B次元官网网址淒onB次元官网网址檛 use my name,B次元官网网址� she warned. B次元官网网址淥kay, I wonB次元官网网址檛, scoutB次元官网网址檚 honour,B次元官网网址� I assured my Langford Lake friend and neighbour. I was tapping into her view of past years.

LetB次元官网网址檚 call her Mary. Under cover of nameless status, she isnB次元官网网址檛 afraid to put a pre-inflation date on herself by remembering five-cent chocolate bars and five-cent restaurant coffee.

B次元官网网址淭he night the Highway Sawmill burned down,B次元官网网址� Mary said, B次元官网网址渕y husband came home so dirty and smoky fighting the fire, that he just dropped his clothes on the raft and jumped in the lake before he had a bath.B次元官网网址�

That was in the 1950s. B次元官网网址淭here was another sawmill on Dunford Road, in the 1940s, and that burned down too,B次元官网网址� she said.

I had the sense that her memory worked somewhat as mine did, a stream of pictures with sound track, driven by strong feelings and quirky surprises.

Like my inner videotape of a man shaking loose a shower of soot from his hair and dropping it on the desk in front of the city editor of the old Daily Colonist.

That was his (eventually successful) complaint against the particle-laden smoke from the mills that surrounded downtown Victoria and sprawled out to distant Langford, in the days when Ross carriers used to trundle through the streets of Victoria with underslung loads of lumber.

Now the sawmills themselves have melted away with the smoke, which has been replaced by the massed fumes of car tailpipes.

B次元官网网址淲e came to Langford in 1946,B次元官网网址� Mary said. B次元官网网址淢y husband was in the air force until August of 1946, and we came out in September. We lived on Dunford Road at first, where the recycling place is now. Before that, we lived in Fairfield for a few months, and our friends there used to ask why we wanted to live way out in the sticks.B次元官网网址�

The little WomenB次元官网网址檚 Institute hall on Dunford, demolished in the 1980s to make room for development, was commemorated indirectly by the name of the cluster of dwellings B次元官网网址� Adelaide Court, after Adelaide Hoodless, who was the founder of the WomenB次元官网网址檚 Institute in Canada.

Mary remembered the Staverman family on Leigh Road. They lived in one of a small scattering of houses on Leigh and the Island Highway, now Goldstream Avenue.

They were generous enough to allow a big piece of their waterfront to be used as a public beach. Many Langford people learned to swim there.

B次元官网网址淎nd then there was the Powers property. The present public beach was part of it. The Powers sisters had their big house and five acres of woods on Langford Lake. Some of the neighbours tried to have the property developed as a park, but that didnB次元官网网址檛 work.B次元官网网址�

In the conflict between todayB次元官网网址檚 profits and tomorrowB次元官网网址檚 hopes for the grandchild generation, tomorrow came out the loser, as it usually does.

B次元官网网址淲here Western Foods now is, and the other stores, that was the Hincks farmB次元官网网址� Mary said. B次元官网网址淜en and Bunty Hincks had a dairy farm there, but I never saw any cows. They must have been further back out of sight. KenB次元官网网址檚 brother Claude was killed in the war. Claude Road is named after him. Ken and Bunty grew vegetables for some years.B次元官网网址�

Looking at the web of leaves and branches that screened Mary away from the streets and buildings on the former peaty wetland that used to be HullB次元官网网址檚 Field, I asked her: B次元官网网址淲hen was the last time you heard the frogs singing in the springtime?B次元官网网址�

B次元官网网址淚 heard them a little last year, but I didnB次元官网网址檛 hear them at all this year,B次元官网网址� she said.

Developers hired consultants who testified that by one of the many definitions of a wetland, HullB次元官网网址檚 Field was not a wetland. But the frogs knew better.

gemort@pacificcoast.net

B次元官网网址擥.E. Mortimore is a Langford-based writer. Think About It runs every second week in the Gazette.