Depending on which source you use, Barrie's population is 128,000, 134,000, 148,000 or 177,000 souls in a growing community surrounding Kempenfelt Bay. I prefer to round it off at 150,000.
I’m not about to expound on the evils or benefits of growth, nor will I take sides on the Barrie/Innisfil annexation issue, except to observe that Barrie can’t help but look like a bit of a bully in that fight.
I moved to Barrie in 1996, which hardly makes me an old-timer here. However, my former job as editor of The Advance positioned me to see some results of that stupendous growth on a daily basis.
Sitting on my deck cobbling this column together on an impossible-to-see-because-of-the-glare laptop, I am brought to a halt by the arrival of a bunny. (You may recall my previous rabbit-themed column). He sits in the middle of the yard, in a frozen pose that he thinks will make him invisible to me. And his visit reminds me about all the wildlife that has been displaced by the city’s rapid growth.
I have recently been visited by Flopsy, a chipmunk, two black squirrels, and a skunk that strolled into my garage one evening and dared me to move him from beneath my car. Being a man of action, I bolted inside the house leaving Carol and the skunk eye-to-eye. The skunk, obviously as much of a coward as me, backed down.
Last week I was visited by a groundhog (I prefer to call him a woodchuck) who brazenly sunned himself just outside our patio door. What’s next, a wolf, a bear ... an emu? My friend Karen, who lives nearby on property bordering Lovers Creek, has experienced both a wolf and bear in her backyard (no emu yet, as far as I know). Wild turkeys are also in abundance in our corner of the city.
These animals are not trespassing on our property, they’re simply reminding all of us that they were here first. Leave them alone and they will soon grow bored and find what little wilderness remains in which to settle down and raise a family (I hope).
I also wonder if our growth means we are running out of street names. Barrie has more than 950 streets according to the city map, and I suspect developers are finding it tough to come up with new names.
I scanned all of them and found some neat names of thoroughfares on which I would be proud to live. What writer wouldn’t find it cool to live on Hemingway Crescent or Shakespeare Crescent? Blueberry Lane, Bluegrass Drive and Bluejay Drive all have a bit of panache. If you are a history hound like me, wouldn’t it polish up your CV to have an address on Magna Carta Road, Churchill Drive or Mountbatten Crescent?
I’ll have to be happy living on Widgeon Street, which I routinely have to pronounce and spell for bureaucratic clerks everywhere. But the street is fitting for me ... a widgeon is a duck and I have a small but spectacular collection of carved ducks. It must be kismet.
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