Greenwood BC is Canada's smallest city, but it's smaller than many villages so I'll post it here. I stopped here right before an epic storm swept through with huge hailstones, forcing me to pull over in the village of Midway down the highway in early June 2022.
looking north
looking south on the highway towards Vancouver
I saw plenty of aging hippies sitting on their porches watching the weather
I drove to BC to visit my cousins in Fernie, BC (and Vancouver & Nanaimo) only to discover when I got to Fernie that he'd gone to France ha. I stayed at the Fernie RV Resort: nice facilities, however like many Northern Ontario/Prairie/BC towns along the TCH/rail corridor, the frequent night trains were very loud and annoying. I met a young guy biking from Banff to Mexico City! (And here you thought I was crazy for sleeping in a tiny car in downtown Edmonton.) I found Fernie full of beautiful women, dumpy old town Nanaimo-style houses with an Ontario-style main drag - Paris in the Mountains?, and no one wearing masks, and old 1980s cars like the 1988 Honda Civic Wagon (damn that would be a sweet ride to car camp in.)
I did end up seeing my cousin for a few hours in Nanaimo weeks later.
Weekend before last I was driving back from Niagara and I saw there were slowdowns on the QEW. So I checked how long it would take if google maps avoided highways. Practically the same. So hopped on North Service Road/Lake St. and drove a good length of it. My first time ever on most of those sections. I wasn’t even aware of this neighbourhood called Grimsby Beach. I saw the backs of three colourful houses as we passed by so I looked into it further. It could pass as being on Vancouver Island. And almost as colourful as St John’s.
New mission: Stop over here one day on the way back from Niagara one day and explore a little. Their beaches aren’t going to win any awards, but the housing stock could.
If you buy one of these houses, there’s going to be pressure on you to maintain it well. Shit, if I bought one of the regular houses next to these creative houses, I’d feel pressure to conform.
A couple pages back I showed pics of Grimsby on the Lake, which is a new ‘hood they are building from scratch. It’s somewhat sterile at the moment. It’ll improve, but it definitely is not going to be this. I also professed my love for gateway signs and appreciated that the new neighbourhood has one of those, just like Downtown Grimsby. However, didn’t notice one for this place.
Wow, I've never heard about this place. Must be a well-kept secret. It's really charming, though unfortunately the omnipresent din of the QEW would take away from the experience a lot.
Narrower streets make a huge difference in how a neighbourhood feels.
Wow, I've never heard about this place. Must be a well-kept secret. It's really charming, though unfortunately the omnipresent din of the QEW would take away from the experience a lot.
The QEW's presence isn't that pronounced among the "painted ladies" of Grimsby Beach. I imagine one can still hear it, but at less-than-din volumes.
I do wonder how it all got started though. What's the history of it? Did one homeowner decided to change things up, and was followed by others? Or did it begin with several who decided they had the same aesthetic and made simultaneous changes to their homes?
At Christmas it's quite a nice place to visit.
It's a shame Grimsby didn't maintain much parkland along its waterfront.
Circle roads are cool. Where else can you find them? I can think of Niagara on the Lake, Fort Erie (Crystal Beach), Goderich and Downtown Toronto. Little roundabouts don’t count.
Circle roads are cool. Where else can you find them? I can think of Niagara on the Lake, Fort Erie (Crystal Beach), Goderich and Downtown Toronto. Little roundabouts don’t count.
Circle roads are cool. Where else can you find them? I can think of Niagara on the Lake, Fort Erie (Crystal Beach), Goderich and Downtown Toronto. Little roundabouts don’t count.
Not just aesthetically does it not feel like Canada, but that's also a gated community there, so feels more American than Canadian. My aunt lives in one in Florida, surrounded by others.
A couple of us discussed the history of that pier there, either in this thread or the beach one. Very interesting.
Ming Teh in Fort Erie is one of the best Chinese-Canadian restaurants in Niagara. It's been around for 30-ish years and when it opened got a rave review from The Buffalo News food/restaurant reviewer at the time. It's one of those old school places that still has Peking Duck on the menu.
Even though Western NY now has a better selection of Chinese and Asian cuisines in 2023, many still cross the border to eat at Ming Teh and do some grocery shopping for items they cannot find in the Buffalo Metro.
Nearby Happy Jack's--while not as good as Ming Teh, has a great outdoor patio right on the Niagara river and a loyal Western NYer customer base. Fort Erie is such a hodgepodge between this small restaurant and bar strip, the old "Bridgeburg" downtown, Ridgeway, Crystal Beach, and Garrison Stroad.
Ridgeway is seen as the "nicest" commercial strip in Fort Erie and has a craft brewery inside the basement of a former church (and nice outdoor patio) that also serves as a community centre.
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