The bed was hard. The girls slept terribly on possibly the worst pull-out couch, ever. After failing to get the Krupp machine in our room to work, Monkey and let Alex and Choo Choo sleep a bit more and stole away to the Harbour Merchant Coffee Company – a small coffee shop – across the street. In addition to coffee, we each had a small breakfast sandwich.
The weather forecast said “mist”, but it was full drizzle bordering on light rain with a balmy 13 C temperature. I had brought only t-shirts and shorts. Only Monkey had the foresight to bring a jacket. Alex and Choo Choo were up and ready by the time we got back; we had to announce Harbour Merchant had no gluten-free bread, ixnaying it for breakfast. And, weirdly, “That Breakfast Place” didn’t open until 10am.
Fortunately, G&T’s On The Beach was open at 8am, as any great bar should. And it’s a proper beach bar/restaurant – no permanent outside walls, heaters in the covered space. Even with the cool temperature, it was comfortable. I had coffee while Alex and Choo Choo ate breakfast.
The destination was the (former) Campbell Family farmhouse. Allan and his wife (whose name I shockingly never got) had been kind enough to not only host us for a couple of hours, but also allow us to scatter some of Janice’s ashes in the forest she loved so much.
The farm is to the west of St. Thomas, in an area now known as Southwold. (Janice only ever referred to it as “St. Thomas”.) The approach is between rows of huge spruce trees that were unquestioningly planted by the Campbells at some point in the past. At the end is a two-storey yellow brick farmhouse that we would see repeated again and again as we would drive through the countryside.
It was originally a single storey and much smaller. The families (there have been at least four that I heard of) have expanded on it over the years, which had led to some questionable decisions on the work. Allan and his family have taken it upon themselves to restore the house to its former glory, albeit with modern code (electrical and plumbing, in particular) and materials. They’ve uncovered original flooring, restored the front porch, and have at least a decade of work ahead of them as they tackle the kitchen, the living room and dining room, and eventually the upstairs (which we did not see). It’s a very impressive amount of work.
Following coffee and pie, we collected ourselves and marched down the side of the corn fields (now owned and managed by other farmers; the property is now just the house), heading into the woods. It was here, three years ago, where Janice had spent a long time, being in the silence of nature. As we found the spot, we admired her discovery – there was not a single sound of civilization, only nature. It was there that a third of her ashes were cast into the creek valley (an unnamed tributary of Kettle Creek), the light breeze taking some far into the trees.
After a short prayer, we returned to the house and headed out for parts beyond. Dugauld and his family were headed back to Michigan, Alistair and Blair back to Ottawa. We were headed to St. Thomas, because trains.
If you’ve read the previous entry, you’ll know St. Thomas has a storied history related to the railways, and I needed a chance to see it more closely than I had in my only other visit to St. Thomas years earlier.
We parked downtown and tried to make plans. I say “tried” because multiple coffees had left me with a dying need to pee, and there aren’t any public washrooms in St. Thomas. We ended up at the Legends for lunch, which solved both needs.
I left before lunch was officially done, having a few missions to attend to. The first was looking at the Wabash Yards, which are CN’s property where the Cayuga Subdivision meets the Talbot Subdivision. It’s very quiet today, the railtops a dull shine with bits of rust (one way to tell how much a rail line is actively used). There was a yard building there as recently as 2021, but all that remains now is a concrete pad and a bit of linoleum.
The yard is located at the western side of a wye that connects the Cayuga to the Talbot, the Talbot ending in an upside-down Y going east and west. Once upon a time, the Talbot was actually the London & Port Stanley Railway, which had its own line that extended in a third segment right down the middle of the Y, heading south. That segment is now long gone, though the right-of-way is still plainly visible. When I was in St. Thomas in 2006, you could stand in the L&PS right-of-way (not on the CN tracks, as that’s dangerous) and see right down the line. Today, it’s blocked by a rather large barrier of heavy creosoted beams and concrete blocks, which I can only assume is an attempt to block ATVs and other motor vehicles from approaching active lines.
I headed back down the L&PS right-of-way, passing the BX Tower. It’s an old station to control the blocks going in and out of the CASO station yards, and I was struck by the fact that it still had the manual handles. I was even more struck to find that in an allotment garden on its east side, you can still see the switch control arms still present, going out to where the switches would have once been.
Alex was caching nearby as I took pictures of the CASO station, before heading over to get pictures of the old CASO shop building. Sadly, the Elgin County Railway Museum, which occupies the shop building, is closed until 2028, so I couldn’t see CN 5700 or even a gift shop.
I stopped briefly in the CASO station building (which is still open and even features some original furnishings on the main floor) before heading to Purely Wicked, where the rest of the family was perusing. And boy, did they peruse.
Having eventually purchased the things they wanted, we went over to the Elevated Park and the statue of Jumbo. The Elevated Park is what remains of the CASO bridge over the Kettle Creek valley on the west side of the city. Today, it’s a literal park. St. Thomas has wisely chosen to own its heritage, and upgraded the massive trestle to feature a park on top, complete with sculptures and concrete pathways. It’s a nice walk and a gorgeous view of the treed valley.
After a stop at the nearby Tim Horton’s for drinks and a final pee break (which was difficult after someone lost the key to the women’s room), we started back to Oakville. And that ended up being more of an adventure as we planned after we’d attempted to make one last gas stop of cheaper fuel that drew us unexpectedly north into Paris (Ontario, not France). From there, we ended up on Highway 5, which took us through some gorgeous little towns like St. George, before putting us on Highway 6, down to the 403. Save for an accidental turn towards Niagara, we were back at Cathy’s reasonably quick.
Following dinner, Cathy and I went out to Hurontario in Mississauga to get her a new dishwasher. A couple of months ago, Cathy had a rat infestation, which laid waste to her dishwasher. Annoyingly, the unit might actually be okay, but short of hooking it all back up, there’s no guarantee that the motherboard isn’t shot. But then she found an almost-identical unit for sale for $400 on Facebook Marketplace – a savings of nearly $800!
The family selling it had bought their place with the unit wholly unused, and removed it in favour of a different brand. Cathy needed a near-identical unit because their custom-built kitchen wouldn’t fit anything else. We had it installed barely 30 minutes after getting back. Even at the rock-bottom price, the unit seems find and should do nicely.
Tomorrow is our last day in Ontario. We head back tomorrow evening. For once, I’m not eager to bolt. Our visit has challenged me in ways I hadn’t expected: I still dislike Toronto, but southwestern Ontario is proving to be far nicer than I had thought. I could even see myself moving there, though I’m sure my eventual relocation will be to the west, not the east.
