Fifty years ago my primary – indeed exclusive – route of vehicular access to and from the city to and from the country was along March Road (connecting to the Queensway). The new 4-lane highway which leads from Carleton Place (southeast of Almonte where we reside) to the city had not yet been constructed. If it matters, we have the Ontario Conservative government to thank for that particular improvement. The new highway affords a convenient and pleasant (less frantic) passage to and from the city to and from the country along the Appleton Side Road to and from Almonte.

The predominance of properties along the Appleton Side Road are farms. Many of them tumble down to the edge of the Mississippi River in a manner reminiscent of feudal land holdings (extending deliberately from road to river thus enabling the maximum benefit and convenience of passage and transportation). During the past decade (roughly commensurate with my retirement in 2024 when I adopted a life of leisure) I have regularly acquainted myself with the Appleton Side Road not only for its tranquillity and convenience but also for its beauty and animal husbandry (including horses, beef cattle, goats and sheep).  And the flourishing flowers along the roadside.

Fifty years later – with unanticipated fortuity – it pleases me to sit comfortably at my desk chair while looking upriver to the remote treed horizon, knowing that the Appleton Side Road runs parallel the river to and beyond the Village of Appleton to the basin south of Carleton Place that is Mississippi Lake (passing Gardiner’s Shore, Petrie Shore, Sinclair Shore and Craig Shore to McCullough’s Landing).

I dwell upon the immediacy of this rural drama because only yesterday (when traveling along the Rideau River Road south of Ottawa) I was reminded of similarly inexpressible rural scenery throughout the Ottawa Valley. If, as I did yesterday, one were to get off the main highway and venture within the interior environment, the attraction is endless.  The grand homes along the Rideau River are almost exclusively residential (that is, not part of a farming operation) but the lots are large and enchanting.

Naturally I am biased to the countryside within my usual orbit of activity. It does however gratify my curiosity to familiarize myself with nearby properties – partly no doubt by way of comparison (the utility of which I recognize for the purist of reasons only). My landscape analysis is unquestionably a product of my devotion to driving my car. Readily I submit to the unqualified laziness of driving because 1) driving is an unrepentant passion of mine; and, 2) it pleases me to have expiated the guilt of indolence by having cycled this morning about 5 Kms. It is not an exhausting exercise but it nonetheless acquits me of pangs of conscience.