The Street - A Composite Sketch (31)

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 Thirty-first part of the anatomy of The Street.

They had married late and consequently were a little older than most young couples purchasing their first house. Both born in Quebec, francophones as proud as any of their heritage, but inclined to disengage from the rigidity of the French experience, unlike so many others of their contemporaries. They were both employed by government. She held a good junior officer position with Statistics Canada, and he was in charge of the fabled Snowbirds, the crack flying team; trained as an engineer and moving quickly up the ranks in the Air Force.

They had been unable to conceive, and this was a source of unhappiness to them. They both wanted a family. They had a proxy-child in a dog they adopted, and thinking as a puppy it was a male, they had to change its name soon afterward when it became abundantly clear it was a female dog. They had it neutered in any event, as responsible pet-owners, uninterested in having to cope with a bitch that went into heat and attracted all the neighbourhood male dogs. On it they spent their attention and care.

It was an animal with a very good and reliable personality, would listen to whatever it was told to do. When the dog was eight years old, and as a larger breed (an overweight black retriever) beginning to slow down (to their dismay), they discovered that they would have a child, after all (to their great joy). And with the birth of their little boy they also discovered that biddable dogs are nothing like stubborn, assertive little boys. From the time the little boy could crawl about he pestered that poor, long-suffering dog.

When the child's mother saw how physical her son was with their beloved dog she realized she had her work cut out for her, distracting the boy, because he would simply not obey when he was asked, begged, then finally emphatically ordered to stop making the beast miserable. This was a difficult child to raise, all the more so when the parents were in their 40s, not as flexible as younger parents. But they loved their child deeply and valued the gift that life had given them.

People enjoyed seeing them out on the street. He was a very fit man, and often bicycled around the neighbourhood. He would take their dog out to the park at the bottom of the street and give it a good work-out throwing balls for retrieval. Later, when their son grew out of infancy, his mother returned to work, and he was looked after by a care-giver. And the father began to throw balls in the park for his son, to the elderly dog's great relief.

And then, the family had the opportunity to return to British Columbia, where they had been stationed for years before moving to Ottawa, where they bought their house on the-then new street. They deliberated, and decided that although they would miss the neighbourhood and their good friends, they really wanted to go back out west. They actually bought their new house in Comox through the Internet. He did travel there before they committed, and satisfied himself that the house was as it was presented on line.

The first few years they sent emails back and forth to some of their neighbours. And on several occasions they came back to visit with family, and in doing so dropped in on their old neighbours, surprised and gratified to see them. His new position, effectively commanding the base in Comox, kept him busier than his wife would have liked. She found herself isolated, unhappy and missing everything she had left behind. But she eventually adjusted, tried to become a little more gregarious; difficult with her retiring personality.

It was a family from Russia who bought their house. A fairly young couple, newly emigrated to Canada. They had a young child, a daughter, with the wife expecting another baby. They were made welcome to the street and the neighbourhood. Others whose children had outgrown their toys, offered them to the grateful newcomers. Before long the couple had sponsored her parents to come over as landed immigrants. Neither of whom understood English. When people spoke to them, they would gesture in response.

The grandfather was particularly friendly, and even without language, he was able to communicate his pleasure at being there, taking his granddaughter to the nearby parks, seeing other older people with their grandchildren there. His wife was far less communicative, with or without language, shrinking from verbal contact with others. Oddly enough, the grandfather decided to return to Russia, and the grandmother remained behind, to look after the new-born baby, another girl. And she simply stayed.

The family acquired a female Doberman-Pinscher, which accompanied the grandmother everywhere. As the girls grew older their grandmother would take them to the ravine, and teach them, when mushrooms were growing, which were safe to pick. The dog would be with them, always leashed, always muzzled, giving others with pets the impression that the animal was dangerous, so they kept their distance. Eventually the grandmother relaxed, began to smile and although making no effort to learn the language, did communicate.

The two little girls grew into older little girls, pretty children, with very nice manners, entirely Canadian, attending a nearby primary school, and playing with the other young children on the street. The parents, both professionals, had good employment. Unlike their children they remained socially remote with their neighbours.

c. 2009 Rita Rosenfeld