Toronto Film Shooters Meetup – Summer 2019 – Into the Peterpatch

I honestly don’t mind leaving at 6:30 in the morning, I had a two-hour drive in front of me and these days, especially on the weekend traffic, is an unknown variable. But I was Peterborough bound, having grabbed a coffee at the local Starbucks before getting on the highway. But this wasn’t going to be the average Toronto Film Shooters Meetup, we had guests this time around. I’ve been in talks with our cousin group in Kingston for a joint meetup. It would then just be a matter of finding an interesting spot in the middle of our two cities. Eventually, I settled on Peterborough being about 1.5 to 2 hours away. Plus it’s an added bonus as the TFS group has a number of people who attend our events from Peterborough and it was about time we took a trip out into their neck of the woods.

Thankfully I decided to completely avoid the city and skirted north along Highway 407, then 7 and 7a into Peterborough. A nice leisurely drive that allowed me plenty of time and I still managed to arrive at the meeting spot at 9 am. But hey when you run a photowalk it’s always best to arrive at the meeting spot early. The sun was already warming everything up so I settled down on the coffee shop patio and enjoyed the morning. The turn out proved far larger than I expected, which is good for a first event this far from the city and with what turned out to be three different groups, TFS, KFS, and the local camera club. Plus two others, my friend Julie who taught me film processing and darkroom printing, and Torsten whom I knew through various Social Media platforms. The group moved out along the river and across the CP rail bridge, the group moved slow, but with so many new faces and connections to make, it was bound to happen. Thankfully no one got lost.

After two hours we had barely made it half-way through the walk and gathered at the famous lift-locks on the Trent-Severn Waterway. The bonus was that we even got to see the locks in action during our stop. Having originally planned to have lunch at the Publican, taking the group temperature showed that we needed lunch soon, and not after a direct half-hour walk. So it was to the Ashburnham Ale House a shorter distance away. Thankfully they had a set of outdoor picnic tables which we all filled easily. The spot didn’t even blink an eye as we sat out in the beautiful sunlight all spread out enjoying good beer and good conversation. After lunch, we took to the downtown and I switched up from taking pictures of people to taking pictures of places. From the smell of cookies off the historic Quaker Oats plant into the lovely historic downtown.

By three I was ready to leave as was the rest of the group. Of course, everyone had started to filter away after lunch or various points of the hour walk back to where the cars were parked. I had planned to stop off at either Seven Mile Island or Port Perry on my way home to try out the new-to-me waist level finder for my m645 but by this point, such a move would only put me home later. And having not seen my wife yet save saying goodbye while she slept it, I decided it would just be best to head home. As a meetup, the joint effort proved well worth it as was the city of Peterborough. So I certainly expect a future event to take place up in the city with a different model. And maybe the TFS will invade Kingston at some point as well!

If you want to join the Toronto Film Shooters in a future event, join our Facebook Group or Flickr Group to get notices on future events! Also, you can check out all my images from the event over on Flickr!