Earlier this week I showed my stroll to look at the new Shipyards construction. While I was down there I took the opportunity to walk back towards town. Maybe you do this regularly but I have not done it on foot for 2 or 3 decades. So here are some random observations with no glue to hold them together.
It was a joy to be able to pause in front of the great concrete staircase up into Stadacona. This stuff doesn’t just happen.
Approaching the bridge there is a concrete and pipe railing that I think of as recent but realize is nearly 40 years old. I know that because I took a picture of the previous iron railing about 1975 (lower photograph). It was a last remaining remnant of the Richmond Train Station. Sadly it disappeared without a celebration.
Here is a 1917 post-Explosion photograph (from the Public Archives of Nova Scotia) that shows the railing and the train shed with roof collapsed and the station in the distance.
Under the MacDonald Bridge it was charming to notice that the well detailed concrete abutments rise from a couple of courses of cut granite. A 1955 engineering nicety.
Another detail I enjoyed were the pictograms on what I assume is a Navy gym: clearly volleyball and weightlifting. And the bridge is kinda great don’t you think?
The enduring discovery of the walk was the Active Transportation Trail that I ‘m only vaguely aware of as I speed down Barrington in my closed car. I suppose you guys zip along this on your bicycles everyday. A great sense of separation from the four lanes of traffic right above the trail, and excellent interpretative signage along the way. It felt like it was the middle of something great, just needs a beginning and an end.
And here was a view from the trail of the casino looking like the Pharos of Rhodes. Can you tell I was feeling a bit rhapsodic by my Barrington experience?
If you glance to the other side of the street there are samples of several urban housing strategies from the last 40 years.
The last stop on the waterfront was the sewage treatment plant that I have also never examined. My sense is that if they spent a gazillion dollars on stuff we do not see maybe they should have spent a little more for superb design of the little bits we do see.
We can’t end that way. The sun had come out so I walked up to St Georges and looked at the weather vane that celebrates the passing of Halley’s Comet in 1835. Sublime.
