Sitting here waiting for The Tragically Hip to take the stage in my beloved Kingston for the last time. Myself and many Canadians have a date with them tonight. Even our Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau is at the concert, along with 6,000 people inside the arena and 25,000 standing right outside watching it on a big screen. Above is the live stream on Youtube, if you’re interested in catching any of it.
That’s it for me. As many have said over the last week. As of 8:30, August 20th, Canada is busy. Cheers!
I’m breaking from Helen’s theme on Song-Lyric Sunday today because what I want to write about is time-sensitive.
I’m not much of a Tragically Hip fan. I never have been. But what the band is going through right now affects me. It has the potential to affect all music fans, regardless of preference. You see, a few months ago, when The Tragically Hip announced their final tour, they also came out with the news that their lead singer, Gordon Downie, has brain cancer.
Over the years, The Tragically Hip have become a Canadian icon, every bit as much as David Bowie was to England. Yet they chose to handle the same disease differently. Some would say Bowie did it right, not allowing his fans to fawn over him during his final days. Those same people might say The Hip announced Gordon Downie’s disease as a publicity stunt. But I would have to disagree. The same number of people would have bought tickets to their “final tour” (in brackets because we know what that usually means) and perhaps some of their most loyal fans would have waited until they came out of retirement. As it is, it doesn’t seem they will.
Imagine.
On August 20th they will walk off the stage for the very last time, in their hometown of Kingston, Ontario. The venue, the K-Rock Centre on Tragically Hip Way. How difficult will that be for both the band and the fans? I’m in tears just thinking about it, because even though The Tragically Hip isn’t “my band,” it will happen to every one of them, eventually. Because of the timely announcement, the CBC will simulcast the concert countrywide.
To one of Canada’s greatest bands. I salute you.
Wheat Kings
(Lyrics from Google Play Music)
Sundown in the Paris of the prairies
Wheat kings have all treasures buried
And all you hear are the rusty breezes
Pushing around the weathervane Jesus
In his Zippo lighter he sees the killer’s face
Maybe it’s someone standing in a killer’s place
Twenty years for nothing, well, that’s nothing new
Besides, no one’s interested in something you didn’t do
Wheat kings and pretty things
Let’s just see what the morning brings
There’s a dream he dreams where the high school’s dead and stark
It’s a museum and we’re all locked up in it after dark
Where the walls are lined all yellow, grey and sinister
Hung with pictures of our parents’ prime ministers
Wheat kings and pretty things
Wait and see what tomorrow brings
Late breaking story on the CBC
A nation whispers, “We always knew that he’d go free”
They add, “You can’t be fond of living in the past
‘Cause if you are then there’s no way that you’re going to last”
Wheat kings and pretty things
Let’s just see what tomorrow brings
Wheat kings and pretty things
Oh that’s what tomorrow brings
I absolutely adore train stations. I’m not sure why – perhaps I traveled by train often in another life. Anyhow, one of my favourite places to visit (as you may already know) is Kingston, Ontario, and downtown there is an out-of-commission station, now used as a tourist shop and information booth.
The doors, in my opinion, are spectacular. Please click on the images for a closer look.
The front of the old Kingston Train Station, located on Ontario Street
At the back
The front door, through which you can see the back door, and vice versa
The back door, where the travelers came out to board the train.
Bonus: a secret side door going into the basement
And finally, behind the train station there’s an old engine sitting on an unused length of track. I tried to take a picture of its door, but it’s kind of squashed in where you can’t see it well.
The door
A wider shot
And a wider one yet
Thursday Doors is brought to you by the great Norm Frampton here. Click the link to read the rules and add your own post.
As I was wandering around Kingston on the weekend, looking for metal, (because that’s the theme of this week’s Cosmic Photo Challenge) I came across a gate with some nasty looking needles. It’s like they put them in there just to make a point… so to speak.
The first is close to the original. I washed out a bit of the colour to age it a little:
But then I thought what the hell. I just got a new phone today and the camera came with a few editing goodies, so why not make it look like I took the photo when the place was built?
As promised, I did some more research on the wall (with a hole where a door used to be that I discovered on Ontario Street in Kingston), when I was there last weekend. Upon searching the library, I came up with two addresses on the adjacent street: 221 and 223 King Street. I still couldn’t find any information about the wall, except that it seemed to stretch across the back yards of these two homes. So off I walked to check it out. Handily, it was only a couple of minutes from the library.
Here is 221 King Street
and attached to it is 223 King street.
Here is the wall from both sides,
You can see the door at the bottom of the garden, below the branches of the small tree.
and the “front” door of #223.
