Going Back to Red Deer

Our recent Alberta trip had many highlights. For me, one of the most exciting times was driving to Red Deer, to explore the city I had lived in as a child.














My childhood friend, Jean - pictured above in an old photo with her parents - warned me that I might be disappointed: so much had changed!














 She was right. Our old house didn't look the way I remembered it.














It had been renovated and now had a high hedge next to the walkway.














I marveled that our old street now had mature trees, paved roads and sidewalks.

It had been a new neighborhood when we moved in. Dirt roads with no storm sewers...


















One memorable spring our unpaved street had flooded!

I remember playing hide-and-seek in a farmer's field behind our house the first summer we were there. Before long, new homes were sprouting up where fields had been.

I wandered over to the neighborhood schools I had attended: Grandview Elementary and Eastview Middle School.














They looked much the same, though both had new additions. Jean and I had attended Eastview when it was a brand-new school.














A few blocks away, I found the church where I had been confirmed - Trinity Lutheran. It looked much the same...














... except that now now it is a Coptic Orthodox church.














We drove down the hill to River Glen School, where my mother had taught. The old barracks that had housed the school back then have been replaced by a modern building.

Later we wandered around "historic" downtown Red Deer where Terry "met" the city's founding father, Reverent Dr. Leonard Gaetz. (It had simply been "downtown" when I lived here in the 1950s!)














We saw the old train station.














A lot of changes had occurred... But the visit wasn't disappointing! The parts of the city that I remember are still where I remember them... They haven't been torn down. I still felt at home!

 












And perhaps because we arrived around the time that children were leaving school - their youthful exuberance brought back memories of my childhood!

Rediscovering some of the paths that led downtown from our neighborhood - paths I remember taking as a child - I caught a sense of why I missed Red Deer so much when we moved to Kelowna.














It was a wonderful child-friendly city to grow up in. And it still seems to be!