What's the deal with Strathroy?

When I was a kid, my family subscribed to the Waterdown Review, the local weekly newspaper. Every week, I was an eager reader of the column from editor Ken Bosveld, a breezy mix of village news and personal reflections. I don’t know why I loved it so, but I did.

One of the topics that Ken would write about frequently was visits to a place called Chapleau, where his family, if memory serves, had a camp of some sort. 

I never knew where Chapleau was: it was a mythical place somewhere in Ontario. And that’s where I filed it away in my memory and my imagination.

In the same file as the town of Strathroy.

I’ve never been to Strathroy. 

I don’t know anyone from Strathroy. 

I don’t think I’ve ever read anything about Strathroy. 

But, somehow, I’m aware of its existence, in the same imaginative neighbourhood as Chapleau.

(Strathroy and Chapleau are not geographically close; depending on which way you drive, you’ll need to travel about 900 km to get from one to the other).

Strathroy, meanwhile, after languishing in this liminal space until now, has suddenly emerged onto the scene.

First, Strathroy is the home of Crystal Clear Bags Canada. 

A month ago, we were looking, wouldn’t you know it, for crystal clear bags. The Google pathway led right to their door. 

We are now repeat customers. 

Great selection, good website, quick turnaround, reasonable prices, not U-Line nor Amazon: they check all the boxes!

You’d think that would be enough Strathroy.

It wasn’t.

Yesterday, the post The Bureau of Library Tourism, from Mita Williams’ Librarian of Things blog, showed up in my RSS reader.

In the post, Mita writes:

I just walked back from the lovely Cookie Bar in Ford City, Ontario, where I was one of the six “fun” speakers at the Bike Windsor Essex AGM.

The theme was transportation and the format was pecha kucha: 20 slides that auto forward every 20 seconds.

This is what I was supposed to have said.

She then goes on to include the slides for her delightful talk on the topic of helping “libraries give tourists things to do when they visit.” 

For a fan, like me, of both libraries and travel, and visiting libraries when I travel, this is heady stuff. (Go read it; it’s lovely).

(An aside: earlier this week, Lisa and I were visiting St. Dunstan’s Basilica, a few blocks from our house, and we ended up chatting with a tourist from Colorado, newly arrived on a cruise ship. She asked us for directions to the public library and explained she was a library trustee in her hometown, and liked visiting libraries when travelling. Library tourism is real.)

Right, Strathroy.

How could I not click on the Cookie Bar link in Mita’s post!

Cookie Bar turns out to be exactly what’s on the tin. 

A bar. With cookies.

Here’s their story:

Started mixing one cookie as a time, customizing each recipe from scratch, laid off in 2020 because of the pandemic, in a small apartment kitchen. Upgraded to renting a kitchen in Walkerville, then having a spot of my own at 471 Pelissier. Serving over 18 different 1/4 lb craft cookies and over 80 different craft beers.​

Mita’s event was at their Windsor location, in Ford City (that’s a Wikipedia entry worth reading), but Cookie Bar also has a location in, you guessed it, Strathroy.

So. Much. Strathroy.

As no laterally-slithered-together blog post would be complete without a neatly tied bow, I present The Ghost in the Waterdown Library, originally published in 1987 in Heritage Happenings, which starts with:

Now I don’t believe in ghosts, but I can tell you there are a lot of people who won’t use that elevator.”

—Mrs. Lorraine Eastwood, Head Librarian, Waterdown

I went to high school in Waterdown, and the Waterdown Library—the same one, with the ghost, though I didn’t know about the ghost at the time—was a frequent refuge for me, a place to get away from the overload of Waterdown District High School.

I knew Mrs. Eastwood: she was ever-present, and the very model of how you might imagine a small village librarian from literature. (My mother, also a librarian, was a colleague of hers in later years.)

That piece on the ghost mentions Waterdown Review editor Ken, he of camp-in-the-Chapleau-in-my-imagination:

Later on the same day, Mr. Ken Bosveld, the Editor of the Review, came to the library and interviewed Mrs. Eastwood about the elevator’s strange behaviour. Within seconds of focusing his camera on the tombstones, the door mysteriously opened and remained so, long enough for two photographs to be taken.

Libraries. Travel. Ghosts. Newspapers. Elevators.

And Strathroy.

Time for a visit? They have a library!