All of last year’s blooms have gone and died

In Oakville, there is a street called Lakeshore. I’m sure this is nothing unique; most every town I know has a similarly named street. Our Lakeshore stretches a long way, from downtown to godknowswhere; 50 miles per hour and some time to kill will get you anywhere.

The street’s name is a bit of a misnomer, however. Yes, it does run mostly parallel to the lake, but you wouldn’t know it just by driving along. Flanking the street on both sides are houses. Not just regular houses, but huge houses. Three-or-four story monstrosities, with wrought-iron gates and nine-mile driveways. Groomed gardens sit, lilacs and magnolias ready to bloom, and towering oak trees cast shadows over the new corvette out front. Everything stands impeccable, without flaw — cold, hard, imposing.

It’s become quite a thing to take a drive down Lakeshore, especially when it’s Christmas and all the houses are set ablaze with professionally done Christmas lights. The middle class can cruise down the streets, and point at the houses, and the continuing construction, and marvel, or wonder.

And all the while, they’ll never see the lake.

You can’t really see the lake. Only the houses that stand in front of it. All down the street, there are fences, and gates, and towering messes of brick, steel and wood, obscuring the water behind. Sure, you can see the water if you drive a little further, go down by the beach at Coronation Park, but why on Lakeshore — a street with such a straightforward name — can you really only see mansions?

Yesterday, Imagine Media shut down their Daily Radar website. Leaving any feelings as to the quality, or lack thereof, of DR aside, it was one of the ‘biggies’ in the videogame website world. Alongside IGN, DR was one of the big ‘corporate sites’ — their writers were paid. A year ago, the thought that a big site like Daily Radar could die, while fan sites like Sharpgaming and the like live on, would have been a laughable thought. The corporate sites were thought to be invincible. Masses of profit gleamed through their pretty ad banners.

But now, dead, or dying. IGN, DR, GamerWeb all following the same path as the Internet implodes around us. Money? Pfft! There is no more money on the Internet. Where there was once a plentiful spring of continuous profit, there is now only a dry riverbed, and us proverbial Israelites, wondering what the hell is going to happen next.

And so we drive down Lakeshore. And watch as the big houses, the manicured landscapes and the fancy cars all fade into scattered leaves. Everything begins to change, slowly and steadily. It’s rainy and sunny at the same time, as the days go by. We bemoan and we bitch as last-ditch efforts to save the ship are attempted, but everyone knows the inevitable. Everybody knows what’s happening.

And so all of us — the writers, the fans, the webmasters, the artists — everyone, we sit at the intersection, hand on the turn signal. And we all have to ask ourselves the question: did we come here for the big houses and the fancy cars, or did we come here to see the Lake?