The Street - A Composite Sketch (23)

 

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 Twenty-third part of the anatomy of The Street.

One supposes it doesn't say much for the neighbourly effect the original owners of the house had on those who lived on the street. Taking little notice of their neighbours, their neighbours returned the compliment, taking scant notice of them. Their comings-and-goings were uninteresting, mere glimpses caught of the pair as they went about their business, definitely excluding the interest of onlookers, stiffly keeping their privacy intact from public view.

Although there is much to be said for friendly relations between neighbours, everyone has the right to comport themselves as they wish, and if their wish is to erect a barrier between themselves and others who live close by, then that is their choice, to be respected. If not respected, then at the very least noted. After all, people have a right to their privacy, and there are far too many instances of neighbours behaving badly toward one another; disinterest is no vice, merely indicative of a wish to avoid social contact.

When they did move out of their house after a relatively short stay of five years, it was rumoured that the house had been a temporary investment, that they made money from the sale, planning to move 'up' from what the neighbourhood and the houses on it represented. Taking their place was a young family, husband in the trades, a house painter with no lack of contracts on construction sites, and his wife a hairdresser. With two very young children, a boy and a younger girl.

Immediately on moving into this relatively new house, the two set about making changes of note. The double garage, for one thing, was drywalled, a ceramic floor laid in it, cupboards built along the walls, and a number of pedestal sinks installed. Clearly, the hairdresser meant to pursue her craft at her home, on the street. But it never happened; they must have discovered that it was illegal and weren't able to get the appropriate business license.

One might have thought they'd have checked first, done their due diligence, but she said that they hadn't encountered municipal opposition in their previous home, not all that far from this street. Perhaps some neighbour on this street intervened, contacted authorities to prevent anyone from undertaking commercial business on a residential street. It took a while before the garage was used in a conventional manner, to park their cars.

His being in the building trades meant that he could call in his peers in the industry and have things done in the house at a substantial cost-reduction. He had the driveway replaced with a truly durable, concrete one, the envy of the street. That it was also heated might be viewed as a bonus during Ottawa winters. They put in an above-ground pool and had a very large poolhouse, garden-shed combination built for them. They changed the flooring in their new house, and had the master bathroom re-built, the kitchen cupboards changed and granite countertops installed.

People on the street were agape at the constant stream of construction crews coming in to complete one job after another. And wondered where a house painter would get the funding to do all these things to a newly-acquired house that he also replaced the roof on, because he didn't care for its colour. And they also had their front lawn nicely landscaped, inclusive of a bricked frontyard patio.

Their two children were slightly older than the two that lived directly beside them, but they got on quite well together. Also with the brood of little girls living directly across from them.
The little girl also became friendly with the small girl whose grandparents across the street, several houses removed, looked after her during the day. The street became more lively with their rambunctious play.

The parents were quiet people, despite their flamboyant streak demonstrated by their frenzied home renovations. They adopted a lovable, tiny dog which, in high spirits, would run about the near neighbourhood to the distress of others hoping it would never be run over. And it wasn't. The tiny dog was a whirling dervish of unrestrained energy, with a wild ambition to be an acrobat of note. Its antics were noted and greatly amused the neighbours.

The children were both unfailingly polite. The little girl much like her mother, slight, and pretty with light brown hair and a wide, quick smile. The boy, older, did manage from time to time to get into some trouble, particularly when he decided to hang around with a boy several years older than he, living across the street, with a sole parent, a father busily attempting to raise two boys and two girls on his own.

They live there still, quietly, the children growing older, preparing to move now beyond their teen years into a broader maturity. Their mother still looks fresh and young and pretty, their father still has his brusque manner intact. They never have made much of a social impact on the street, despite their initial and ongoing busyness in enhancing their property. It was rumoured in the neighbourhood that they have been quietly attempting to sell their house.

No signage has ever gone up to alert the neighbourhood that the house would be sold again. It seems that real estate agents have informed that it would be quite difficult for them to recoup their investment in the house substantially beyond what they had originally paid, to compensate for all the improvements and updates they committed to, in the space of the years. So it seems they have decided to stay.

For the time being, in any event. Their presence has been good for the street, despite their never quite having seemed sufficiently relaxed in their presence there. But nor has their presence ever been anything but quietly companionable to their neighbours, however socially distanced.

 

The Street - A Composite Sketch (22)

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 Twenty-second part of the anatomy of The Street.

