Woman ties herself in knots to get guy to tie the knot
This week, let’s just stay with the work of Toronto Globe artist W. J. Thomson, whose 1889 drawing of the brand new Montebello Park pavilion was featured here recently.
We can continue to admire his skill as a draftsman, here applied to a different part of our city. Sent here by the Toronto Globe early in 1889, artist Thomson produced eight drawings. This one looks north on Ontario Street from the intersection with St. Paul Street.
On the left side we see, in effect, two fraternal organizations vying with one another to make the grandest statement on that part of the street.
The tall building closer to the artist was the I.O.O.F. (Independent Order of Odd Fellows) Building, with space on the ground floor for commercial use by local merchants, over which were three more floors of club rooms, including one of the major meeting halls in town, available for rent by local groups.
Built in 1862, the building stood until it and several buildings to the south of it were purchased by the city and demolished in late 1915 to allow St. Paul Street to be extended to the new Burgoyne Bridge.
The other tall building down the street on the left was the Masonic Temple, constructed in 1872. Likewise serving commercial renters on the first floor with fraternal space, including a large meeting hall on the upper floors, this building still stands today. However, it looks a bit different now than in this drawing, since a serious fire in 1895 destroyed its ornate, Mansard-roofed tower.
Just beyond the Masonic Temple stood the Grand Opera House, but our “Today” photo shows the space empty, the building replaced by a parking lot following a 1992 fire.
The last structure visible on the left side of the street was St. Thomas’ Anglican Church, but I must admit in this drawing it lacks the bulk of that 1877 building — here, it looks more like a slim minaret reaching into the sky.
In the distance we can see, gliding down the middle of the street toward us, a car of the St. Catharines, Merritton and Thorold Street Railway, a formerly horse-powered rail line electrified just two years earlier. Otherwise, the street is busy with horse-drawn vehicles, wagons and carriages and such.
The right-hand side of Ontario Street is given short shrift in this view — nothing more than a meager slice of the 1862 Haynes Block, standing where One St. Paul is today. Dennis Gannon is a member of the Historical Society of St. Catharines. He can be reached at gannond2002@yahoo.com ASK AMY
My boyfriend and I have been together for more than seven years. He is a wonderful man who has a lot of good intentions, but he is a lot of talk and not a lot of action.
We moved in together after talking about it for years. We would start to look for apartments together and then he would change his mind. Finally, I was about to go away and I mentioned that while I was gone it would be a good time for him to start moving some things in. When I got home a few days later he was there and he has spent every night since then in our apartment. It was a huge step.
We are both over 30. I want to start having children and become more settled. We talk about getting a house, him proposing, etc., but again it’s all talk.
All of his friends are married, and I am at a loss. I don’t understand why he won’t propose! We have talked, and fought about it, and he says that he plans for us to get married, but I am concerned that it will never happen.
I love him and want to spend my life with him, but I also don’t want to spend another few years waiting for him to commit.
Friends and family have told me to give him an ultimatum. Knowing his personality, this will just push him away. I don’t feel able to walk away.
I did say that if we were not engaged by the time his youngest brother gets married (this weekend) that I would need to re-evaluate what I’m doing. He has said that he thinks he will propose by the end of the year.
How can I communicate this to him in a different way so that he understands?
— WAITING
If you are unwilling to leave this relationship, and also can’t seem to manipulate your guy into proposing, then your remaining option is to propose to him. You successfully got him to move in with you, and that seems to have worked out the way you wanted.
I assume you fear that if you proposed, he might say that he’s not ready, but surely the certainty of that can’t be worse than what you’re currently experiencing. Are you brave enough to take this risk?
Be prepared that unless he changes radically, you may have to always force him toward momentous life events: having children, taking vacations, buying a home and retirement.
I was concerned by your answer to “Worried,” about the health and welfare of her husband’s 94-yearold grandmother, “Jenny.”
Jenny has every right to live the way she wants to live, no matter what meddling family members think.
— ADVOCATE
You are right. But there are many services and resources available to help people like “Jenny” live alone, but more safely. “Worried” needed to try harder to find them.