A11

Bill Robb

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Botsford Street takes the walker through a beautiful downtown neighbourhood, with attractive green space like the Aberdeen Cultural Park, stalwart older homes, and some truly lovely old trees.

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Bill Robb/This Week

Botsford Avenue in Moncton.

Taking a walk along it on a snowy Sunday afternoon makes you want to pack up and instantly move back to the downtown area, since it is at once convenient and gracious. For me personally, as I walked along Botsford between Mountain Road and St. George street, there were ghosts of Christmas seasons past playing in my memory.

I grew up in that neighbourhood, walked along that street to attend Moncton High in the 60s. Some good friends and relatives still live in the neighbourhood, and as I pass their homes, it feels that the only changes around here have been largely for the better.

Walking not only exercises our bodies, but it puts our mind and our memories through the paces as well. I looked over at the area that is now the Aberdeen Park and remembered it as a school yard where we played as children.

Now it is covered with beautiful trees and shrubs, some evergreen, some barren to the winter's chill. Who knows how far our life will take us from the neighbourhoods in which we grew up? I look at the green space of the cultural park, at the trees now brushed with snow, and think of Goethe. He said:

"Sometimes our fate resembles a fruit tree in winter. Who would think that those branches would turn green again and blossom, but we hope it, we know it."

Indeed we do.