In the 1950s of downtown Toronto the old Brunswick Hotel (it was old even back then) was a clapped-out, disreputable drinking establishment in whose near proximity it could be guaranteed one would see alcoholics publicly displaying the type of mental abyss typical of alcohol addicts. Bloor Street itself back then was fairly run-down and tired in appearance. Close by the Brunswick Hotel was where my parents' convenience store was located; about two doors over.

I'd be asked by my father when barely into my teens to fit my body into the tight space that represented his store's front-window area, to arrange displays of items sold in the store attractively in the hopes that people would be enticed to enter and make purchases. It was a dusty enclosure; the first time I was dispatched to do the job it was clear that it hadn't been done in many a year. That neglect was just one of many my father, on becoming the store's proprietor meant to change. The odd times I was tasked with manning the cash register as a kid, I was told precisely what to charge when someone might toddle over from the Brunswick to buy a single cigarette.

My parents stocked their narrow, elongated cave of a store with everything imaginable, from newspapers and magazines in languages other than English as well as more local ones, to canned foodstuffs my mother would trundle over in her buggy when they were on sale at the Dominion Supermarket a block away. With tobacco products, toys and gifts, candies and baked goods, ice cream in huge drums to be scooped up into cones, housewares and anything useful and inexpensive that could be stuffed onto the shelving along its narrow aisles.

The store in the Byward Market that my husband and I have been dropping by for many years has a similar configuration to my father's old store; it is long and deeply narrow. The cash register and counter located in the very same place where my father's was. But that store specializes in newspapers, journals and magazines of a far wider variety than my father's ever did, as well as ecigarettes, conventional cigarettes and cigars, hookahs, and marijuana and other drug paraphernalia. For the past decade it has been owned by a Somali family, its members graciously helpful and patrician in their proud bearing.

When we dropped by yesterday after discovering the week before that the September issues of the monthly art magazine and the antique digest my husband usually collects there hadn't yet arrived, we found that though the shop owner had been certain they would be coming in at the very latest last Friday, they hadn't. That wasn't the only disappointment of the day. From the Byward Market we headed up to Gatineau, Quebec, since it was such a lovely day, with a high of 26 degrees, under sunny skies.

Unfortunately, when we reached Chelsea at the point where a hundred yards' distant we would enter the road into Gatineau Park leading to our hiking destination we discovered the road closed and under construction. Searching for alternative entry points we drove to some of the old areas we'd been familiar with decades ago, but found even those areas dramatically changed. Some days are just like that.