Sometimes it’s nice to return to places from our childhood and see if they at all resemble what we’ve stored in our memories.
Victoria Beach is such a destination for me. It’s a vacation town, lively in the summer but with few permanent residents (those mostly being fishermen who harvest the freshwater bounty from Lake Winnipeg). Victoria Beach is just a little over an hour’s drive north of Winnipeg and a world apart.
Our family owned a small vacation home in Victoria Beach and I spent a lot of time here as a teenager and into my early 20s. I really enjoyed fishing off the community pier (where personal boats, Canadian coast guard ships, and barges hauling the fine sand from the lake’s beaches to European crystal factories would tie up). Many memorable treats were crafted in its seasonal but excellent bakery, where the most amazing Irish bread was baked twice a day — not to mention a wonderful assortment of cinnamon rolls, cookies and the like. I’d spend days walking or cycling around the peninsula and just relaxing. When in season, fresh blueberries were always nice to pick and enjoy.
My dad sold the cottage shortly after my mother died 25 years ago because her presence was such a vital part of being there. But from time to time he likes to go back to Victoria Beach and when I visited him a few months back we traveled and remembered together. Not much had changed….
The town’s central park and gathering area was much the same, the rails that had brought tourists from Winnipeg removed decades before….
The bakery is still there, open the same few hours a day, the Irish bread as wonderful as I remembered it being…
And the government pier was nicely maintained, with young families still pulling fish from the lake….
Lastly, I leave you with an image of a wild rose, one of many growing around the pier….
