Colonial Times and Cordage Long before C.J.O.N. (an acronym for Canada Jumped On Newfoundland?), Don Jamieson and Howie Meeker came to St. John's, the Rope Walk was in operation making ropes of all sorts, mostly from what I understand due to the fishing industry in Newfoundland. When I was five years old my parents moved to St. John's and bought a small house, a hundred feet or so from the Rope Walk's western property boundary, and I lived in that house until a month before my nineteenth birthday. My dad added to that house with each new addition to our family and as our neighbour once said to me, "Art has built so many wings on that house it's a wonder it doesn't take off and fly." The Rope Walk property was not enclosed by any fencing and so the young friends that I had made in my new neighborhood and I had ready access to the property where we played sand lot baseball, cowboys and Indians, hide and seek, and any number of other games that young boys used to play in that era during the two or three weeks of summer. Summers are always too short when you are still a kid. When the snow came in the winter we had the most fun, as we would find a spot where the snow had drifted almost to the top of the roof of the quarter-mile-long building where rope was spun, and then we would run along the roof and jump off into a large snow drift as a game to see who could jump the furthest. We would then climb back up on the roof and do it all over again and again, and sometimes continue to climb, run and jump until we heard our mothers calling us for supper. All the boys of course had a dog and sometimes two dogs, usually big mongrels, not little house pets, and the dogs would run and jump with us, and by the wagging of their tails I think the dogs enjoyed doing what we did more so than us guys. At the easterly end of the Rope Walk property, near Rope Walk Lane, was a bog or a swamp. I'm not sure what the correct name for it was, but in the summer it was full of water where we rafted, went swimming and sometimes just hung out as the kids say today. Again, winter was the best time as the water would freeze over, usually before Mundy Pond froze over, and we would take our shovels, brooms, homemade hockey sticks, Sears catalogs for shin pads and, of course, ice skates with us to the bog/swamp. We would then clear the snow from the ice, choose sides, the youngest kids always were the goalies, and then Gordie Howe, Rocket Richard and the rest of the NHL'ers would play for the Stanley Cup. I may get an argument from some of my friends from that long ago time, but I seem to remember that I was always on the winning team and I was always awarded the first star. The Rope Walk is long gone, as are some of my friends from a time that I remember with a fondness beyond description, but I remember it not as a different time, but as the Bucky Covington song "a different world." A world that was different than it is today but a world that will never change in my memories.   Submitted By: Randolph Toope