Re-setting our clocks to Manor Park Standard Time

By Douglas Cornish

Times change, people don't. This undated photo show a crowd gathered for a skating party during a chilly day in the 1960s outside Manor Park Public Schoo. Currently, Manor Park Community Council is getting ready to prepare the rinks for a new skating season. Photo archives
Times change, people don't. This undated photo show a crowd gathered for a skating party during a chilly day in the 1960s outside Manor Park Public Schoo. Currently, Manor Park Community Council is getting ready to prepare the rinks for a new skating season. Photo archives

We recently changed the clocks back to standard time. Oddly enough it was on Guy Fawkes Day this year, November 5 (‘Don’t forget to remember the Fifth of November’). It’s usually a controversial time of year. Not everyone in North America observes the time change; there are a few pockets within Canada and the U.S. that stay on standard time all year.

People who favour time change love the extra hour in the summer and early fall. Others claim that sleep patterns are seriously disrupted, car accident rates go up, suicide and heart attacks increase, etc. And, of course, each year in the spring there’s usually talk of scrapping the entire exercise and staying on standard time permanently. In the Second World War, I believe, the English advanced the time by two hours because that gave them more daylight to prolong the bombings, which usually occurred after dark.

Zoning out

Time can be manipulated, zoned, and so on. There are, of course, permanent time zones right across this country. Does Manor Park, though, have its own time zone, its own time? Ridiculous you say? What would make this area so special, at such a small size, to deserve its own time zone?

Most suburbs have their own time, and Manor Park is no different. There is a Manor Park time, not so much in the official sense, but rather in the emotional or spiritual sense. Suburbs are home, and after a long day, however you spend it, there’s satisfaction and a sigh of relief to get back home.

For some, it’s really the place where many people can be themselves and are at peace. In this sense, they are in their proper space and their own time zone. At home, it’s not someone else’s time – it’s their time. Just the fact of being home takes over the senses, inevitably creating its own atmosphere of time.

At home, time is less structured, more flexible, and more enjoyable. The stress is out there–away from your home, your street, your neighbourhood. People can breathe and feel less like they’re on a continual societal leash. It’s a time-leashless area.

Village time

Manor Park is in a village valley-like neighbourhood where all the hustle and bustle occurs away from its core. Manor Park is fortunately located at the northern end of St. Laurent Blvd., which is not as busy and relatively quiet compared to St. Laurent south of Montreal Rd. Similarly, Hemlock Rd. is relaxed, then Beechwood Ave. takes over and the hurriedness increases.

Beechwood Cemetery enhances the peacefulness of the area; time seems to slow down and become more manageable.

The Ottawa River and parkland at the northern limit also add to the calm.

Bursting the time bubble

The Manor Park time bubble stays intact until one temporarily wanders outside the neighbourhood. In many senses, the community has an invisible time moat surrounding it. Within the bubble, time slows and even disappears to the point where people aren’t constantly concerned about what time it is.

As the old Chicago rock group song asks, “Does anybody really know what time it is?” Within Manor Park time, there isn’t such an urgency. Time? What’s time? Of course, the real meaning of time and the satisfaction that goes with it is doing whatever you wish to do, and when you’re on Manor Park time you have that luxury. You can relax, unfettered, unshackled, and liberated. the real meaning of life is probably when one can stop and enjoy the movement and the passing of time.

Manor Park time is characterized by a relaxed state of mind, a feeling that this is the real me, mask-free, “dancing like nobody’s watching”. It also is footloose, for the most part. People walking through the hood, with a dog, by themselves, with their kids, often stopping to talk to neighbours.

Excuse me, but can I trouble you for the time?

Oh, it’s no trouble at all. Why, I believe it’s Manor Park time.

Times change, people don't. This undated photo show a crowd gathered for a skating party during a chilly day in the 1960s outside Manor Park Public Schoo. Currently, Manor Park Community Council is getting ready to prepare the rinks for a new skating season. Photo archives