It’s a short column today… dear reader. I’m in the midst of researching a number of items, but none are ready yet for public scrutiny. So, in the interim, I don’t have a lot to report.
While meeting with Audrey MacQueen at the church hall last week to go over some burial records, I came across a different name for the other community hall in Dunvegan. I had never heard it before, but it made perfect sense.
When Audrey was growing up, Dunvegan’s Loyal Orange Lodge No .1158 was in gradual decline. About the most impressive event associated with the hall was the annual celebration of the Battle of the Boyne on the 12th of July, also known as the Orange Day Walk. The Dunvegan Lodge shared the hosting with the other Loyal Orange Lodges in the area, so there wasn’t an Orange Walk in Dunvegan every year. But when there was, it was a very impressive event and no doubt resonated through the intervening years. Hence, it’s not surprizing that, to this day, Audrey MacQueen refers to it as the “Orange Walk Hall.”
It’s just like residents who were active in the Women’s Institute (or partook of their mouth-watering turkey dinners with all the fixings and homemade pie for dessert) know the 100 year-old building as the W.I. Hall. Or parents and children who grew up with the family-friendly events the Dunvegan Recreation Association hosted there (like Crokinole & Taffy or the Community Halloween Party) call it the DRA Hall.
What the next wave of Dunvegan newcomers will refer to it is anyone’s guess. But given the lack of interest many of them express (or don’t express) in their adopted community, it might well be rechristened “Mailbox Hall.”
Yes, it’s noisy, but…
With apologies to Gordon Lightfoot, there was a time in this fair land that the 417 did not run. It’s hard to imagine, but Dunvegan wasn’t always a quaint bedroom community within easy commuting distance (at least before the usurious increases in gasoline and diesel fuel prices) of Ottawa and even Montreal. In fact, before the four-lane motorway we take for granted today was officially opened to traffic on December 2, 1975, Dunveganites probably thought long and hard before making the journey. True fuel prices were lower, but the trip was on two-lane back roads virtually the whole way and that must have taken some serious time.
I surmised that one possible route to the bright lights of Ottawa had been to take Highland Road north to Plantagenet and then west on Highway 17 (now Route 174). And life-long resident Robert Campbell confirmed that this was indeed an option. He also rhymed off a route through Embrun that was too complicated for my tired brain to absorb.
When I asked Audrey MacQueen how her family had travelled by car to say the Ottawa Ex, or an appointment the hospital, she too mentioned Plantagenet and Highway 17. She also described a path less travelled that I hadn’t even considered: west on Highway 43 to Winchester and then straight north to Bank Street and right into the heart of Ottawa.
Google Maps estimates the Highway 17 route would take about 75 minutes, depending on where in Ottawa you were going. By contrast, Google pegs the Winchester/Bank St. route at 90 to 105 minutes. But these calculations are based on Highway 417 carrying most of the competing traffic. Nor does it take into account any improvements to the back roads that have been made over the years. Before they cut the ribbon in 1975, Trans-Canada Highway 17 was the ‘high-speed’ route to our nation’s capital. I used to take it regularly for a short while when I lived and worked in Montreal and moonlighted at the University of Ottawa’s audio-visual department. Trust me, the only thing ‘high’ about the trip was my blood pressure by the time I got there.
All too soon, we won’t be able to cruise up to Costco without taking out a second mortgage (or a reverse mortgage in the case of us codgers). However, if we ever can afford to get behind the wheel again, we should thank our lucky stars the 417 is near at hand.
-30-