Back to Peterborough

My travels took me back to Peterborough, Ontario last week for the first time since I last visited in 2008. It was a quick visit, barely more than 12 hours in the city, barely enough time for a good meal, several rounds of dominos, a good sleep, and breakfast.

I took time for a walkabout, much as I did 18 years ago, revisiting the places I’d lived, the places that had been important to me. I was wearing different lenses on this walk than I was then: it was less warm nostalgia mixed with discomfort with change, and more “I’ve invested so much meaning into these places over the year that they have become mythological, and yet… they are just places.”

Here’s what I saw.

The Cottage

The Cottage, on 733 George Street North was once Trent University founding President Tom Symons’ office, and I interviewed him there in the mid-1980s, over a pot or two of tea (a delightful interview with a deeply caring and thoughtful man; alas, there’s no record of it as I forgot to press “record” on the tape recorder). 

It’s clearly fallen on hard times, likely because Trent divested its downtown Peter Robinson College years ago. Here’s what the building’s heritage designation says:

Built in 1855 by T.G. Hazlitt for his bride, Mary Anne Dickson, daughter of lumber baron Samuel Dickson, 733 George St N is an excellent example of a Regency which may have had a central dormer added to create an Ontario Gothic Cottage. In 1875, the property was purchased by Henry Denne, member of Town Council and the Public School Board, for his daughter. Denne owned the Blythe Mill and the Sperry flour mill built on the site of Adam Scott’s old mill. In 1967 Trent University purchased the house and for many years it served as the office of Founding President Thomas H.B. Symons.  

Trent Radio House

Trent Radio House is at 715 George Street North, just down from The Cottage. I spent thousands of hours in this house. I had sex for the first time in this house. I developed lifelong friendships in this house. I came of age creatively in this house. I cannot imagine any building played a more formative roll in my life than this one.

241 Dublin Street

I lived at 241 Dublin Street for 9 months, starting in the fall of 1988. At the time the ground floor housed Ed’s Music Workshop at the back, and a screen printing shop at the front, while the top floor was our roomy four-bedroom apartment. Many many hands of canasta were played there. I had my only one-night stand ever there. 

When I think of the heart of my 20s, it’s this apartment I think of.

The building has been substantially renovated since I visited in 2008: the red brick has been “parged” and painted brown, and there are new windows.

621 George Street North

The duplex on the left was where I lived for a year, from the spring of 1991. My room was in the attic: the three-pane window at the very top. 

Catherine lived in the house next door, and she presented me with the keys on the day I pulled up in my rental van after driving back from 9 months in Montreal. We became friends, nudged toward each other by our respective roommates. I made space for her on our living room couch, and made her a rootbeer float one day when she was sick. She hosted bonfires in the back yard, the same back yard  where she eventually asked me to kiss her for the first time. It’s the house that launched our 28 year coupledom.

Peterborough Community Credit Union

The former home of the Peterborough Community Credit Union, on 167 Brock Street. It merged with a larger credit union some years ago, and this branch closed in 2024. 

I opened my first credit union account here, and got my first loan (less than $300, to help me bridge cash flow for a print job). I became a believer in the power of credit unions here.

The Cheese Shop

The Cheese Shop, now on 158 Brock Street, was, before a fire, on Hunter Street West, right across the street from the Peterborough Examiner. When I was working in the Composing Room there in the early 1990s I used to get cheese sandwiches from there for lunch: “I’m going across the The Cheese Shop… anyone want anything?”

139½ Hunter Street West

Catherine and I moved out of our neighbouring houses on George Street, and into the 3rd floor apartment here. At the time it was owned by the man who owned the Sam the Record Man franchise around the corner. 

It was a lovely apartment. 

The building has clearly received a lot of attention over the years: it’s in much better shape than it was in 2008.

451 Water Street

I first lived in a tiny apartment at the back of the second floor while friends of a friend were tree planting; a few years later they’d moved into the huge apartment on the second floor on the right, and when they moved out, I moved in. 

It was perhaps the nicest apartment I ever lived in and it’s sad to see the building painted such an ugly colour, and to clearly not be receiving the care it used to. 

Some of the best and worst memories of my 20s played out in this building.