When I lived in Ottawa, I worked for a video company that covered all kinds of sports such as NCAFA, Junior A Hockey, OUA and more.
This meant I spent a good chunk of time in all kinds of small towns in Ontario. Even if the job was in a larger city such as Markham (with a population of 300,000), I would often take the scenic route back, stopping in small towns to have lunch, watch to the world cup or simply sit on the side of the water for a while. My wife would often accompany me on the weekends to make sure we at least got to spend some time together.
Almost every little town in Ontario was stunning, with beautiful old brick buildings in the downtown streets in addition to many being adorned with rivers and streams to make it just a little more scenic. Certainly, both of us enjoyed “going out shopping” in one of these little towns than in the massive daylight devoid malls in Ottawa, often largely stocked with all of the same brands.
Some of these towns were doing very well for themselves, often thriving with day-tourism from a bigger nearby centre or people commuting to one of the bigger centres.
However, many small towns, gorgeous as the buildings may have been, were half boarded up. One building would have a fantastic locally owned restaurant, the next would be boarded up, the one after that would have locally made clothing and the next would be boarded up again.
It really showed a side of the country I wasn’t expecting to find.
This week they were working on the mural for Ross G. Marks on the Community Hall and I went to take some pictures. The sun was out and it was really quite lovely.
My experience in Ontario really makes me appreciate what we have in 100 Mile House. Our downtown is lively with all kinds of interesting stores. As evidenced by the mural painting, the community works hard to improve the appearance of our downtown.
Similarly, the editor for the Clearwater paper is retiring and the new editor joined us last week for some technical training. He had recently worked in Manitoba and also remarked that 100 Mile House is quite a nice town.
We’re not the only ones. I recently overheard a conversation between some long-time Cariboo’ers, who expressed that they had disliked 100 Mile House as children but, remarked how nice of a place it actually was.
It makes it hardly surprising the South Cariboo is such a popular retirement destination.
