As I was typing last night, I was definitely looking for a space heater of some kind. Jack Frosts fingers were finding their way through the nooks and crannies. It's been such a mild winter, I wasn't used to it.
The mighty Chesterville Record was more than 100 years young, and it was pretty obvious, once you got past the main entrance. Upstairs, the editor and I huddled next to the small furnace they had. He still chain-smoked and guzzled hot coffee, in an effort to keep his fingers warm enough to type. I can remember days when we could see our breath. The morgue was a fitting name. In the days before Google, you had to go back into the stacks and find copies of the old papers, where you could find all the details of what happened 5, 10, 50 years ago. If you looked down past the yellow, brittle pages, you could see between the floorboards to the pagination tables below.
In Eganville, The Leader was among the best papers in the country. It had just won best photo at the Canadian Community Newspaper Awards. One of the brothers had snapped a shot of the church steeple on the big Catholic church, just before it tumbled to the ground. A lunatic had lit the thing on fire, and it all came down. Of course, with community release programs during the Harris years, he was released within a few years. So, the same nutcase went across the river, lit a match, and burned a Protestant church to the ground. Equal opportunity, I suppose.
Anyway, I lived above the florist shop next to the bakery. I could go downstairs, talk with the Canadian Open fiddle champion, get a freshly baked loaf of dark rye, then go across to the store where beekeepers sold buckwheat honey straight from the hive.
The funniest memory I have is getting my hydro bill, wondering why I was paying more than $300 for a one-bedroom apartment. When I talked with my neighbour, who ran the shop below, she was wondering why -- every time she flushed the toilet -- there was steam coming up. I mean, she didn't mind it, but it was odd. Turns out the Toronto cop, who'd bought the building, had done his own plumbing and got the lines crossed. My hot water tank had been hooked into her toilet. Geez...
The not-so-funny memories come from the problems we had with heat in the building. The florist was recently separated from her husband, so she couldn't afford to pay a lot for utilities. Her solution was to burn wood. Still, she needed to cut costs and keep her flowers warm, so she bought some cheap supplies of green wood. Since it hadn't aged properly, all the creosote lodged in the chimney and caught fire one night. All of a sudden, there was a whooshing sound and a few minutes later there were firemen knocking at my door. Needless to say, they didn't waste any time, as they cleared away my belongings to get at the chimney, so they could dislodge the lumps of creosote. We were lucky that night, as it was all extinguished within a matter of minutes, with a minimum of damage. Still, I remember looking around for photos and keepsakes, which couldn't be replaced.
Closer to home, I remember visiting the Adam's Block downtown, before it burned. I'd been invited to visit a room, where the glass window had been replaced by plastic, and the drafts were definitely coming through. It's just such a visceral feeling, when you can't get warm, even in your home. To this day, I get sick when the thermostat dips below 20, just because of all the cold and drafty placed I'd lived in. I can only imagine how the residents of that apartment at the old Adam's Block felt.
I can also remember how the mayor and members of council joined with the fire chief and the board members of the Fellowship Centre, as we looked for places to sleep for the Adam's Block residents, as they had no place to go after the fire. We looked long and hard at the old Kenwood and the rooms up above. Engineers and architects donated their time, in an effort to make it work.
Still, six years later, we haven't been able to replace the rooms that were lost. For those counting, we've lost more than 120 units since the old Norman was torn down. While there are people working very hard on the issue, we haven't seen new units built for 30 years or more.
