"The Skater" by Charles G. D. Roberts

 

N.D.G. Winter Carnaval, February 19, 1955; photo taken at 
NDG Park (Girouard Park); St. Augustine Roman
Catholic Church in the background.

My glad feet shod with the glittering steel
I was the god of the wingèd heel.

The hills in the far white sky were lost;
The world lay still in the wide white frost;

And the woods hung hushed in their long white dream
By the ghostly, glimmering, ice-blue stream.

Here was a pathway, smooth like glass,
Where I and the wandering wind might pass

To the far-off palaces, drifted deep,
Where Winter's retinue rests in sleep.

I followed the lure, I fled like a bird,
Till the startled hollows awoke and heard

A spinning whisper, a sibilant twang,
As the stroke of the steel on the tense ice rang;

And the wandering wind was left behind
As faster, faster I followed my mind;

Till the blood sang high in my eager brain,
And the joy of my flight was almost pain.

The I stayed the rush of my eager speed
And silently went as a drifting seed, —

Slowly, furtively, till my eyes
Grew big with the awe of a dim surmise,

And the hair of my neck began to creep
At hearing the wilderness talk in sleep.

Shapes in the fir-gloom drifted near.
In the deep of my heart I heard my fear.

And I turned and fled, like a soul pursued,
From the white, inviolate solitude.

-o-

Note: As of 8 a.m. today, 22 January 2025, it is -16C with a windchill of -23C. Milder by Sunday...

The Chalet Bar-B-Q near NDG Park

Here is the Chalet Bar-B-Q, a block from Girouard Avenue. As I'm driving home from work, getting off the Decarie Expressway, I drive up the exit ramp to Sherbrooke Street West, the smell of chickens cooking permeating the air, and I always think one of two things: it's either I wouldn't want to live near the Chalet Bar-B-Q because of the smell of cooking or I think I'd like to eat supper there and I should go more often . . . The Chalet Bar-B-Q was opened around 1940 and I doubt they've changed the decor since then.  The place has a rustic appearance with wood paneled walls, friendly waitresses some of whom have been there since the the 1970s, and we always make the usual order: creamy coleslaw, a quarter chicken and french fries, served with their own BBQ sauce and a toasted white bun. I am not sure they have these establishments in other places but there is a Quebec-based chain of trendy St. Hubert BBQ restaurants that can now be found in Ontario. In addition to this, there is the Cote St-Luc BBQ on Cote St. Luc Road near Girouard; and the New System BBQ cars seem to deliver to remote locations from their restaurant on rue Notre Dame. Back in the 1940s the Chalet Bar-B-Q didn't provide cutlery, they did have finger bowls and you were expected to pick up the chicken and enjoy it that way, but that's long changed. Imagine that. Before the ubiquitous McDonald's.

BTW, NDG Park is known to many of us as Girouard Park, that's what we always called it.

 

That's Girouard Avenue at the far left, as we drive south, cross
Sherbrooke Street West, and arrive at
my grandmother's flat at 2226 Girouard Avenue