Heart of the Ottawa Valley

Today we arrived in Pembroke, Canada – specifically the Riverside Municipal Park.  For a municipality with less than 15,000 residents, it’s a pretty impressive park with playing fields for softball, soccer, lacrosse, and even horseshoes.  The park is on the banks of the Ottawa River so there is a small beach area for swimming (though the beach could use some cleaning up of some ‘pop’ tops and broken glass).  There is RV parking (electric and water) and lots of space for tent camping.  Since today’s Fathers Day, quite a few dads were with their kids playing in the river, in the water play area with all sorts of sprinklers, and on the climbing and slides part of the park.  Everyone was having fun.  Nice community space.

Charlie and I took a drive to the local grocer and then drove through town in search of the coffee shop I had spied when we first drove in.  No luck -- by 3:00 it was already closed.  It reminds me of growing up in Frederick, MD, in the 50s and 60s where all the downtown shops closed by noon on Wednesday, by 5:00 most other days, and were never open on Sunday.  In Pembroke today we saw several businesses with signs saying they were closed in observance of Fathers Day.  Nice simpler times.  The outstanding architectural feature of the town is the many big brick Victorians, probably from the turn of the century.  BIG with turrets, gingerbread, porches, and stained glass, most of which have been converted to multifamily housing.  There definitely was a time when Pembroke was home to a bunch of folks with big money – and big families!