They were Franco-Ontarians, both. He much older than she, a first marriage for him, second for her. She brought two young boys to their marriage. Actually, they lived common-law, but theirs was a strong family unit regardless. She was very pretty, slight of frame, and was a dental technician. When they moved into their lovely new home her children were six and eight years of age, both boys. She thought raising them on this quiet street with other young families would be good for all of them.

He was a dapper man, well built, and extremely well aged, given his advance in years over her. They were well matched in temperament, both openly friendly and gregarious in nature. They presented as an elegant pair, always ostentatiously well dressed. And he always presented as a gallant, vividly aware of women, and addressing himself to them as one fascinated by femininity. Women responded to him, and that certainly was not lost on his wife, who well knew his penchant, but trusted to the fact that she was pretty and young.

It didn't take long for neighbours to understand that he had the credentials of a wandering eye inhabiting the mentality of an unquenchable thirst to drink deep of female attributes.
But he was irresistible, no one could deny his neighbourliness, his social tractability, his eagerness to talk companionably. His enthusiasm was boundless, for company, male as well as female, for discussions about matters in the news, and matters that would never find their place in any newspaper.

When he had bought the house originally - for it was he and he alone who had bought the house - he had an in-ground pool installed, and a most substantial pool house. The pool house was like nothing most people in the street had seen before, with separate change rooms, and its own bathroom. He also had a stand-alone utility shed. Their backyard was one of the two largest on the street; another pie-shaped lot, opposite the ravine side.

So large he actually divided it along its length; one-half containing the large kidney-shaped pool, the other, play structures for the children. And in that half-portion also was contained a large, carefully tended and productive vegetable garden, of which he always commented wryly that the local wildlife benefited more from than did their table. He was the only pool-owner on the street, in fact, who invited his neighbours to come around, and use his pool.

He worked for the Department of National Defence as a civil engineer and was well remunerated. He also travelled widely from time to time with the department, as required. Because he had married so late in life he had acquired a healthy nest egg, and invested in properties; one at the ski resort at Mont Ste.Marie, and a few condominiums across the Ottawa River, in Quebec. He was very particular about his property. And in the winter they took possession of their property at the ski resort, and skied as often as time permitted.

He had his double driveway installed with fancy brick pavers. He'd had vinyl-covered windows installed in the house so he need never bother about painting wood. He had his basement professionally finished, and ceramic tile and wood flooring installed on the first and second floors of the house. And as the boys grew older they indulged in some travel with them. And as the boys grew a little older, the older one presented as a bit of a problem.

Hanging out with bad influences he once, while his mother and step-father were out for the evening, broke into the master bedroom, destroying the wide double door leading from the hallway to the bedroom in the process, kicking it in, to get at a coin collection. In his step-father's absence, the bedroom door was always locked, and that infuriated his older step-son. Although they knew, from the evidence and a confession, who was responsible, the boy was forgiven.

Still, for a year afterward, he went to live with his real father, along with his younger brother. That didn't quite work out, and the boys returned to live with their mother and step-father. The boys acquired cars of their own, and the driveway and double garage were crowded with vehicles. Which increased when girlfriends came on the scene, particularly when, on occasion, they were invited to move in.

All of this activity came to a sudden halt. The woman of the house experienced some medical problems; two, not one but two detached retinas. After surgery her partner was most solicitous of her, and proposed that they marry. And they did just that, finally legalizing their long-term partnership. Things proceeded very well between them. She decided to continue working when he retired. They took up golf together, and line dancing.

And they travelled to exotic locales; Greece and Portugal, Hawaii repeatedly, Mexico, and Peru. He loved to travel, and she enjoyed it as well. And they entertained a lot at home, inviting friends and former co-workers over in the summer months. It was during one of those pool parties that their neighbour who lived directly across the street spotted, from her second-floor window, his fumbling in the garage with a blond woman definitely not his wife.

Their marriage dissolved. By then the boys had moved on. Her furniture and belongings were moved out of the house, into another one he settled on her in a division of property which necessitated that he sell off two of the condominiums he owned. The blond woman with whom he had been making out moved in, along with her some of her furniture and belongings. That lasted several months, before her furniture and belongings were moved out.

And then he was lonely. He was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, and it affected his eyes, his eyelids drooping uncontrollably, requiring a series of operations. He was lonely, and confided to one of his neighbours that he couldn't stand the idea of having a woman in his household who was overweight and sloppy, and he just wasn't able to find anyone who matched his needs. His wife, whom he begged to return, adamantly refused.

