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Spent a lovely late afternoon wandering around Cobourg yesterday, with Katherine Ashenburg's excellent Going To Town tucked under my arm, camera in hand, reading/walking/looking/snapping photos (awkward but do-able). Ashenburg writes an especially useful preface to each walking tour of the 10 historic Ontario towns featured in the book. She describes "two Cobourgs" , one "a Tory town with great expectations and repeated frustrations" and the other, a summer retreat for wealthy nineteenth century American industrialists - a fascinating invitation into research on the social history of the town. We strolled the short boardwalk through a preserved beach ecosystem beside a placid Lake Ontario, prior to a dash around town to catch the fading afternoon sun on some of the buildings constructed when Cobourg's star was rising in the early and mid c19. Victoria Hall, designed in a style as grandiose as the aspirations for national importance held by the city fathers, was opened by the Prince of Wales in 1860. Shortly afterwards, the death-knell sounded - the Cobourg Peterborough Railway dream (and its bridge) collapsed and the town fell into decline. For another visit - Cobourg rises from the ashes as "Newport North."