Exploring History

It was my birthday. I don’t recall exactly which year, but probably nineteen seventy-six, seventy-seven. I had no plans for the night. Just hung out in the basement on McKay until it was late at night and the urge to move hit me.

I’d learned to trust the urge, as it had sent me down some very interesting paths. This night, it sent me out on my bike, as it was one of those warm nights following the kind of smoking hot late-summer day for which Winnipeg is renowned. I love the late-night, late-summer rides the best. Little traffic, no wind, and the scent of humidity that would be burned off by ten the next morning, to be replaced by the flinty hardness of another scorcher. In my, I don’t know, shoulder-bag, purse, pouch, yeah, pouch, I carried a half-mickey of Southern Comfort for old time’s sake, and a harmonica. I wanted to see the river.

Fraser’s Grove Park wasn’t far away, and the banks of the river were low there, intimate. In springtime a little too cozy with the river, which would take it over all the way up to Kildonan Drive and beyond. I walked the bike into the park, not wishing to brave the irregular ground in the dark at anything above a walking pace. Uncharacteristic caution on my part, I know, but I certainly wasn’t in any rush. I wandered down the bank to where the grass gave way to the river silt and flotsam of the last spring flood. The moon provided plenty of light and glistened on the water in a most inviting way, but a swim was out of the question. Ick. I slid down next to a particularly inviting elm tree and just sat for a while, enjoying the silence and thinking about nothing.

After a while of this, I had a sip of Southern Comfort and played some harmonica, just noodling away without any goal for awhile until I was interrupted by the somewhat surprising arrival of a rent-a-cop. He told me that I’d have to vacate the vicinity as no one was allowed in the park after dark. While this struck me as rather a strange rule, I wasn’t about to give him any grief about it and prepared to move along. We chatted for a while, brothers in arms, as I’d done my time as a security guard the previous year and well understood the loneliness that goes with a dead-end job that compels one to curtail the fun of otherwise law-abiding citizens late at night. Granted, my great claim to peacekeeping consisted entirely of rapping on the inside of the window of a locked-up K-Mart, attempting to shoo away the kids on the other side of glass who were sitting on the dime-a-ride pony. They treated me with the respect I deserved, gave me the finger, and moved along. So I did, too.

I rode along the streets that follow the river, over the Redwood Bridge, and through the northend, something I wouldn’t recommend nowadays. Through some circuitous meanderings, I ended up in the Wellington Crescent neighbourhood and figured I’d see if Danny was around.

Dan’s basically my oldest friend. I’ve got a few months on him, so when we were about four and five, I was the old guy. To him, of course, this was a great challenge, so he’d attack me at unexpected moments and attempt out-wrassle me. Having a bit of height on him worked to my advantage, but by sheer persistence, he’d occasionally get the better of me. We could go for years without seeing one another as I roamed about the prairies and he around the world, but the threat was always there, and continues to this day. I expect that one day we’ll run into each other and he’ll try to tip me out of my wheelchair.

In any case, he lived with his childhood sweetheart in the Wellington neighbourhood, so I parked in the street near his second-floor apartment in a stately old house. It had, as mentioned, been smokin’ hot that day, and those old walk-ups tended to get equally hot, so leaving all the windows open over night was mandatory. I pulled out the harmonica and noodled away for a couple minutes until his head appeared at one of the casements and he said, “Ya got any liquor?”

I waved my little bottle in the beam of a streetlamp and he was down in the street in a few moments. Susan was probably upstairs fuming at that moment, so it was best that I not go up. There was a history of, ummm… conflict between us due to the chemistry between Dan and me. He toasted my birthday and we did a little catching up before jumping on our bikes for a leisurely cruise around the neighbourhood.

Dan’s grandparents had once lived around the corner from where we were at that moment, so we drifted over in that direction to check it out. Charlie and Rae had been the housekeeper and handyman for the Richardsons, one of Manitoba’s preeminent families, and had a nice little house on the property, a bit back off the street from the main mansion. On this night, however, most of the old house was missing, as some sort of major demolition was underway.

Unbeknownst to us, the matriarch of the family, who had been the last holdout in the palace, had died a while previously and had bequeathed the land, some of the most prime real estate in the city, to the city, to be made into a park for the enjoyment of all. Nice lady.

What this meant to us, though, was that the properties, big and small, were unoccupied and apparently unguarded in any way. We entered the “servants’ quarters” through the back wall, or what was left of it. Dan’s grandmother had died in the front room, resting comfortably in her La-Z-Boy lounger and simply sliding away into the next world. Standing in that so-called living room was quite poignant and we gave it a few minutes to settle in, but we had other things on our minds.

Having more or less grown up in this house, we kind of knew our way around and, while it was a nice house, other adventures perhaps awaited us. We went down the basement stairs, not knowing whether the set-up was the same as when we were kids. At the back of the basement was a passage, still open, that lead through a tunnel to the gymnasium-sized garage. This held room for a dozen or so cars but was thankfully vacant or we may have gotten into a whole different kind of trouble. Something more than the straightforward trespassing we were engaged in at that moment.

No, where we were headed was a bit further down the tunnel, closer to the main house. It was always off-limits when we were little, but of course we always sneaked in just because. And there it was. The pool was not only there, but it was full. I don’t know how big an Olympic-sized pool is, but this thing was huge. It had not been neglected for long, as the water was clean and clear, but rendered chlorine-free by time. Well, nothing for it but to doff our duds and dive right in. It was glorious. Right up until I did a spinning cannonball off the middle-height diving board and got slapped in the nuts by some extremely hard water. Damn, but that hurt. I made the standard squeaky noises once I caught my breath and squatted on the edge of the pool until I could trust my legs. Once I was mobile, we explored the various change-rooms and spas that surrounded the pool area until we found our way into the main house.

This was definitely new territory for us, but it was fairly easy to find one’s way around as it had been pretty much gutted. All the fine wood and marble, the fixtures and fittings had been removed down to the studs, so you could see from one room to the next, indeed you could see the outside world, and the sky was beginning to brighten up a bit. We went upstairs to see what wonders the upper storeys held and, indeed, it was spectacular. The roof had been mostly removed, most probably to obtain the substantial amount of copper that had been used in its construction. It was quite the place.

Standing on the joists of the third-floor roof and holding the chimney for balance, the view was astonishing. That cool, blue haze that signals the coming dawn gave the city a magical look. From this height it appeared to be a vast forest with only the occasional building thrusting up through the foliage and the mist. The river could barely be made out meandering among the trees that had survived the ravages of Dutch Elm disease.

Closer at hand, we could see down, almost straight down, to Wellington Crescent and the long sinuous drive leading from the street to the house. This drive was currently occupied by a slow-moving convoy of construction-, or in this case destruction-equipment coming to finish the demolition of the house. The house on whose third-storey roof we were standing. We were, naturally, buck-naked because our clothes were downstairs by the pool, and our bikes were back at the remains of the little house. Time to skedaddle.

We retraced our route and managed to reclaim our belongings without incident, climbing on our bikes and riding calmly past the curious crew of workers assembling in the drive. We waved jauntily and got the hell out of there. We had harmed nothing during our explorations, but we didn’t relish the prospect of explaining what we’d been up to all night, so best be on our way.

Within a few days the houses had been levelled and that piece of history was behind us. Memories.