Your old mall photos are a real Peterborough trip
Okay, so I was scrolling through the local currents this morning, and what pops up? A whole set of pictures from inside Portage Place, circa 2018. Now, for anyone who's been here a while, that name probably conjures up a specific kind of nostalgia. Portage Place wasn't some huge mega-mall like you'd find down in the GTA. It was a smaller, quieter spot up on the north end, near where Parkhill meets Water Street – a place you probably only went if you had a very specific errand or were just cutting through. It's been effectively gone for over a decade, but these photos really brought it all rushing back.
Here's the thing about Peterborough: we hold onto these places, even when they're gone. The building is still there, of course, repurposed for other things, but the *idea* of Portage Place as a shopping centre? That's what these photos captured. It wasn't fancy, but it was *ours*. You'd see kids from Crestwood coming through after school, folks from the surrounding neighbourhoods running errands. It was a low-key gathering spot, a quiet eddy in the flow of the city. Seeing those old storefronts, the faded decor – it reminds you of how much a city changes, even when it feels like it's staying the same.
### What This Means for Peterborough
* **A Nod to the Past:** These aren't just photos; they're a digital time capsule. They remind us of the Peterborough that was, and the specific places that shaped our daily lives, even in small ways. * **Community Memory:** It sparked a whole conversation online about people's memories of the place, the stores they remembered, the times they spent there. It’s a collective dip into the city’s shared history. * **The Flow of Change:** It highlights how commercial spaces evolve here. What was once a mall is now something else entirely, a constant reinvention that's part of the Electric City's pulse.
These kinds of posts, these little glimpses into our past, they're important. They help us understand where we’ve been, so we can better appreciate where we're going, much like watching the river flow under the Hunter Street Bridge.
This is the Electric City — small town, big current. Let's go.
For more of these kinds of deep dives, you've gotta check out our morning crew at mornings.live.