The Fletcher Fenestella: T.O. and the Twins!!!

Last week I spent some time in Ontario. The first bit, a three day session put on by the Ivey business school, really tuned up my perspective on the marketing end of our business. The second bit, a whirlwind tour of southern Ontario, with various stops at family, was brief and left me a bit frazzled. I had some time on the plane ride home to think about how far I had traveled. Including the car ride to and from the airport, I figured the entire week was about 4000 kms. That's mostly the 3000 kms in the air and the rest in family vehicles - Rochelle and Amelia, Limo, Coach, Limo, Dad and Jill, Mom, Mom again, Joel and Nat, Steve and Christy, a cab (although I don't remember much about the cab), Joel again, and the limo home.

When I was preparing for the trip, there were several phone calls to organize rides and sort out where I was going to be staying. One night with Dad and Jill, then off to Joel's to be picked up by Mom, and then a night at her place, then back to Joels's for a pub night with Steve and Christy, then of to Ralph and Joanne's to see the twins. I was dreading the travel, but was really looking forward to seeing everybody, even if most of the visiting took form of car rides.

It's been about a year since I had traveled to Upper Canada (as referred to by east coasters), and I was shocked by the changes to the city and suburbs. I had forgotten how towns in the outskirts of a city like Toronto have a tendency to meld together as mould on an orange would, but in a clinical boxlike fashion. We left Dad and Jill's and drove at highway speeds for an hour and never left a developed area, the city ever expanding to accept more people and Costcos to feed them. What was corn field is now a shiney Best Buy or 40 story apartment building, all devoid of the character and charm that was old Markham. I suppose seeing the daily progress probably inhibits the spectrum of the wholesale changes, but go away for a year and return to be amazed.

Markham had always been a special place to me, particularly around Christmas time. When Main Street was decked out in that Norman Rockwellian style, with wreaths on each lamp standard and lights strung across the street. The Victorians that had been converted to window shops and their brightly lit frosted windows, the snow piled high on the boulevards and music playing from the Duchess where the locals met for a pint (or ten). I wish Amelia could see Christmas from that view, get that perspective. Now the town is bustling with construction, the roads are a disaster from the trucks tearing it up, and traffic is crazy. I had even heard a rumor that they were moving the town's center to a different and more efficient part of town. How do you even do that? It was sad to see.

I guess the children in our family will have their own memories, and come up with their own sad tales of how progress ruined what their memories were. I guess each generation has that feeling of losing familiarity. I guess that's why we develop our personal traditions, to hang onto what is important to us to fend off the changing world around us.

But regardless of the constant brain bending traffic, the boat-arse inducing car rides, dragging my luggage around like a minor up-scale hobo, and my crushed memories of Old Town Markham, it was all small potato's compared to seeing my family. That won't ever change.

With the horrible events recently in the news, this thought has been first and foremost in my mind.

Here are some pictures from my trip.

First stop Dad and Jill's.