The Street - A Composite Sketch (18)

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 Eighteenth part of the anatomy of The Street.

They had moved from a four-bedroom two-story house in a comfortable family neighbourhood to this new one, close to where their daughter had bought her house. The nearby ravine was the clincher for them. Their new house was larger than their previous, wouldn't make much sense for most empty-nesters, but he was a devoted art collector and wanted more wall space. Their house was an inventory house, unsold although people loved to look at it. It was an open concept house, with galleries on the second floor overlooking the first. And a two-story foyer, living room and great room.

The house was one of two, built differently than all the other houses on the street, as an experiment in style, with architectural features seen in California. People were not ready for a second-story room open on one side, looking down over the foyer, or the galleries, the open feel of it all. He was, though, fully prepared to deal with all that wall space, to hang his art collection acquired over the past three decades. And Japanese wedding kimonos, and Japanese and Chinese wall screens. As an inventory house the builder wanted to move, they were offered a very good price.

Immediately they moved in, they had a welcome visit from their neighbour directly across the street, an African-Canadian who, with his wife and two children had moved earlier into the other house different than most, and which had been built several years later than most houses on the street. Eventually they met all of their neighbours living close by, and formed nicely casual relations of friendship with them. And almost from the first year of their move into the house, he began to transform it to represent the aesthetic he appreciated.

They were second-generation Jews, secular in nature. Although his parents had been quasi-religious, and his grandparents had been orthodox Jews, hers were not. They had met when they were in high school, both fourteen. By eighteen they were married. They bought their first house several years later, and five years after marriage they had their first child. The next two followed in year-and-a-half intervals. She was a stay-at-home mother, going out into their Toronto neighbourhood to volunteer at their children's school.

When he was offered a position that meant an entirely new direction for his career in the nation's capital they moved there. Where their children then went to a new school, and where the house they bought was in a leafy-green neighbourhood of interlocking parks, schools and libraries, a completely family-oriented area that was perfect for them. They learned to ski, snowshoe and skate. Putting on snowshoes at night they could move from their backyard out to the surrounding greenspace and trek for hours.

Then their children went to area high schools; the oldest boy and the middle-born girl becoming interested in music performance and attending an enriched art-environment school, while their younger boy remained interest in science. The older boy eventually attended University of Toronto, the younger one following him a few years later, while their daughter went to Algonquin College, her profession becoming that of an interior designer, to her older brother's eventual move to medieval history, and the younger to biology.

When the children left home to go their own way, the parents decided to do something a little different. The mother had worked for years once her children attended university, as the office manager for a charitable organization. The father moved to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and was sent abroad to Japan, where they lived for a short while, then moved to the U.S. for another few years on another posting, before returning home, and deciding to sell their house, and buy this one.

He was a classic do-it-yourselfer; he closed in the area between the breakfast room and the great room, extending five glass-panelled French doors between the rooms. He lined the open upstairs room over the foyer with West Coast pine, and built bookcases on the three remaining walls, to host their large collection of books, for they also loved books. He installed glass doors where there were none, closing off the 'open' look of the interior. He laid marble and ceramic floors everywhere. In the upstairs bathrooms even the walls were lined with marble.

He ripped out the kitchen counters and replaced them with those he designed himself, and then laid them with ceramic tiles, and did the same with the powder room and the laundry room. He finished the basement, with another powder room, a study and a very large room where he set up special lighting for his own oil-painting ambitions. And then there was the furnace room and his workshop that housed all of his tools. When neighbours needed help with a project they might consult him, and he was often quick to offer assistance.

It bothered him when the tools he loaned to neighbours weren't returned once their usefulness was completed, or when his tools were returned in not quite the shape they were originally handed over in, but that too was a learning experience, he gained knowledge about whom he could trust to return and carefully use his tools and who not. He was a trade specialist with the federal government, and travelled extensively. She worked as an administrative assistant in another government department. After work they would hike into the ravine before dinner.

Their son and his wife in Toronto would visit several times a year. And their unattached son in Vancouver would visit whenever he could, usually two times a year, occasionally more often, taking a side-trip when he had a conference or seminar to attend. Their daughter accompanied them on their daily ravine hikes, sometimes with her partner, and certainly with their newly-acquired dog, a German Shepherd/Malamute mix. Eventually a grandchild came along, a little girl.

When the wife turned 60 she retired, joining her husband in retirement, who had done likewise two years earlier. And then they looked after their grandchild during the working day until their daughter picked the child up, after work. They gave day care to the little girl until she turned nine, when their daughter left her partner, and eventually moved from the area, to take ownership of a 150-year-old log schoolhouse that had been updated over the years into a modern home.

In the interim, he excavated a large area in front of their house, and laid down brick pavers for an extended pair of open areas around which raised garden beds lined with stonework enhanced their property. He cut the stone and the brick by hand, using a stone mason's hammer and chisel, and the completed project was well done and beautiful beyond their expectations. She was an ardent gardener, and this enabled her to extend her gardens, the hardscape enhancing her efforts.

They travelled occasionally to British Columbia to spend time with their youngest son, a biologist with the provincial government. With him, they experienced alpine camping, a raw and beautiful landscape exciting them with the adventure of it all. He also took them canoeing in the Cariboo Mountain range on an eight-day round trip, and they spent time visiting the Fraser Valley, and the areas of old growth forests around Chilliwack that made them think they were in an amphitheatre, or a cathedral.

When their children were young they had used to take them on vacations to far tamer regions of the world, closer at hand in Canada and into the U.S., to spend a week or two every year mountain climbing. Far older now, their children long since independent, they remained faithful to their yearly mountain climbing expeditions, although the treks became increasingly physically difficult. They were loathe to give up this pastime, however, because they so highly valued their experiences in natural settings.

In their 70s they both remain in good health. Neither became overweight to any significant degree, and both are sensibly energetic and fully engaged with life. She does some volunteer work in the neighbourhood, mostly door-to-door canvassing for a variety of charities, like the CNIB, Salvation Army, Arthritis Society, Cancer Society, Multiple Sclerosis, that kind of thing. Her neighbours have been long accustomed to seeing her at various times of the year, seeking their donations for these causes.

Life, for them, continues to be an adventure in possibilities and potentials. They enjoy living in their house, on that street, value their neighbours and their neighbourhood.

c. 2009 Rita Rosenfeld