He continued going on long sight-seeing tours in different places around the world: Egypt, Norway, the Philippines. All fascinating places, that he would describe with enthusiasm to his neighbours. But then, he would come home to an empty house and he felt desolate. Then he adopted a small cat from the Humane Society and his life turned around. The cat took the place of a companion for him.

He arranged a towel neatly at the foot of his bed and she slept up there. He permitted her outside only in the backyard where she was fenced in, and he worried lest neighbours' cats enter the backyard and molest her, for she had no claws. He fed her the best cat food, took her to the veterinarian to ensure she was in good health. And began staying home more, unwilling to leave her unattended.

He decided to forego his usual trips because he worried about her welfare in his absence. He no longer went out during the day to swim in the winter months at the local community centre, decided to install a hot tub on his commodious deck. Then he worried the cat might have an accident, and kept it covered. When summer came he neglected his swimming pool, fearful she might fall in. He adored that little cat.

And he felt happy, finally. But his tourism days weren't quite over. He would be taking the little cat to his sister in Montreal, who knew and loved cats, for the few weeks he had planned to travel to Beijing and Hong Kong and Tokyo. Life was once again worth living.

 

 

The Street - A Composite Sketch (21)

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 Twenty-first part of the anatomy of The Street.

They were quiet, and modest. They moved into their new home once half of the houses were occupied on the new street. Still, they had bought a lovely lot, nice and deep, unlike those on the opposite side of the street, and they backed onto the ravine, as well. He was one of the first men on the street to put down brick pavers in a walkway from his driveway to his front door. They planted two exotic magnolia trees, one in the front garden and one in the back, and the trees, although they weren't meant for that climate, thrived, every spring bursting with huge, beautiful blooms.

They represented another mix of Ontarians of long standing; he an anglophone, she francophone. They actually resembled one another physically, middling-height and spare, lean faces, breaking out easily into genuine smiles of friendship. She used to take public transit to her contract work with the federal government, making instant friends with others whose normative work transit that reflected. He, for the most part, seemed to work from home. His job was to mediate stalemates in worker grievances, a labour negotiator, and he was good at it.

They had two children, semi-adults, attending universities. It wasn't long before both children graduated and moved on to lives of their own. Their children were as industrious, capable and good-natured as they themselves were, and they had no fears that they would not find their place in a contented and satisfying future for themselves. Both the young man and the young woman moved out of town to take up their life trajectories, visiting their parents occasionally.

And when the wife decided to found her own contracting-out company she did very well with her insider connections with the federal government contracting arm. So well that she employed others to do what she had done, and was able to live handsomely on her share of their contracted work. Impressing her husband so much that he decided to throw in his lot with her, and become one of her employees. Because there was no need for them to be physically at government offices themselves, thanks to teleworking, they decided to move.

To a generous lot of several acres with a lovely heritage stone house close to Kingston, Ontario. Everyone hated to see them go. They were such pleasant people to be around. But go they did, and their house sold quickly. The new inhabitants of the house presented as an interesting combination to their new neighbours. He had adult children elsewhere from an earlier marriage. She was half his age, Cuban, a classical dancer, she told everyone proudly. They had two children, a lovely little girl and a tiny boy.

They inhabited their new house boisterously, the mother and children. Nothing boisterous about him; he was, in fact, fairly truculent, sour, but quite clearly proud of his beautiful young wife, and enamoured no less of their adorable children. Clearly this was paradise for her, having been taken out of a socialist country suffering under a long trade embargo. They met on one of his postings with the Department of Foreign Affairs. She thought he was a wealthy catch. He thought she was a new lease on life.

People attached to the Cuban Embassy began presenting themselves at the house at her invitation, and although he wasn't entirely comfortable with them, he acceded to their presence; particularly the cultural attache to whom his wife appeared to have attached herself, as a like spirit. Her mother and father were given visitors' visas and several times travelled to stay with them for a few months at a time, helping with the children, and the gardening around the house.

And he continued to travel with his department, but no longer on extended postings, just weeks at a time. In his absence a small red car with red diplomatic license plates began showing up. Staying overnight, and for week-ends. When neighbours saw her she was always delightfully flamboyant, cheerful and exuberant about life, her life in particular. Her accented enthusiasms were charming. Her children were quite precocious and talented too, she assured her neighbours.

