OK, so maybe it isn't really a birthday celebration. However today would have been my father's 68th birthday if he were still alive, and so we went out to his favourite restaurant for dinner. And normally it wouldn't be worth mentioning, but I was inspired by thinking of the history of this place.

The restaurant is Brady's fish-and-chip shop, and it has been in the neighbourhood for at least sixty years. My father recalled attending elementary school as a child and walking down to the shop each Tuesday with a dime for fish and a nickel for chips. When his parent's died, he got fish-and-chips for a quick dinner. When they were dating and then married, my parents made weekly trips to this shop. My great-grandmother would ask any visitors she had to go and get her fish-and-chips from Brady's.
When my father had a stroke and was recovering, we motivated him to walk in the neighbourhood by offering to buy him Brady's fish-and-chips if he could make it there. And so every Thursday for several years, no matter what the weather was, he would walk to the shop and sit there having lunch. It was his favourite part of retirement.
On March 31, 2007 I picked up fish-and-chips for dinner and when I came home my father had become sick again and had to be hospitalized. He never came home again.

And so that is why I look at Brady's and think about how it was an important part of my father's life from his childhood lunches to his final days in retirement. It is fitting that we celebrated his birthday there...


PS: I wrote this on Saturday, but the blog software gives it Sunday's date for some reason...