Thanks but…

No thanks. Yup, you read that right. No thanks. I’m not talking about a thankless Thanksgiving weekend. As a matter of fact, each year Thanksgiving weekend is a gentle reminder of the good stuff I’ve experienced in my life. This past Thanksgiving was the first time in well over 40 years LOML and I haven’t spent the weekend with kids, kids’ friends, sisters, brothers or in-laws. No turkey. No stuffing. No pumpkin pie. No science-experiment casseroles covered with miniature marshmallows. No jellied cranberries shaped like the tin they grew in. No blue-lidded containers of mysterious leftovers. No fridge filled to capacity with aerosol-assisted whipped cream, heat ‘n’ serve dinner rolls or bricks of unsalted butter and gelatinous jugs of lumpy gravy. The fridge door was devoid of flowcharts for showers, laundry and sleeping arrangements. It was just the two of us, thankful, because we had been told, many years ago, “it won’t last”. Imagine that! We were alone together on a holiday weekend. Over the years we’ve spent literally hundred of hours of quality time in our car (many of them Rolls-can-hardlies) with kids and pets making the trip from our home in The County to my parents’ home and then to my in-laws’ for one too many turkey dinners and all of the accompanying “trimmings” a large, noisy, nosey extended family can offer. As our family grew, we crammed even more kids, carseats, diaper bags, toys, gifts, suitcases, inflatable beds and snacks into our vehicles and made the trip—come hell or high water—only to pack it all up and do the reverse with a carload of dirty clothes, tired kids, a cranky driver, a zombie referee and ziplock bags of leftovers at the end of the holiday. This year, only The Waterfront Trail from Picton to Cobourg beckoned. This year I am thankful for The Trail. Instead of hustling backand- forth across the 401, trying to squeeze in as many visits and dinners— with all the fixin’s—we chose The Trail. No timeframes. No family politics. Our cameras, our music playing and an empty trunk.

Our first stop was in Brighton. Brighton has a special place in our hearts. As young students who were working and attending school in the ’60s and ’70s, we’d often squeeze an end of summer camping trip in—just before classes reconvened. Presqu’ile Provincial Park, in Brighton, was often our destination. Close to our home in Toronto, yet far away from the hustle and bustle of our real lives. By the first weeks of September Brighton was quiet and the park was close to empty. While we never spent Thanksgiving in the park, we were thankful for the beauty, the quiet and the simplicity of small town Ontario. It was on one such camping trip we discovered The County. Little did we know, at the end of our educational journey we’d find ourselves living here. Thank you for the memories Brighton and Presqu’ile Park.

The Trail from Brighton to Cobourg is punctuated with roadside farm stands, fields of pumpkins, trees laden with apples, trees ablaze in spectacular fall colours and a hint of The Lake, here and there. The small communities of Spicer, Brookside, Grafton, Wicklow, Lakeport, Alnwick, Haldimand, Colborne, Cramahe, and Spencer Point are barely mentioned along the “faster road”—the 401—but, are heralded, like the next course in a great meal, along The Trail. I’m not sure my thankfulness extends to the peck of apples I couldn’t leave behind at a rustic stand on The Trail. I guess I’ll mix them with my bounty of County apples and whip up a few batches of applesauce, apple butter and a pie or three. I am thankful these places still exist.

My OMA certification background in historic buildings made me insist on our final stop (no arms were twisted in this part of the trip). The Town of Cobourg has received a lot of press recently and is often held up as an example to the rest of Ontario as a community which cares for its heritage and culture. The Ontario Heritage Trust presented the Award for Community Leadership for the careful preservation, refurbishing and conservation of close to 600 properties. Approximately 15 percent of the properties, located in the Town of Cobourg, are now testament to the process of careful town heritage planning. Both LOML and I were blown away by the architectural beauty of Cobourg’s downtown. As we quietly (ya, quietly) walked along the main street, we couldn’t fathom the amount of work, thought and effort which had been put into the process of recreating the architectural extravaganza. Yet, on the other hand, we were stunned by the number of empty storefronts. I counted 11 in the space of three blocks. Far too many businesses were “out of business” or had “moved to a new location”. A lot of money, time and thought went into the old/new Cobourg and a lot of bucks were spent on kraft paper to cover windows in vacant storefronts. The preserving and protecting didn’t extend to keeping businesses in the downtown area. I am thankful for the beauty of their downtown and the wisdom of their heritage planners, but am seriously concerned about the big box developments cropping up closer to the 401 that have ravaged their downtown community.

Yup, it was a weekend of “no thanks” yet, thankful. Hope your weekend was all you hoped it would be!

theresa@wellingtontimes.ca