Growing up in Brampton in the 80s has left us all with unique set of memories. Most of us can remember when most of the city was farmer’s fields, and weekends were spent at the old Gateway theatre. Let’s take a walk down memory lane.
1. Family celebrations took place at the Swiss Chalet on Queen Street and you always hoped to be seated at the super cool booths with the removable wooden dividers
2. You took countless class trips to Old Britannia Schoolhouse and Mount Chinguacousy. But hit a certain age at which time you refused to call it “Mount” anything.
3. You can still feel (although you never admitted it) the disappointment that you never had a Discovery Zone birthday party because by the time it came to Brampton, you were way too old for that!
4. Bramalea City Centre was a grand total of one aisle with Eaton’s at one end and The Bay at the other. There was that awkward offshoot hallway, but you never needed to go there because Bank of Montreal and Food City weren’t at all interesting.
5. Biway and Bargain Harolds existed, but you fought tooth and nail with your parents to never cross the entrance of either store.
6. Your teenage Friday nights meant a trip to Jumbo video to get the latest flicks and countless bags of free popcorn.
7. That one weekend in June when Carabram took over was awesome. You owned those free buses all weekend and marvelled at the 3 hours lineups to get into Scotland, Canada and Ireland.
8. The excitement when Olive Garden moved to town. And the subsequent disappointment years later when it left again.
9. You remember when Mandarin was on Queen Street and while maybe you went there a few times, you probably went to Wong’s instead because it was cheaper.
10. The fact that Brampton goes north of Bovaird is still mind-boggling because there was nothing there when you grew up other than farmers fields.
11. You know the difference between Brampton and Bramalea.
12. You still feel a small twinge of nostalgia when you drive by the old Gateway theatres because you spent so many move nights with friends there after going to Taco Bell.