Impressions of Paris, Ontario

[vaneramos]

It's strikingly pretty, the store fronts typical of any small Southwestern Ontario town, but the surrounding forested hillsides atypical. Nestled at the confluence of the Grand and Nith rivers, Paris is reputedly a good place to search for antiques. I've passed through many times en route to Simcoe, where my father's parents are buried and I spent a summer surveying Carolinian woodlands, but never had occasion to stop until yesterday afternoon. No money in my pockets to shop for anything except images.

After photographing the shops backing off Grand River Street (doorwindowwall), and the surface of the water (texture), I followed a middle-aged woman down a reclining sidestreet. It was a warm Monday afternoon, the wind promising rain. People had left front doors standing open.

The voice of an old man gave lessons to someone playing an out-of-tune piano. It was something that could have happened a century ago. Brick and clapboard houses with overflowing flower beds enhanced the mood, transporting me back. Through another screen tinkled the sound of a woman washing dishes by hand. In a garden behind the same house, a teenage girl in overalls sprawled reading on a bench among Rudbeckias and roses. Orange mountain-ash berries littered the sidewalk. The street wound upwards again, to a rusty steel footbridge spanning the Nith River. In a riverside park, two women faced one another across a picnic table. Downstream, in shade where large maples extended branches over the current, four adolescent boys sat talking.

Back toward downtown, a faded house backed onto the street. Beyond two windows in separate front rooms, an elderly couple sat at separate keyboards, computer light reflected in their glasses, drawing me back to the present. On a bench in front of a variety store, a man with unkept grey hair sat severely bent, eyes a few inches above his knees, peering as he painstakingly scratched a lottery card.

Comments

not much to do with the actual entry

[queenmomcat.livejournal.com]

...but there's a little (7-8) girl has been coming into my library recently who looks spookily like your daughters (or rather how I think they might have looked as children); only the fact that she's at least five years too young stops me from looking around for you.

Oh, and I love the photograph.

[missprune.livejournal.com]

The place looks as though it has such an old world feel to it. Simply beautiful!

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Yes, there is a European charm. I catch a whiff of it in certain Ontario towns where the 19th Century downtowns are well-preserved. I'm glad the photo conveys it.

Re: not much to do with the actual entry

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Well, they do have a distinctive look to them!

[osodecanela.livejournal.com]

There is that something of homes that are right there, foundations apparently extending to the water that one sees in much of Europe, an just not seen all that much in this hemisphere. This reminds me so much of what I saw in Slovenia, Hungary, the Czech republic and Romania.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

It hearkens to an earlier time when rivers served as an essential mode of transport around Ontario, and that goes back long before Europeans arrived!

[clairenolen.livejournal.com]

i love your writing here and the photo! i've never been to Paris/ON.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

It was a lovely visit, definitely worth the wander!