My post about Aydon Charlton the other day brought to mind the neighborhood we grew up in, the old north end of Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. Aydon and I shared the pedigree of being Albert-Scott men, Albert Elementary School and Scott Collegiate. Kids from the south end of town would look down on us I guess, but we were proud to have graduated from both of those schools.
Fun Fact. I once read that more students who started at Albert School went to jail than graduated from high school. Or maybe I just dreamed that. It’s not too big a stretch to imagine that it’s true. Interesting times, interesting place, for sure.
Nowadays they call it the core or North-Central. What had been a good working class neighborhood when I grew up there has fallen on a hard times. Macleans magazine called it the worst neighborhood in Canada, worse even than Vancouver’s infamous East Hastings area.
I knew the hood had fallen into hard times since I left back in the 1980s. (My parents stayed on in the house on Cameron Street until they, like most of their old neighbours, sold for what they could get and moved to the south end.) But I never thought it was that bad.
Last summer my wife Belina and I traveled back to my homeland. She came directly to Calgary from the Philippines and had never been to Saskatchewan. (Imagine!) We stayed at a hotel in the south end. (Where I ran into my high school art teacher, one of my favourite teachers of all time, still going strong!) We had tickets for the Rough Rider game, thanks to my friend Scooter. (Yes, I have a friend named Scooter.)
We planned to spend one morning touring around my old neighbourhood. I was afraid of what I’d find there, and I wasn’t sure how Belina would react if it was really as bad as Macleans made it out to be. We set out on a beautiful morning in June. We went into a Tim Hortons for some coffee and donuts. The woman working there was from the same province in the Philippines as Belina. Off to a good start.
We drove past my old house on Cameron Street. The front veranda was gone but otherwise the house and yard were in good shape. The lovely old elm trees arched high above the street, dappling the light of the early summer sun. The street seemed tranquil, hardly the ravaged war zone I had been expecting. All in all, the old neighbourhood looked pretty good that morning. I’m not sure I’d want to live there again. I’m not sure I’d be comfortable walking around there at night like I did as a kid. All in all, we had a nice day, seeing the sites of my younger years.
I thought it might be worthwhile to attempt some stream-of-consciousness sketches of the neighborhood I grew up in. Stream of what? Just my little way of making sure I’ll never make a million dollars from this blog of mine. (Sorry Belina!)
Here you go . . . .
these streets we walked along in broken down sneakers and jeans cuffs scraped down to hanging threads under the canopy of lofty branches verdant and dark and cool in summer, black and skeletal and sketched against a stark white sky and the crunching of footsteps on the snow (still in sneakers despite our mothers’ pleas to wear the boots they paid good money for) back and forth along the avenues past the library and David’s confectionery past the school we went where the recess battles were lost and won further along to the playground its pool empty and derelict in winter blue and shiny under the glow of distant street lights in summer when despite the tall chain-link fence we were drawn to climb over and go skinny dipping (only once for me thank you) although the water was cold and the prairie nights cool and it never lasted long enough to feel it was worth the effort unless of course there were girls involved but unlike the movies there were never girls involved and if we would cross the playground to the south side we would discover the foundation of the jail they kept Louis Riel in before they hanged him although we didn’t learn anything about that in school so what did we know anyway more likely we would turn north and walk the two blocks to our high school if we had any reason to be there, basketball in the winter, baseball in the summer and fall, bit just as likely we’d go back home and see what was on the two channels we got on tv back then
eugene stickland 