Alas, Paradise turned to Hell, and once he realized the extent to which he had been cuckolded, he invited her to join her lover at the Cuban Embassy or wherever it was he had his diplomatic digs. Eventually they worked things through and although at first, care of the children was a shared commitment, it came to pass that they lived permanently with their father. Despite the schism between the parents, he had been given a new lease on life. It was as though he had shed years. He re-discovered the unadulterated pleasure of parenting, but as a single, responsible parent.

He bought bicycles for the three of them, himself and the children. During the day when they attended school, he attended to housekeeping and cooking, having by then determined the best course of action would be retirement. He was old enough and had acquired more than enough in the combination of age and working years for a handsome pension.

Neighbours see them now riding their bicycles to local parks, exchanging spirited observations and conversations, happily engaged with life and each other. Thriving.

 

The Street - A Composite Sketch (20)

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 Twentieth part of the anatomy of The Street.

The couple that bought the house on the curve of the street bought themselves a huge pie-shaped lot. Their backyard was easily twice the size of the others on the street, but for their neighbour to the left of them, also on the curve, also with a double-sized lot. Funny thing about people who have a lot, they always crave more, no matter what that 'more' consists of.

For this couple, with the huge lot, more meant that when fences were going up they insisted that every inch of property remain uncontested as to ownership. What they claimed to be theirs was to be respected. So that when the people with the backyard to their right with its modest dimensions were claiming what they felt certain was theirs, the amply-dimensioned owners clamped onto ownership. The others shrugged assent, content with what they had. Human nature, it seems.

This was a second marriage for her, first for him, both middle-aged. Her son lived with them, a very nice young boy, in high school, whose competitive swimming and diving prowess his mother was inordinately proud of, and encouraged. She was herself a math high-school teacher, her husband general manager of the city's famed National Arts Centre.

She reminded her neighbour of that old actress Mercedes McCambridge, without the charm. She had a rather grim sense of self in the world. Not much to discuss with her, other than her son's talents, and their commitment to encouraging it. Her husband had a tight smile, rarely revealed. He was most certainly what most people might claim to be mildly misogynistic. He would never discuss with a woman anything of substance, but would ignore her presence, and insist on speaking instead to her husband.

Casual greetings were all right, but verbal commitments of conversation relating to anything of value were not to be wasted on women. Marriages can be odd relationships; onlookers often wonder how it is that two people seemingly so unsuited to one another decide to forge marital bonds. Their interior discussions taking place in the confinement of their home often wafted exteriorally at high decibels.

They did not stay long in their house and it was sold to another young couple, francophone-Ontarians both, and both from the area. With a little girl and an even younger boy. He had a supple physique and hers was, to be kind, substantial. They both worked for the same employer, a government intelligence security unit.

As soon as they moved into the house they began to effect physical changes in its interior, having a ceramic tile floor laid in the kitchen and a granite counter placed on the kitchen's centre island, the carpeting torn out and oak strip flooring installed. Her word, wish and whim was his command. Not that he did the physical labour, but he saw to it that they contracted with French-speaking labourers whom she could command to do her bidding.

In fact, she commanded him also, constantly. And her husband responded with alacrity. They doted on their children, both unaffectedly sweet-tempered and sociable. The girl and the boy did not spend much time with the children on the street, preferring the company of their school friends. With one exception, as the boy grew older, he and the Indo-Canadian boy up the street played in the same hockey and soccer leagues and grew to like and respect one another.

Unlike the Indo-Canadian boy, however, this boy did not do well at sports. And unlike his sister who performed very well academically, the boy languished in regular schoolroom classes. He was identified as a student who would benefit from attendance at a special school for academic under-achievers, operated by the Ontario government.

It meant that he would have to leave home weekly and live in at the school, located miles from the city, but his worried parents signed him up for the project, hoping that it would result in his being able to achieve academic par with his peers. It did help; once his two years of attendance there was over, he entered the regular student stream at a local high school.

His sister had once wanted to be a popular singer, an entertainer, but that was when she was a pre-teen. As an older student she became attracted to the idea of studying medicine. Which pleased her parents no end. One child of theirs at least would achieve a higher education, might join the elite stream of professionals.

They knew their younger child never could aspire to academic success, and they were fine with that, not wanting to place more pressure on the boy. Neighbours would see the father patiently explaining over and over again to his son how to use the lawn mower or the snow thrower. He learned slowly, methodically, but he learned.

