All that we have - Shawn's Sense with Shawn Loughlin

Remember during the pandemic, when international travel was precarious, that our various levels of government encouraged us to travel within our own county or province or country? Discover or rediscover some hidden gems right in your own backyard, hiding in plain sight was kind of the idea.

 

Canadians were urged to explore this great country of ours and see all that it has to offer. On one hand, it’s just great marketing. As cities and national parks were hurting without their normal flow of American or international visitors, they could fill that void with people from this very country. Furthermore, we could fill that Manhattan-sized hole in our hearts with Toronto or Montreal, get a taste of Yosemite by way of Algonquin or traverse our very own Alps in Canmore or Banff.

 

Of course, there were practical and health-related reasons for those kinds of pushes, but the reality of it was that a lot of us have missed things that had been right in front of us, or a short drive away, this whole time. It was around this time that Jess and I took our time away from our family of just one child then to places like Bartlett Lodge in Algonquin Park, Langdon Hall just down the road in the Cambridge area, Restaurant Pearl Morissette in Jordan Station and the beautiful Elora Mill. All places within a few hours’ drive for us, but we’d never been to them before. 

 

I had two reasons to think about this over the past week. First, speaking with photographer John Stephenson, we talked about his recent visits to Toronto with a visiting family member to see a number of relatively local attractions, like Niagara Falls, the C.N. Tower and the Ripley’s Aquarium of Canada in Toronto. I told him that I remembered heading up the tower once when I was a kid, but, for someone who grew up in that area and was frequently near the tower, attending dozens and dozens of Toronto Blue Jays games over the course of my life, I almost never bothered again. 

 

The one exception was when my cousin and his family from New Jersey came to visit. We met them in Toronto and went up the tower and then saw the aquarium for the very first time.

 

I realized that, in years and years of living less than an hour away from the tower, I didn’t bother to see what people would come from all over the world to see. You wonder why that is. 

 

When I lived in Goderich, it was the same way. I think the only time I ever went to the beach - this beautiful beach that people would travel from all over to see and swim in (which is something we couldn’t do when I was young in Lake Ontario, which I grew up on) - was when my mom came to visit. 

 

Then, as my cousin Mike was here on the weekend, bringing his lady friend Kara, I wanted to run out on Saturday night with Tallulah to the opening of Tony Miller’s show at the Blyth Festival Art Gallery. Kara asked if she could come and see the art with us and, of course, we were more than happy to oblige.

 

So, she saw the art and met Tony and then I called in a favour from Blyth Festival General Manager Rachael King. Seeing as how the Memorial Hall stage wasn’t going to be used for a show that night (there was a production at the Harvest Stage, but it was a beautiful night and the Festival didn’t need to move the show indoors), I asked Rachael if she wouldn’t mind taking us into the theatre space. Kara was so enthralled with the space, the Festival itself and its companion art gallery and the fact that a small community like ours could support it. 

 

It may be hard sometimes to see the forest for the trees, but we’re lucky to have all that we have in this area. It’s the envy of many.