The Hidden Trail, 4 August 2025

I hadn't been on the hidden trail for several months so I was surprised at how overgrown it had become. It wasn’t always like this, the hidden trail changes with the seasons. It's like being in the country even though it is adjacent to the backyards of houses on one side and train tracks on the other side. So, maybe it's a little of the country in the city, not the downtown city but the neighbourhoods just outside of the downtown core. I have always wanted to be near nature and, even as a child, I tried to find places of nature and solitude, birds and insects, and small animals that are in the city. I liked to explore. Today, on the trail, I saw a ground hog, the other day at home I saw a skunk . . . all minor but they are a part of nature and give meaning to life, meaning not found in some of the other more lucrative things people do. As children we used to explore buildings still under construction, we used to go in old abandoned houses, we used to explore different neighbourhoods, we used to ride our bikes anywhere we wanted; I guess we were safe, or safe enough, we never thought about being safe. None of these adventures were told to our parents, why would they be? Our parents had lives of their own and we never thought that we should tell them anything about our lives. And today we still need places like the hidden trail, places in nature where people can be in touch with nature, where people can breath fresh air, walk on the earth instead of concrete and asphalt, where people can get away from the cars, noise, pollution, and other people, places that haven't been destroyed with condos and apartment buildings and roads and highways, where you don't have to see other people or be with them; nature is healing, just being in nature is healing. Nature heals the undiagnosed symptoms of urban life.  

Edited: 07 August 2025

Remembering Veeto (2)

A few years ago, after the death of her mother, Veeto sent me this photograph of the family dining room table where we used to play "space command" when we were children. We lived in the same fourplex, one of Hoolahan's flats on Oxford Avenue, we were at 4614 Oxford and Veeto (Audrey Keyes) was three doors north in the same building. When I was four to maybe ten years old I used to go to her front door and Mrs. Keyes would answer, "Can Audrey come out to play?" I would ask, or we would stay indoors and play in their flat, either in the living room or dining room under this table, or Audrey's bedroom. It was all "let's pretend", it was all the imagination, it was a wonderful innocent time of life. I guess Veeto inherited the table and had it shipped to Australia where she lived. 

My cousin, Linda Morrissey, who lived a few doors from us, walked Veeto to the Villa Maria School where both were students. I wonder what Linda remembers of Veeto, Veeto was Audrey Keyes in those days. I was walked to school, to Willingdon School, by another girl, Mimi, who lived on Oxford but a few doors in the opposite direction to Linda. I was not the greatest student and I would play hooky from school, either feigning illness and then I might stay at my grandmother's home on Girouard Avenue, or hiding out in my bedroom, one day hiding under the bed. Other people have fond memories of school, I don't have those memories. But I have fond memories of Veeto. 

Below the dining room table

Sitting outside of our respective homes

Audrey and her lovely mother, Mrs. Keyes; in 2006 at the residence
corner of Sherbrooke St. West and Landsdowne Avenue

It’s pretty sad losing an old and dear friend. Veeto was so full of life, to walk down the street with her was to have the street transformed by her presence. She sang and gave everything new life, new meaning, a new presence. What a special friend she was, what a special person to share one’s childhood with. I was blessed by her presence as was everyone who knew her.

Remembering Veeto

When I was growing up on Oxford Avenue, in the mid-1950s, Veeto was the little girl next door who was my first friend in life. We moved from Oxford in 1963 and while I heard a few things about Veeto, that she had moved to Australia, it wasn’t until around 2006 that we met again. She was an extraordinary person, one of the important people in my life. I will never forget dear Veeto.

    Photos of Veeto (Audrey Keyes) taken on 30 June 2009 at Cote des Neiges Cemetery, Montreal. Veeto's mother died in February 2008 and the funeral was a few months later; these photos were taken probably the following summer, in 2010. Both of Veeto's parents died on February 28th, her mother in 2008, her father years before.

 

Childhood days at St. Joseph's Oratory

These 15K year old caves below an area in Montreal are an incredible discovery. Photographs of the caves make it look like the walls are lined with brick, but this is stratified rock as I learned in high school geography class (Mr. McGee?), and the ceiling looks as though it was carved out by people. This also reminds me of when we were kids and used to take the bus to St. Joseph's Oratory, a few miles from where we lived, and we'd walk around looking at the thousands of crutches that belonged to people Saint Brother Andre (he's been made a saint) healed, the smell of candles and incense, Brother Andre's heart in a container in a separate room and the heart was stolen by someone and returned many years later, Brother Andre's corpse (minus his heart) lay in a black granite casket with little notes folded and squeezed between the cracks of the casket with requests for healing of various sorts. What a great place to grow up! You won't find this in white bread North America! But I also remember that one winter we discovered man-made caves located, I believe, to the left of the Oratory building, below where the garden of the Stations of the Cross was located, as you stood looking up from Queen Mary Road. We would enter these "caves" and walk around exploring. Always exploring. Our parents didn't know anything of our adventures because we never thought to tell them and would they really care? Probably not, we weren't yet filled with the fear of predators, clowns, deviants, or pornographers. After time spent there, when it was dark at 5 p.m., we'd take the bus home with frost bitten toes in the short dark winter days.

Images of St. Joseph's Oratory, Montreal: