B
arrie is the town Inervously wan-dered away fromearly in the ‘80s, rightafter high school, in pur-suit of knowledge andabundant riches layingin wait elsewhere in theworld. And it’s the placeI returned to some 18 years later. I never knewexactly what drew meback at the time, but inthe eight years since myreturn, I’ve slowly beentrying to figure it out. Just asIhadmaturedduring myabsence,sotoo hadmyhometown.Infactmuch oftheBarrieIonceknew now onlyexistsinmymemory.The outlying woodsand fields surroundingBarrie were once theequivalent of theSerengeti, as seenthrough the curious eyesof a 12-year-old boy.Those ravines and over-grown fields were thesetting for endless sum-mer days spent catchingfrogs and snakes, flick-ing grasshoppers intospider webs, upsettingant hills, building pre-cariously placed treeswings and forts frommaterials appropriatedfrom building sites. Onoccasion, we smokedstale cigars that my still-best-friend Stan swipedfrom his dad. And weattempted to wash awaythe acrid taste with aconcoction of gin, ryeand various liqueurspurloined in presumablyundetected amountsfrom my mother’s liquorstash, amassed for laterconsumption in amason jar.Today manicuredlawns, paved drivewaysand inground poolsamongs seemingly end-less rows of new homeshave replaced thosefields. The turtle pond isnow a large, cement-lined water reservoirsurrounded by a seven-foot-high chain fence,tucked into the backcorner of a subdivisionof over three hundredhousing units.
NOWANDZEN
The dance the minddoes between past andpresent is never moreenergized as when driv-ing through the stomp-ing grounds of your youth. Waiting for thetraffic light to change atBig Bay Point Road andYonge Street, I havemore than oncesquinted for a brief mo-ment in the direction of the Zehrs mega grocerystore while mentally en-visioning the old farm-house and barn thatonce stood abandonedand alone at this corneragainst a backdrop of fields lined with 100- year-old maple and oaktrees, evenly separatedby field stones piledthree or four feet high.At least the woodedareas along the oldcreek bed itself stillexist. But on my firstvisit in almost twodecades, I was takenaback to see that thewell-worn paths soclearly etched in mymemory were com-pletely overgrown. Eventhough the number of schools in the area hasmore than tripled since Ileft, so few kids madeuse of the old paths,they disappeared. Iguess the appeal of nature and the greatoutdoors that once heldso much sway over youngsters has vanishedalong with the trails.If you spot a kid witha stick in his handsthese day, it’s likely tobe a joystick attached toa video-game console.Fun as they might be,virtual games can neverreplicate the instanta-neous adrenaline rushof a young boy’s out-
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 My Hometown
BacktoBarrie
What is that mysterious forcethat draws people home again?Â
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