It was another typical Wednesday morning. The kids were putting together puzzles; I was cleaning up after breakfast and thinking about what to do with them for the day. I’m not an activity-oriented guy and I honestly struggle coming up with fun new things for us to do. We have a regular routine that usually involves going to the City Market, museum, library, local play centre and the playground near my mother’s place in Rothesay. And my parents are away this month, which has left me with a large block of time to fill!

Fortunately I was listening to Q while cleaning up, and Jian Ghomeshi was chatting with David Suzuki about the 30×30 challenge, a month-long campaign to get Canadians to spend at least 30 minutes a day in nature for 30 days. We were eight days late getting started, but I thought, “Here’s something that will shake us out of our routine and get us outdoors more.” I also decided to take on an additional challenge: I would try to take us somewhere different every day.

For the past week I’d been promising to take the kids to Brunswick Nurseries. It sells trees and shrubs, and also has a small petting farm and walking trail. I worked there for a summer in my early 20s, and like to occasionally take the kids there to visit the animals. There’s a pond with ducks and geese, and an outdoor corral with goats, lambs, chickens and pigs.

In which a goat rams a cow and a bunny battles a weasel

I still have great memories from my time working there 20 years ago. It’s about half an hour outside the city with a commanding view of the Kennebecasis River. I used to ride my motorcycle along the winding, riverside roads and then spend my day watering and selling trees and shrubs, and tending to the animals.

Back then, parents also brought their children to see the animals, and I always found their visits a welcome distraction from the day-to-day business of the nursery.

One day, some children came to tell me that a cow had gotten her head stuck in between the wooden slats of a fence, and that a goat was ramming her in an effort to set her free. I managed to pry the cow loose, while the goat nibbled on my shirt. On another day, some kids came running to tell me that a weasel had captured a baby bunny, and was trying to pull him underground through a hole he’d dug into the rabbit cage. To the cheers of gathered children, I won the battle with the weasel and a still-frightened bunny spent the day perched on my shoulder while I served customers.

The children were mostly respectful of the animals, but they did sometimes overstep their bounds. Once I was talking with a woman about our bedding plants, and her son ran by chasing a pack of screeching geese. A few minutes later, the boy ran by again; he was now crying because the geese were chasing him.

Ella had a number of run-ins herself on our visit there. She got a little close to the chicken coop, and they tried to snatch her cookie. Then she crouched down next to the goat pen, and one nipped at her finger when she got too close. It was lucky for her that a fence separated them in each case.

The situation lacked a sense of poetic justice, though. My kids interact with them like animals in a zoo, protected by the barriers that separate them. Twenty years ago, the little boy and the geese had to settle their differences out in the open – school-yard,er…barn-yard-style.

My neighbourhood is celebrated mostly for its connections to the past – the stone, brick and clapboard buildings constructed in the 19th century. But the South End is evolving in subtle ways. For the month of April, I’m one of 12 CBC bloggers nationwide telling stories about the changes taking place in our neighbourhoods.

The series is called Hyperlocal and my first piece is about InterAction School for Performing Arts, located in the former Germain St. Baptist Church. Many of the churches in the South End are closing because of declining congregations and the buildings left vacant because of high renovation and maintenance costs. But the InterAction story is about a successful re-purposing of a building that has been a hub of community activity for generations.

I’m a fiercely loyal South-Ender – to a fault sometimes. But I know that neighbourhoods throughout the Saint John and surrounding areas are also growing and changing in interesting ways. And Hyperlocal wants to hear your stories too. Visit the Canada Writes Hyperlocal site and post your pictures, videos or written stories about your neighbourhood. There will prizes for the best submissions – a National Film Board (NFB) adaptation of your story and a MacBook pro computer.

So let’s share the stories of the Saint John area on Hyperlocal. Look for mine in the coming weeks, and I’ll look for yours too.

Visit Hyperlocal to learn more about the project or listen to my interview on CBC Information Morning, which aired last week. I’d also be happy to answer any questions you might have. E-mail: fmleger@gmail.com. Twitter: @markleger

I went for a haircut early Saturday morning, and had to walk around broken glass on the sidewalks outside the uptown bars and restaurants. On Prince William Street I had to stop two women who were about to walk through shattered glass with their two dogs.

Back home I posted a note on Twitter and Facebook, and not long after received this post on Twitter from Ward 4 Councilor Ray Strowbridge:

“@markleger Hi Mark. I will call and report it to Municipal Operations.”

Then a few minutes later he followed up with this note:

“Municipal Operations is on their way to take care of it. @markleger”

The simple exchange between a constituent and councillor seems hardly worth mentioning, but here are a few things it got me thinking about:

• Sweat some of the small stuff: Since it was elected last spring, City Council has tackled a number of major issues – most notably, the adoption of new model for the public pension plan, and the recent decision to apply for P3 funding to build a new water treatment plant. But good governance also involves being responsive to the smaller day-to-day issues that come up in our neighbourhoods. People rightly expect politicians to stay focused on big picture issues, and let staff take care of the day-day-operations. But they still appreciate politicians that stay connected and help address their daily concerns, even if it’s something minor like alerting staff to some broken glass on a city street.
• Four wards, one city: some people think the ward system makes councillors too preoccupied with the concerns of their neighbourhoods, when they should be focused on the concerns of the city at large. Ray Strowbridge represents Ward 4; I’m in Ward 3. That didn’t stop Ray from picking up the phone to take care of something in my ward. I suspect other residents have their own examples of councillors stepping outside ward boundaries to address their concerns.
• #tellray, #telldonna or #tellmel: Many politicians understandably view social media as another way of talking to constituents about what they do – public events they attend, policies and community initiatives they support, etc. But social media tools like Facebook and Twitter are a great way to talk with, not merely at, constituents in a meaningful, and public way. I could have called a councillor on the phone, but posting on Facebook and Twitter made it a public conversation, and potentially an issue of concern to others, not just me. By the way, I haven’t been down to Prince William since Saturday. Anyone notice if the glass was cleaned up?

