Seven years in Wellington

If you hadn’t taken a photograph of the old Dave’s Car Wash building, it’s too late now. Your only chance, if you can’t see one in a friend’s collection, is (shameless plug) to buy my CD of the same name—for the cover photograph, if not the music.

The site, and that of its neighbours, has now been levelled and has sprung fencing, looking like a cattle pen erected to rein in the volatile machines that are digging and scraping away. Now I’m not suggesting that it was a historic building or anything like that, but it did get methinking about all the changes that have been wrought in Wellington over the almost seven years that I have been living here.

Seven years ago, the Midtown Meats property had not yet burned down, and the massive freezer trucks that used to hold up traffic along Main Street for, oh, at least two light changes as they performed their delicate manoeuvres, were still fixtures in the village. Fortunately, you can still watch the dance alongside the Wharf Street entrance to the Foodland store, or get a good seat as the pylons are set out to signal the arrival of the Home Hardware delivery truck.

Seven years ago, the new Dukedome on the Belleville Road was not much more than a gleam in Jim Dunlop’s eye. Now it comprises not only a hockey arena, but a meeting, exhibition and banquet complex, together with a parking lot that says to the casual visitor: “Wow, this place has really arrived: look at how many cars they can accommodate.”

Seven years ago, the Wellington Grill was firmly fixed on the corner of Wharf and Main—or at least as firmly fixed as the raging current underneath it would permit. Now, the Pomodoro restaurant sits astride the same current as a beacon to fine dining, along with its companion restaurant East and Main—also a place that didn’t exist seven years ago.

Seven years ago, the tenants at the Wellington Plaza included a laundromat, a chocolate store and a dentists’ office (talk about a strategic location for impulse guilt!). In their place, we now have a beauty salon, a bakery, a dollar store and a restaurant that has passed through at least three different hands—although it is now in very familiar ones.

Next door to the plaza stood Wight’s, with its inviting mist-up-the-glasses lushness. It has closed down, its greenhouses dilapitated and up for sale. Meanwhile, a new florist has opened up at the Fields on West Lake. The Fields property itself became the subject of a knock ’em down, drag ’em out fight that eventually went to the OMB to be resolved.

Seven years ago, the Tall Poppy cafe didn’t exist. After renovating from top to bottom and getting the place rolling, its proprietors sold it and moved to Australia. A couple bought it and have maintained its niche as a community hub, seven days a week.

Seven years ago, the Devonshire Inn was a low-key country inn, quietly up for sale. Then it was bought, sat there untouched while plans evolved, and then was renovated within an inch of its life. Now it is almost impossible to escape writeups of the Drake-Devonshire in the pages of style magazines; or to spot its bemused patrons strolling Main Street looking for action, which they can find—once it reopens—in our new piano bar, which wasn’t here seven years ago either.

Seven years ago, the Kaitlin Group had not yet received planning permission for its several-hundred unit residential development and golf course north of the village proper. Now, permission granted, the project sits unstarted. In the meantime, an ambitious local proposal for a condominium and townhouse devleopment has burst forward. The project is sited on the Twelve Trees property, which was for sale less than seven years ago, with no takers.

Seven years ago, the LCBO store stood by the docks, and the dairy bar—in its older configuration— stood on the west side of town. Now, the LCBO is a spanking new (startlingly ugly) building across the parking lot from the finallyreopened new dairy bar. Both are within sight of the swanky new dentists’ office, which harbours the practice from the old Wellington Plaza location.

I’m babbling on. The point is, you can see seven years in the life of a community as a brief tick in time. Geologically, for example, it means nothing; historically, very little. But it is long enough to be able to see just how much things do change, and to begin to realize there are people behind every one of those changes; people who each have stories of dreams fulfilled, modified or abandoned; stories that could fill a book with joy, frustration and despair.

It may have taken me seven years to be able to say this, but I take my hat off to all the poeple who have tried during that time to make their dreams work. Regardless of the outcome.

dsimmonds@wellingtontimes.ca