Early 1950s in the Suburbs

Although I’m a dyed-in-the-wool city girl (always have been, always will be), for one reason or another, the look-and-feel of suburban development that dominated from 1946 to about the late-1950s has always fascinated me.

It could be the swirl of televised nostalgia I grew up with (“Before anybody did anything, Elvis did everything!”), the imaginary created by the Popular Mechanics Do-It-Yourself encyclopedias we had at home, the 1960s/70s-era Government of Ontario 16mm films shown in school (“…the Burlington Skyway, which only just opened…”), or just my own interest in histories that are, historically-speaking, just outside of my existing. Whatever it is, I’ve committed many of Ottawa’s (and Toronto’s) to film and digital sensor over the years.

On Saturday, once Kathleen and I were finished at the fabric store, we ambled on northward through the Laurentian View-McKellar Park-Westboro borderlands, the southern portions of which were the site of much construction in the early 1950s. While the goal was to have some lunch (or brunch as it would turn out), but really, I also love that architectural transition from the early-1950s, back into the 1930s, and then being jerked back to the 2010s as you head north toward Richmond Road.