I was disappointed, though not entirely surprised, when Starbucks chose to locate its uptown cafe in Brunswick Square. I was hoping it would be on King St., as part of the revitalization of the uptown’s outdoor commercial corridor from King’s Square to Market Square.

This choice reflected Starbucks approach to broadening its appeal. The first Saint John location was a small kiosk in McAllister Place; then they opened the standalone cafe with a drive-thru and an outlet in the Indigo bookstore on the East Side. I had first experienced Starbucks on downtown street corners in Toronto. When Starbucks finally arrived in uptown Saint John it was in a mall near the entrance to the pedway, not in an historic building on King St.

You know what, though? Starbucks knew its market, and they also knew Mark, as it turns out.

More than 10 years ago, I wrote a column for here, “On the outside looking in: outside culture is key to vibrant uptown core.” I admitted using the inside connection, but nonetheless argued that it was holding back the development of a vibrant, outdoor street culture in the uptown core.

I’m more of a pragmatist now, and realize the inside connection is here to stay; we have to make the uptown work with it, not merely regret its existence.

I must also acknowledge it’s become an even more important part of my daily routine,

Because I now have kids, I spend more time travelling the inside connection from the City Market to Market Square. We have lunch in the market, go swimming in the Aquatic Centre, and regularly visit the library and museum.

I also spend more time on my own there, because it’s where I’m most likely to meet people I don’t see very often now that I’m freelancing and home with the kids.

Just last week, for example, the kids were at the babysitter and I was home alone working on a story. I really needed to get out and see people I knew. I walked to the market for lunch and sat down by myself at Kim’s Korean Food in the City Market.

I wasn’t alone for long. Someone from my book club stopped to chat about our latest book, Vertical, by Rex Pickett. He stayed for about 10 minutes, and then another friend walked by. She sat down and we chatted for half an hour about our kids and a show she was planning to see at Sanctuary Theatre that night. Then we made plans to do something together with the kids, and talked about attending an upcoming arts event.

After lunch, I walked down to Starbucks in Brunswick Square to have a coffee and do some work. As I was sipping a coffee and sending some e-mails, a childhood friend passed by on his way back to work from lunch. We talked about his golf trip south with my cousin earlier this winter, and our shared need to keep our cholesterol levels low.

I wasn’t getting much work done, but my next visitor made me feel better on that score. A fellow writer, he had a tip on a column opportunity he thought might suit me. I spend time in the inside connection because it’s my best chance to see people I know.

This doesn’t mean people aren’t drawn to the King St. area outside the mall. The street-level commercial district is more vital than it was 10 years, despite the continued popularity of the inside connection. Our best restaurants, cafes and bars are located there in historic street-front locations. It’s just that, in the race to becoming the uptown’s true main street, the inside connection has the inside track.

As Canada’s Original City with a list of “firsts” we’re all proud of, we need to get back to being original, building original, and stop trying to build culture and buildings that replicate our past.

There is a combination of implied expectation, enforced heritage bylaws, and cultural hegemony that leads us to build red brick, late 1800s replicas in Saint John and it’s getting a little embarrassing.

What does a great, original building look like in 2013?

In the Trinity Royal business district there is an absolute treasure of well-built, original buildings that create entire streetscapes worth restoring, preserving, and celebrating. There are magnificent, high quality, buildings throughout our city that deserve the same. But to lock down an entire city into a heritage wonderland that celebrates a storied past at the expense of an exciting and youthful future depresses the heck out of me.

Is this a place that people want to live and work in or a place that people used to want to live and work in? We need to enable and encourage new building development that respects the dimensions and purpose of the neighbourhoods they reside in while aspiring to greatness and originality for the time we live in.

This will capture the creativity that we have in abundance here that is being held down by the cultural demands of a few and the bylaws they have influenced. It will also signal to people who might want to move into our city that there are more options for their investment than just restoring a heritage building and living the dream of someone else from two centuries ago.

Being Canada’s Original City needs to be something that we ARE, not something that we WERE. What is being planned and constructed in Saint John that our followers will be proud of in 100 years? Please tell me. I want to know.

Note re photo: Have you ever seen arched windows in Saint John before? The photo above is of the newly constructed second cruise terminal, slightly more original than the first one next door. I had a very hard time finding a pic of a recently constructed building in Saint John and I believe it is because very little is being built here that’s worth anyone pulling out their camera and posting it online. 98% of the pics of Saint John’s buildings online are of buildings built in the late 1800s when architecture, quality, and design mattered here. Saint John was original back then.