By CHRISTOPHER S. FORTIER
Staff Writer

In 1940, a book was published titled You Can’t Go Home Again. Thomas Wolfe wrote it prior to his death in 1938. Since the book was published, those words symbolize the idea that you can’t go back to a previous life you once had.

Monsignor Clair Catholic school in Barrie brings back fond memories. Photo by Christopher S. Fortier

I have lived in Welland most of my life. For the most part, it has been my home. When I was 10, my family and I moved to Barrie, Ont., when my father took a job with Honda in Alliston, Ont. We lived there for three years, and moved back to Welland when my father took another job that would bring us closer to where we called home.

In the three years I spent in Barrie, I lived in an area off of Cundles Rd. near Bayfield St. called Tall Trees. I attended Monsignor Clair elementary school on Cundles Rd. for grades four to seven. The school, at the time, was a newer school, around 10 years old. Due to the rapid expansion the city was starting to go through, the school was mostly portable classrooms.

I remember vividly the landscape around the area. To the back of the school there was a large field where we would spend our recess, and around the school had was farmland as far as the eye could see, with the exception of across the street, where St. Joseph’s high school resided, and behind that, Highway 400 visible in the distance.

The school was a vision in grey, with the exception of the portables, which were red. I remember fondly the snow-covered winters outside during recess, playing ball hockey out behind the portables. I even remember the time Mark Lewis slashed me with his hockey stick in the thumb on my 13th birthday, nearly breaking it, and rendering me unable to play Nintendo at my own birthday party.

More than 20 years after I left Monsignor Clair to return to Welland, I had an opportunity to visit Barrie; my close friend from grade school, Rob Johnson invited me to his house for a barbecue. I was excited to come up to see him, as well as my other friend from Monsignor Clair, Chris Lynn. I decided to leave early, so I could go and take some photographs of my old stomping grounds. Needless to say, the change that I saw was jaw dropping.

In the 20 years since I left, Barrie went from a city of 50,000 people to where it is today at nearly 130,000. And in that time, the little school that I called my own changed completely.

The farmlands that once surrounded the school have been replaced with subdivisions. The playgrounds have shrunk, and the school expanded. St. Joseph’s is still across the street, however, you cannot see the school, because what was once the front of the school, is now houses along Cundles Rd.

The school itself is now addressed on Livingstone St. a road that never existed in 1990.

Walking the school grounds on that overcast Sunday morning, left me with a sense of confusion. I was trying to, in some small way recapture a part of my youth, but was left with a sense of loss.

In all of the progress the city of Barrie has made, I was left feeling like I had missed out on something. I don’t regret anything that has happened in the 20 years since I left Barrie, but I was left wondering what might have been had I stayed.

It is true that you really can’t go home again.