council-elect and department heads spent the day together yesterday. It was cheerful and positive. Directors outlined the responsibilities of their departments. We had lunch together and went for a bus tour of the town's various facilities.

It was a wistful trip for me. Every stop reminded me of someone no longer with us and more than a few momentous battles. The building I am most proud of was not on the tour. It no longer belongs to the town. York Region Board of Education are in possession.

It was a fine coach. I sat behind the driver. We talked.

His twenty-one year old daughter is in Scotland. She won a scholarship to Glasgow University for music study.

Girl has met boy and his family have invited her to their home. She thinks maybe he likes her. She likes him. He might kiss her. She has never been kissed.

When she left, her dad bought the computer camera and they talk regularly to each other. But it's not the same as having her here.

Now she says she might stay. Not come home again. It's breaking his heart. He misses her so much.

She says it's dark all the time in Scotland Not just cloudy. Dark ....and raining.

If it wasn't for the Gulf Stream, Scotland would be uninhabitable. The Gulf Stream there is like road salt here. But they are further north.

The first time my mother came to Canada, she stayed from August until April. One winter morning she looked out the window and said in amazement;

"Does the sun never stop shining here"

I re-called my first impression was how high and wide was the sky.

The coach driver grew up in the former Portuguese neighbourhood in downtown Toronto. His mother and father worked hard for what they had. They never asked for anything to be handed to them.

He moved out and bought a house outside Barrie to raise his children in safety. Away from a neighbourhood which had become contaminated by crime and murder and guns and knives.

When he and his wife split up, they sold the house. It sat on a hill on two acres with wide windows and magnificent views on every side. After it was sold, nobody lived there. Soon it was discovered to be a grow op.

The driver couldn't find the Town hall yesterday. It wasn't in the Pirrie Book of Maps. It wasn't in the G.P.S.

There's a sign for the Town of Aurora Administration Centre at the corner of Wellington and John West Parkway. On the boulevard further up on the west side of John West Parkway, there's a sign for the Aurora Senior Centre.

It notes the address as 1 Municipal Drive. There is no municipal drive. It's the driveway into the parking lot.

The Town Hall is on John West Parkway. The only place 1 Municipal Drive exists is on the Town Hall Stationery.

That's so that John West won't get free advertising in a future election campaign. It was done with a five/four vote during John's last term in office.

He was suffering severely and clearly unlikely ever to be a candidate again at the time.

Even as he sat at the table... alongside them...as a colleague.