The Bustling City of Port Colborne in April

We went as a family today to Port Colborne. It was an Easter Weekend Family Event; one that my Dad chose. This would have been one of those days where “it’s the journey, not the destination that counts” would have described the day perfectly!
We all spent time together today; we did not interact with each other for every minute of the day, all day long, but we did spend quality family time together. Do I dare quote an RVing commercial … that we should “never confuse the devices that connect us, with the moments that keep us together”. It doesn’t quite fit, But spend moments that keep us together today.

So yes, Port Colborne was not very exciting, but there were a lot of wonderful moments in today. We got up by 6:30am. I uploaded the previous 200 pics from Mom’s camera onto her laptop. We were out of the house by about 8:30, and in 45 minutes, we stopped for a Tim Hortons. We read on the way; Raven’s End, the book we are currently reading right now as a group. I tried to sew the buttons on “my tubes!” (long story), didn’t work, not in the car.

When we got to Port Colborne, we had lunch at Walter’s … a restaurant on West St. Good food, and fast and friendly service. It was a nice place for lunch. We then did some browsing in a couple of the shops in the area; the all of two streets that had any craftsy type shops we found in the city. I got ideas from a 10,000 Villages on Mom’s stationary project that I may one day finish … and at a scrapbooking store – Damn those were some pretty creative crafts (I didn’t like the scrapbooking stuff, but they had other very creative ideas there). We then went for coffee, cookies, carrot cake and a latte at a corner Coffee Café (don’t remember the name), but it also had a nice atmosphere.

It felt like a quintessential small town; with a population of only 19,000 it had a close-knit community feeling, with notices for community issues all over the place. The two that we saw today were for Corporal Tyler Brooks; Port Colborne’s fallen hero, with everyone posting notices to say he will be remembered, and to honor him. He was one of the soldiers that Don Cherry honored a few weeks ago on either March 28th, or April 4th on Coaches Corner. It’s pretty amazing that notices in his memory were all over that city. Something else that was all over the city, just as much on people’s lawns as anywhere else, were notices pertaining to the Save Our Hospital Rally. We drove past their hospital, and it didn’t look in top notch shape, but it definitely deserves to be there.

It’s population is only 19,000. Sadly, it seemed a bit like there wasn’t much “get up and go” in this city. Maybe it’s still asleep for the most part. Maybe it really comes alive in late May, when the weather is good enough to start recreational boating. There were three beaches in this tiny city, and I think three marinas as well, but they were all mostly deserted. There were also several stores that were closed up, and even in the middle of the town areas, it looked like there were several places that could use at least a good power washing and a fresh coat of paint!

We then pretty much drive the entire city, going through all the side roads and residential streets, and if we had counted the houses, we could quite possibly have accounted for a good quarter of the population! I actually loved the houses there! The roofs were absolutely beautiful! I would love to actually build a cup roof like many of those houses had. Some of the houses were very plain, and some were absolutely gorgeous, but they were all relatively quiet. I have seen some houses in Azure and Dwell that are out of this world, so even the ones that had character and personality in Port Colborne were not quite as modern and edgy as some of the magazine homes, but they were still very beautiful. Where I wouldn’t chose to live in Port Colborne, many of those houses had me drooling, but not to live in, so much as to build!

When we were finished with Port Colborne, we headed home, but our day wasn’t over yet. On the ride home, we stopped at a Tim Horton’s in Oakville … for yet another coffee, yeah, more coffee. We had a small dinner at home, just leftovers, and now I am here writing Blog posts, my sister is organizing her sheet music, and my Mother is downstairs watching her Hockey Night in Canada, which I also watched a part of, albeit small tonight!