A summer stroll down Avon Lane
Modern developments haven’t completely displaced nature
The immaculately timed arrival of summer recently encouraged me to put on my strolling sandals and head for a walk I have had on my list ever since I lived in New Edinburgh in the early 1980s. The neighbourhood’s streets were well-established and groomed, the pre-condo domestic architecture a pleasure to walk past, with plenty of detail for the eye to savour and appreciate.
And then there were the lanes, the narrow pathways running between the back gardens of houses on two parallel streets. I would glimpse them as I passed by porches and gentrified homes, but never got around to exploring them. So now I would walk the longer of the two lanes, Avon; the other is River Lane. The lanes were part of Thomas MacKay’s original grid for New Edinburgh, laid out shortly after he bought a whack of land in 1829, south of the Ottawa River and east of the then still-inconstruction Rideau Canal — and I have walked similar lanes in Edinburgh, Scotland, his hometown, and enjoyed romantic teenage liaisons in the back alleys of Liverpool. They add to the charm of the district, and Avon Lane gave me as rewarding a walk as any other I’ve done.
I started at the southern end of the lane, which is on Dufferin (Frederick Blackwood, Lord Dufferin, was governor general of Canada from 1872 to 1878) halfway between MacKay to the east and Crichton (MacKay’s wife’s maiden name) to the west. It was easy to imagine the lane when it was unpaved, and minus the storm gutter, a horse and carriage delivering a father home after a day’s merchanting or civil servicing in Bytown. This daydream was diluted somewhat by the forest of leaning poles of the electrical grid and the fact that it was garbage day, plastic bins and outcast stuff clumped at the lane’s edge.
On my right, as I took my first steps into the lane, was the side of MacKay United Church, built in the arts and crafts style beginning in 1909, and the rear of the School of Dance came up quickly on my left, a building I remember fondly from when it was the city archives, and where I spent hours rooting around in Ottawa’s history. The landscape to my left and right now alternated between garages and backyard fences and gravel parking lots. Little pocket-sized gardens found space where they could, and the abundance of trees gave an air of human cohabitation with nature, rather than us overwhelming it as so often happens now on our thoroughfares.
Crossing first Keefer (MacKay’s son-in-law), then Union, I came to a particularly pretty stretch where the houses faced into the lane rather than showing their backs. I hope the Ottawa Film Office is aware of these houses in the Avon Lane low numbers; the location register should include them. By now I was an expert in garage architecture, from the veterans with weak hips slowly falling over to the modern glass and stained wood, from the basketball hoops above the doors to wooden sheds stuffed with the overflow of materialism.
The end of the lane came too soon, despite my turtle pace, and frequent bloom-sniffing stops, when I was confronted with a dam in the flow consisting of garages on the north side of School Lane. (Avon has an orphaned section the other side of the garages, running between Charles and Thomas, two of MacKay’s sons.) Turning 180 degrees, I walked back, my mood elevated as it always is by urban pockets of beauty and eccentricity.
On a less charming note, as I drove away from New Edinburgh along Beechwood, I was forced to behold, after such a pleasant stroll, the construction site of the condos that are replacing the row of interesting and eclectic stores lost in the fire in March 2011. And the New Edinburgh pub, where I made music with friends many a time, is in mid-demolition. Pity.