This month, My Neighbourhood goes west to Vancouver Island, the city of Victoria, and more specifically, the neighbourhood of North Jubilee, where we got a tour of where Aidan Knight has lived the entire 26 years of his life.

On a rainy Victoria day, a few days before the release of his adored new album Small Reveal, Aidan blew our mind when he told us “Adanac” is just “Canada” spelled backwards, proved that rollerblading isn’t only nerdy, it’s dangerous, and had us reminiscing about penny candy and the scary house on everyone’s block.

The Place: Turner’s Confectionery & Ian’s Coffee Stop, Birch Street and Richmond Road

The Story: “Turner’s is one of those places where bands would take a grungy photo or where a high school photography student might cement their whole portfolio. To me, it’s a sad statement about development in Victoria and one man’s paranoia towards anyone who might change this building. Ian was my parents’ first customer at their restaurant in the early ‘90s, and I remember vaguely liking the donuts at the coffee shop around the corner. It looks the same in there. Wonder if there might still be donuts inside.

The Place: Emerson Street

The Story: “This is the house I grew up in. My friend John lived behind us, and I played street hockey with him just about every day. When you’re a socially awkward little boy, you become a collector of hockey cards that no one likes. I liked Doug Weight and Pat Verbeek, dabbled in Tony Granato but had a real soft spot for anyone Finnish. I also broke my tibia rollerblading here. Embarrassing times.”

The Place: Emerson Street, Rollerblading Incident

The Story: “Imagine the softest, easiest hill. Now imagine me shorter and with a higher-pitched voice, rollerblading up this hill. Now imagine a tibia cracking in half (that’s the big bone in your leg). There was this BC Tel technician who kept telling me that I was fine, that I didn’t break my leg. This Egyptian guy who cut my hair in his garage sometimes came running over with my dad, the nurse. Don Knight took one look at my leg and just said ‘Oh. Definitely broken.’ in my comedic mind, to this day, BC Tel started whistling and nervously touching all the cables up in his bucket crane.”

The Place: Haultain Street, outside Julia Wakal’s (Aidan’s girlfriend and bandmate) old house.

The Story: “This is Julia’s old house. I was telling a story about how we met but then Blake found us and plugged his band Snoqualmie. Love that guy.”

The Place: Haultain Street and Richmond Road

The Story: “Every neighborhood needs a scary house. I just happened to grow up near one of the all time greatest looking ones. If I was still 9 years old, there’s no way you could convince me this place doesn’t have witches inside. Unfortunately, when you become an adult you meet the guy who runs his landscaping business out of it and you stop putting flaming paper bags on the front porch.”

The Place: 2628 Richmond, former corner store, now “Island Sleep Health Services”

The Story: “This was the last corner store in Victoria to still sell penny candy. True one-cent candies. They also had baseball cards and a legendary dirty magazine wall. Essentially my life was like The Sandlot.”

The Place: Carrick Street

The Story: “This is where I spent ages 12-19. I wrote nearly every song from [first album] Versicolour here, rebelled against my parents as a black-haired teen (skateboards), watched The Wire with my dad, and learned how to use the internet.”

The Place: Somewhere off Richmond Road

The Story: Climbing down a steep, slippery embankment to get to this creek…

The Place: Creek between Carrick St and Kings Road off Richmond Road

The Story: “Just like a spooky house, I think every neighborhood benefits from a watering hole. A creek. It’s where young kids can swing on rope swings and other kids can throw rocks and try to splash them ‘so bad.’ Also, this is where Richard and Carl tried to get me to smoke a cigarette in grade three. But Richard’s dad rolled his own tobacco, so Richard ended up taping one up with scotch tape. I took off and ended up finding a kayak in the rushes, and we grabbed a couple flashlights from my garage and went into the sewer system with it. Ah, to be young.”

This article originally appeared in the December 2012/January 2013 issue of AUX Magazine. Download and subscribe for free in the App Store.