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

A child that is loved; a child that isn't loved

 

Children with dead horse

A child that is loved embraces the world, 

For the child that isn't loved, the world is a foreign place.

A child that is loved is happy, for them the world is a loving place;

A child that isn't loved is always questioning why they weren't loved.

A child that is loved is unselfconscious;

A child that isn't loved is self conscious in everything they say and do. 

A child that is loved loves the world,

A child that isn't loved doesn't feel they belong in this world.

Revised, 25-26/05/2024

We visit the children's section at Mount Royal Cemetery

 Photographs taken in the children's section of Mount Royal Cemetery.

This is the headstone of my mother's brother, my uncle, Willie Parker;
much loved by his family who were devastated by his passing in 1914

The Shovel

 

At 2217 Hampton Avenue, around 1953

Not long ago I wrote about my grandfather, who was a fireman, and about a steel fire department shovel of his that I was given after he died. The photo above was taken outside of my grandfather's Hampton Avenue home, I am on the left, my brother is on the right. Perhaps I was three years old and not necessarily the lovely child I thought I was; around this time I dropped lighted matches in my grandfather's mail box, just behind where I am standing on the front steps to his home. My grandfather was a fireman and what do I do? I set on fire the curtains just above his mail box. Meanwhile, upstairs from my grandfather's flat was the flat of my Uncle John and Auntie Muriel; one day we were visiting them and seeing a large and difficult jig saw puzzle that my aunt had just completed I wondered how strongly it was held together, pulling two sides of the puzzle, the jig saw puzzle fell apart; this is minor compared to the fire incident, but it didn't go over very well. No wonder the young are parents, only the young have patience needed to deal with children. 

Edmund at Loyola Park

It's July 2, 2016 but feels like an early fall day, windy, grey sky, rain blowing in; cool until the sun comes out. Here is my grandson, Edmund, playing at Loyola Park. "That's fun" he says after coming down the slide...