The Street - A Composite Sketch (10)

Not a very long street, just off a major arterial, it is shaped like a question mark. At the conclusion of the bulge it meanders into another street. One half of the street backs onto a heavily wooded ravine, a neighbourhood treasure, though few of the street's residents quite recognize its value, nor make use of its propinquity. It cleanses the air everyone breathes, it hosts birds and wildlife and presents a treasury of wildflowers throughout the seasons. At one time the street, part of a larger suburban community, shared a small-town address. It has long since been subsumed into the greater national capital of the country, through a wide-ranging amalgamation of communities and even farms. The street and the houses on it were built two and a half decades ago. The domiciles are comprised mostly of single-family, detached dwellings, with a handful of semis verging on the main thoroughfare. Many of the residents are the original home purchasers. They would comprise roughly 50% of the residents of the street. The semis appear to have changed hands far more often than the detached homes. And those homes that have been re-sold have often enjoyed a succession of owners. The original home owners who moved into their houses when their children were small have mostly bid farewell to now-grown children. The street represents an amalgam of family types, and there is a significant percentage at this time, of retired people, singly and in couples who, though their houses are meant for family occupation, still opt to remain in their too-large, but comfortable and familiar and valued homes. It is a very quiet street, with little traffic other than those who live there. The house fronts are diverse, and attractive. Most residents take care of their homes, seeing them as their primary investments. Furnaces have been replaced, and air conditioners, and also windows. Kitchens and bathrooms have been remodelled, and people have added decks and occasionally airy 'summer houses' to the backs of their homes. One-third of the homes boast swimming pools, in-ground and above-ground. Most people take pride in their properties, and feel they must achieve lawns that are weedless and smoothly green. Some painstakingly remove weeds by hand in the spring, others hire lawn-care companies to spread chemicals on their lawns. Invariably, the people who look after their own gardens and lawns have superior gardens and lawns. Each house has a large tree planted in front; maples, ash,crabapples, spruce or pine, fully mature. This is a community that is truly mixed, representing people from around the world, come to Canada as immigrants, settled and making the most of opportunities open to all its citizens in a free and open society noted for its pluralism and dedication to fair representation. There are the extroverts and the introverts, those who prefer not to mingle, others who do. They are herewith loosely sketched:

This is the tenth part of the anatomy of The Street.

And then there was the young couple who had bought their house while the street was yet raw and unfinished, houses still being completed. They had no children, and would have no children, whether by design or through nature's design no one knew. They were both tall, both singularly attractive people. She of Scandinavian heritage away back in the mists of emigration, and he of eastern Europe pedigree, both third-generation Canadian. She was tall and willowy, with long blond hair and an easy, brilliant smile. His smile was slower to emerge but just as winning.

He was an RCMP officer with a long career with the federal police. He had been assigned to the specialized detachment that was responsible for the safety and security of the prime minister. And he was bored to death of it. Of patrolling 24 Sussex Drive to ensure that all was well, day and night. Of travelling aboard the prime ministerial jet wherever the prime minister was wont to travel on international relations business representing the country. It was a drag, he averred, incredibly dull, no challenges whatever and he chafed at it.

She was a teacher at a high school, teaching mathematics, and good at her job for she had an affinity for it and was, evidently, more than a little popular with her students who regarded her efficacy as a teacher highly. They, like the neighbours on the street, valued her sunny personality. They were so genuinely unaffected and friendly and part of the daily life of the street, that they represented the hands-down most favourite couple on the street. Everyone knew them, everyone stopped to chat with them.

He had dreadful allergies and his wife had taken to keeping their upstairs windows open, even during miserable winter days, in an attempt to alleviate the symptoms he suffered from congenitally. Everyone was surprised and slightly upset when they decided to move, put their house up for sale, because he finally received the assignment transfer he had been hoping for. They were missed. And then another young couple moved into the house, far more private than the original owners had been, but moderately friendly.

They often had people over, friends and family whom they entertained. First year in the house he bought a large motorcycle and he could be seen, fully leathered, driving it on the week-ends. She often accompanied him, wherever it was he went. In the second year of their ownership of the house she became extremely ill. A vehicle was often seen in the driveway, delivering air canisters for her to be hooked up with a breathing apparatus. She was no longer ambulatory, and they had a live-in caregiver to look to her care while he was at work.

Before the third year of their life together as a happy couple in that house was out, she died. Everyone on the street felt the gloom of the occasion, and expressed their sympathy at life's unexpected turns. The live-in caregiver, a dark-haired lovely young woman, no longer came around, as there was no longer any need for her services. And then, after a few months had passed she suddenly appeared again. This time, it would appear, seeking to replenish the zest in life that had disappeared when the man's wife died. It was evident they had fallen in love. He had no wish to remain in the house that had such bitter memories.

The third family moved into the house, another young couple. Another mixed-heritage marriage. The young man Egyptian, the young woman French-Canadian. He was as sweet-tempered as she, each seeming to outdo the other in openly greeting their new neighbours as though they were old friends. He dark complexioned and she fair. Both well spoken and both, on the evidence, with very well-compensated federal jobs as professionals. Soon their family expanded. They acquired a beagle pup, the friendliest, sweetest-tempered dog on the street.

In another few years she excitedly told anyone who would listen, that they were expecting a baby. She hadn't even informed her family yet; the neighbours were the first to know, and they were happy for her. It was a little boy, a little boy who resembled his father, the same facial features, a shy little boy whom both parents simply doted on. The mother stayed home with the child through its first year, then returned to work and her mother looked after the child. And then, when the little boy was almost two, another was on the way.

The beagle, big for its breed, and temperamentally docile, became the little boy's companion. As much attention continued to be lavished on the dog as had been done before the advent of a growing family became a reality. They are now awaiting the fall birth of a little girl, its gender revealed to them through the auspices of modern technology. They have successfully replicated themselves. The street lives on.