Once Dammed

When you stand up on the outskirts, and stare into the remnants of an amusement park called Upper Clements, you’d be forgiven for thinking it’d been dead for decades. But the plug was pulled in only 2019, at the end of that summer season. Then came Covid after, which helps to make it seem a whole lot longer. Maybe that’s the divide indeed, the gulf between now and the time we call BC. What followed was a mismanaged mess so complex that you can read a dozen articles about it. I feel no need to mount a rewrite. Rides and structures were scattered over the sleepy run of Ryerson Brook — this hillside hollow once dammed to make a pond. Nothing lingers but the last rotting infrastructure, docks and boardwalks to nowhere. This was my first job back in 2003, scattered Saturdays running the Craft Co-op by the entrance. I turned sixteen that summer. Accidental preparation for my art gallery a decade later, long hours waiting for very few customers. Now this space waits endlessly for no one at all. Just like the railbed where I walk on by, wander on the way to nowhere.

March 22, 2026
Upper Clements, Nova Scotia

Year 19, Day 6706 of my daily journal.