All this still didn’t give me any clue as to what the wall might have been part of, however. So I came home and did some more research. I came across this site: http://www.historicplaces.ca/en/rep-reg/place-lieu.aspx?id=8265 which goes on to say that #223 was built in 1834 for a lawyer, John Solomon Cartwright as an addition to #221. (If you click the link, you’ll see a much better picture of the wall than mine: in 1991 it had ivy growing on it.) The only real mention of the wall is this:
The property on which the building stands is also of interest, containing a carefully groomed lawn, plentiful gardens and a ten-foot limestone wall at its rear.
which indicates that it might have simply been built as an aesthetic piece. I’ll continue to keep my eyes open; I kind of hope, in some strange way, that it used to be a structure.
This post is part of Thursday Doors, brought to you by Norm at Norm 2.0. Check out his post (by clicking on his name) for the prompt and join in!
On a recent visit to Kingston, Ontario, I was wandering up Ontario Street and decided to take a picture of what used to be a building between Earl Street and William Street. After doing extensive research and finding nothing in the history sites of Kingston, I think I’ve figured out it was either a shed, or more likely a stable that was demolished sometime around 1953. It could have been a house or maybe servant’s quarters, but it wouldn’t have had road frontage. I found a map that dates back to 1865, with a slider that morphs the map up to 2013. Now, the wall faces a parking lot behind the houses on the two above-mentioned parallel streets. Here’s the map: https://apps.cityofkingston.ca/snapshotkingston/ It’s actually really really neat. I found the streets by their names in the 1865 version of the map. Grab the map and move it right and up slightly, so you’re moving south west – the block you’re looking for is right at the letter “A” in “ONTARIO.” (Note: Ontario Street runs parallel, and closest, to the water.) You can zoom in once you find the right block (the +/- button is at the top left of the map). You can see the building there before 1953, but it disappears at about ’53 and then shortly after, the wall appears as a white line in the middle of the block, running parallel to Ontario Street. It’s the wrong colour to have been the the above-mentioned building, but on close inspection I can’t tell what else it could possibly have been.
I’ve always had an interest in ruins. They cause my imagination to go in both conceivable and inconceivable directions. Next time I’m in Kingston, I plan to visit the library or the town archives to see if there’s any information on what this might have been. In the meantime, I’ll allow my imagination to play.
Please forgive the odd angle…
…this was as close as I could get.
I’m so happy and excited to finally be participating in this prompt. Kingston is just a two hour drive from where Norm took his Thursday Doors pictures. Check out his post (by clicking on his name) for the prompt and join in!
A couple of weekends ago it was my pleasure to stay in one of the oldest operating inns in Canada, The Queen’s Inn, in Kingston, Ontario.
It’s a comfortable hotel with friendly staff and, considering there’s a sports bar downstairs and I was there on a Friday and Saturday night, it was very quiet. Despite the fact that they provide WiFi, the place hasn’t lost much of its ambiance from back in the 1800s when it was built. As you can see, drywall, in my room at least, isn’t necessarily a consideration.
After dinner, I went outside to take a picture. My windows are on the second floor with the light on.
In the morning I had Coppers Pub downstairs to myself for the complimentary breakfast, so I wasn’t at all self-conscious about taking pictures.
While I was sitting in the pub, I wrote in my notebook:
I love these old buildings. They send my writer’s imagination into orbit, much like I want to believe the inspiration for the Overlook Hotel did for Stephen King. The feet that have walked these floors and gazed upon these walls – people with a million different thoughts in the their heads even as they looked but barely saw, astounds me. Humans stopped here for the night with their horses stabled nearby – weary souls traveling through came here, refugees from the cold as far back as 1839. The place has so much history, and I can only imagine…
I love staying in Kingston, so it fits well with The Bee’s Love Is In Da Blog prompt for today, “write about places you love.”
If you’d like to read about my most memorable and amusing, (and spooky) visit to Kingston to date, you can find the post here.
I wasn’t able to get any photos of the whole blood-moon eclipse thing, but I did get some pretty spectacular pictures of the almost full moon on Saturday night when I was in Kingston.
Pictures from the Waterfront Trail, taken with my phone, untouched but for a little cropping. Click on the images for a bigger picture.
I had my toast on my plate on the kitchen table along with the tub of margarine (open) and jam (open-can’t remember what kind but it has three fruits in it), and since I was talking to my friend John about something completely unrelated to getting my toast ready, I put the jam on before the margarine.
Wow, that was not as exciting a story as I thought it would be.
I had a dream the other morning that I was at the concert I’m going to in Tokyo in November and I was stuck at the back of the hall and there were no lights on the stage (which was tucked into the corner of the room) so I missed the entire show. I think that qualifies as a nightmare, don’t you?
So I’m going to Kingston today and staying over night to get a break. The Kingston Writer’s Fest is on this weekend and I’m hoping to get tickets to an event tomorrow – if I do, I’ll try to write about the experience next week. I’m also hoping to get together for coffee this afternoon with our gracious badge-maker and host of the blog, “My Leaky Boat.” It’s gonna be fun!
Now I’m off to wash all my sheets and blankets – the cat peed on my bed sometime yesterday. Luckily it’s a nice day out, so it should all dry on the line.
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