This photo may have been taken the same day as yesterday's. Back then, the range of normalcy was somewhat more tightly distributed than it seems to be these days. This observation is not meant as a complaint, other than to say that there is comfort in familiarity, the known.
These women were neither known by me nor, necessarily, of my social milieu – but they characterized a post-war construct that afforded a sense of stability and predictability, all of which seems now to have passed us by.
This was taken in front of Birks on Portage Avenue at Smith Street. I remember going in there to look at the silver, silver trays, dishes, cutlery, that kind of thing. No one wants that stuff anymore since it takes work just keeping it tarnish free. They also had a huge display of gold charms for bracelets, and since gold was not anywhere near as valuable as it is now, they weren't expensive. I have a charm bracelet including charms given to me by my husband to celebrate the birth of each of our babies and others to celebrate my 25th and 50th birthday given by my parents. This picture calls all that to mind and also the time when women went downtown to shop, now very much in the past.
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