'A Tribute to St. Mary's [sic], Ontario'

Dawn on the River Thames, St Marys, Ontario (detail)
Anyès Kadowaki Busby
2016

This month marks the eighth anniversary of our move from downtown Vancouver to the picturesque town of St Marys, Ontario. As a young Montrealer longing to live in Manhattan I would've been horrified. In my thirty-second year, when my wife and I moved west to Vancouver, I complained that the city was too small. And yet here we are, living in community that isn't an eighth the size of my alma mater.

I wouldn't have it any other way. The Montreal I love seems increasingly foreign. The city will always be my true home, but it's becoming difficult to negotiate. Visits, which aren't at all infrequent, find me frustrated in looking to dine at restaurants that no longer exist and shop in stores that have long since closed. Other old haunts have been remade, remodelled and propelled out of price range.

No complaints. Montreal is the greatest city in North America.

Manhattan?

What was I thinking?

That said, St Marys has a growing place in my heart. It's here we've made a home for ourselves – in a large Victorian Italianate, overlooking the Canadian Thames, dwarfed by the town's Presbyterian Church.

I'm not the first Quebecer to fall for this small town. In the nineteenth century, Megantic's foremost Son of Temperance, Archibald McKillop, recognized "beautiful St. Mary's [sic]" in his "A Tribute to St Mary's [sic], Ontario".

"Such scenery nowhere is / For many leagues around", writes the poet.

Now consider this: Archibald McKillop was blind.

Such is St Marys' beauty!

The poem in its entirety follows.

A TRIBUTE TO ST. MARY’S, ONTARIO

                           Where beautiful St. Mary’s
                                Lies nestling ’mongst the hills,
                           The pleasing prospect rare is,
                                Its grandeur me enthrills. 

                           From flow’ry gardens nigh me
                                The balmy breezes blow;
                           The classic Thames runs by me
                                With peaceful, gentle flow. 

                           What kindly, friendly greetings
                                Have cheered me on its shore;
                           And O! such temperance meetings
                                I’ve never seen before. 

                           Good Affleck, Pierce and Manning,
                                Carswell and Watson too,
                           With famous Ross were planning
                                What temperance men should do. 

                           (For here, in Grand Division,
                                The Sons of Temperance met,
                           To work for Prohibition,
                                The law that we must get.) 

                           Thou town of peerless beauty;
                                 Ye friends so kind to me;
                           It is my pleasant duty
                                 To sing this eulogy. 

                           Such scenery nowhere is
                                 For many leagues around;
                           And in this fair St. Mary’s
                                 Let peace and wealth abound.

Collected Verse
Archibald McKillop
Winnipeg: [n.p.], [c. 1913]

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