Dauphin's Monkey Trails

Growing up in Dauphin, Manitoba, we had a beautiful hidden gem located behind Vermillion Park. A sizeable chunk of barely tamed woods, on the east side of the snaking Vermillion river, full of overgrown trees and barely navigable walking paths. As kids, my friends and I spent hours in there.

Often, we were the only people in the woods. It was this fantastic, hidden world, right in behind the houses on Wellington Crescent. I'm not sure how or why, but it was known as the "Monkey Trails". We didn't come up with the name. It was passed down to us from who knows where. Some of my best childhood memories happened on that wonderful patch of nature, just outside our back doors.

No matter the season, it is a place of beauty.

A few years ago, the City of Dauphin ran a bulldozer through the middle of it, and put a huge, gravel walking path in. There's still a few of the side trails that look relatively close to when they did when I was young. Narrow trails. Underbrush. Trees on every side. Sort of like this...

Compare that to this photo of the recently installed main, paved trail.

The formerly dark woods is now dotted with street lights.

Now let me make it clear. I LOVE my hometown. I want it to have attractions for everyone. And it's clear that I LOVE the Monkey Trails.

But for me, a giant lit and paved path sort of took a vacuum to the Monkey Trails and sucked out the magic that made it special for me.

Now, it just seems like an extension of Vermillion park, which coincidentally enough also has wide gravel paths and street lights.

The woods where I used to escape are now fully lit at night, impossible to get lost in, and is dotted with benches sponsored by Dauphin Countryfest, complete with beer bottles littering the ground just feet away from trash cans.

I guess I'm now old enough to yell at kids to get off of my lawn. I am happy that my hometown has this.

I'm also saddened that the Monkey Trails as I knew them don't exist anymore.

Here's a few photos from the parts of the Monkey Trails that haven't been paved over yet. It holds a special place in my heart.

Currently playing: Glass Tiger - My Town
Currently colouring: Spacepig Hamadeus versus the Spectre General
Proudly in my seventh Cola free year!

The Dauphin Herald

Even though I haven't spent more than a long weekend in Dauphin, Manitoba in over a decade, I still identify very much with my old hometown. I recently got a subscription to the town paper, The Dauphin Herald, which I used to deliver when I was a young boy in elementary school (along with the now defunct Daily Bulletin!).

It's been almost half my life since I've called Dauphin home, so I don't recognize as many names and faces making the news there as I once would have. But recently, I was treated to two articles by former teachers of mine.

My high school career lasted from 1990-91 to 1992-93, and during that time I had Mr. Bill Walley for Science, and Mr. Ed Stozek for Language Arts. Both were fantastic teachers. In a recent edition of the Dauphin Herald, Mr. Walley wrote about bird counts in Riding Mountain National Park. Meanwhile, Mr. Stozek has a fascinating weekly article that looks back into the history of Dauphin and the Parkland.

Nearly 20 years after I graduate, and these guys are still teaching me things...

Fellow former Dauphinites, you too can subscribe to the Dauphin Herald!

Currently playing: The Swiftys - Miss Those Days
Currently colouring: An as yet unsolicited Marvel Masterwork! 
Proudly in my sixth Cola free year!

Portrait of the artist as a young rapscallion.

The summer of 1994 was, for an impossibly large number of reasons, THE worst summer of my life. One bright spot, however, was my second full time job, pumping gas at Gord's Convenience Store, with my good friend, Claire Compton. We had a lot of fun there, and the rest of the staff were great.

We'd always joked about doing a "Men of Gord's" calendar. It really would have been a quarterly calendar, since there were only 3 men who worked there (Excluding Gord - however, as nice of a man he was, you wouldn't want to see him in this publication).

I'd completely forgotten about this idea, until I was reminded of it a few years ago by Claire, who had found the photos after almost a decade. Against better judgement, I'm sharing them on this blog. I've got a bad feeling that these pics are going to rear their ugly heads when I make my run for School Board Trustee, so I'd best come clean with them now!

I'm not sure who was manning the gas pumps this evening, where I got the tiger print satin boxers, where my hair went, or how many years it took for me to learn that white socks are a fashion faux pas, but it was a fun night in a pretty bleak summer.

Thanks to Claire for being the custodian of these photos all this time, and for not using them for blackmail purposes!

Currently playing: Bulletboys - Smooth Up In Ya