When the children had been younger their parents had decided to transform that huge backyard into their own personal summertime haven. They had an in-ground pool installed, and it was costly because they had a semi-ravine lot necessitating special work to ensure the pool was evenly placed on that slanting lot. They had a shed built to house the pool's mechanical components.

They had a 'cottage' extension built on the back of their house, and a huge wood deck, extending from the 'cottage' toward the pool, with a large encircling deck around the pool, completely transforming the backyard. And a patio built of brickwork too, of course. Little of the backyard, in fact, was left for lawn and garden, and that suited them just fine.

The pool and the decks and the gazebos they installed on the decks all made for a very comfortable and inviting familial entertainment unit. They were ultimately disappointed in the 'cottage' attached to the back of the house. It was too uncomfortably hot in the summer, and too cool to be used in the winter, since it hadn't been winterized. But it was the spirit of the thing that counted.

They had a dog and a cat and had installed an 'animal door' leading into the cottage, which they found quite convenient. The cat was a neighbourhood hunter, bringing home baby rabbits, squirrels and birds. The dog, a female, was flighty and excitable, and from the time it was a pup, was convinced it was the alpha being in the house, and that everyone needed to follow its emphatic desires.

It wasn't far wrong; it was a middling-sized part golden retriever, a really beautiful dog, but ferocious and emotionally needy at both and the same time. She would flop for a tummy rub whenever a neighbour was handy. She would snarl at her master whenever he wanted to enter his bed at night, asking her please, to move over. The local dog groomer refused their custom after the first encounter.

For the first few years, the mother enjoyed inviting their acquaintances from the workplace over for a yearly barbecue and swim. That worked for them at first, then became an inconvenience. Her mother and father had used often to come over when the children were younger. At that time the children's grandparents, both retired, used to provide their in-home daycare for a few years.

Her mother was a nurse, her father retired from private business; corpulent and ill, so that the nurse-mother had to perform kidney dialysis at home for her husband for years until he finally died of kidney failure, not presenting as a likely transplant subject. After that her mother began to travel the world, finally able to satisfy her curiosity about other geographies.

They saw no need to travel, themselves. They had it made. Good jobs, reliable income, and a home they loved. They had indifferent relations with their neighbours, for some odd reason restrained, although they could not be claimed to be unfriendly. Anything but, in fact, and with the few neighbours whose close presence they acknowledged they did enjoy good relations.

But they were and are insular in their outlook. And remain content with that.

 

 

The Street - A Composite Sketch (19)

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 Nineteenth part of the anatomy of The Street.

Theirs was one of the two houses built several years later than all the others on the street. They moved into it about three years later than most others living on the street. Originally from the Halifax area, they had two young children, both boys. He was an investment banker, and she a social worker. They were the only blacks on the street. And they belonged there, helping to make the street a miniature representation of people from around the world.

This couple, however, represented a demographic of black heritage originally arrived in Canada in the 19th Century via a special underground route, to escape slavery in the United States.

They were self-assured, and urbane, friendly and likeable. Sweet natured and generous people, his ironic sense of presence had him note the presence of new people moving onto the street, and he would make a point of knocking on their doors to introduce himself as their new neighbour.

As he did when an older Jewish family moved directly across the street from them. And, in fact, the two families learned to value one another's presence and the friendship between them that ensued. Unfortunately, when he was offered a professional upgrade by moving his family to Texas he grasped the opportunity. And to the regret of his neighbours the family moved, after having lived on the street a bare six years.

He did return once, on a business trip, and knocked on the doors of some of his neighbours, to briefly recapture old acquaintances. Some of his neighbours had cautioned him against moving to the U.S. with two young boys, telling him their futures would be more assured, quality-wise and lacking discrimination, but he laughed, reminding them that they had suffered in Canada, as blacks, as well.

Their house was sold to another young couple, with a young boy. The woman too was from down east; the Canadian Maritimes, and her husband from the Middle East, an Egyptian. He was a tall, dark and burly man, and she was light and petite. She was shy and reserved and her husband was forthright and though tending to be brusque, friendly as well.

Their son had been diagnosed with juvenile diabetes and they worried about him, but he had adjusted well to his life-style changes and multiple daily shots of insulin. Only once was an ambulance called, in the many years they lived on the street, in response to a severe overnight hypoglycemic attack that had resulting in a frightening seizure.

He worked as a computer specialist for a private firm that had the inside track on government contracts. And she worked most days from home, an accountant who had no trouble picking up contracts herself. After a few years, and when their son was in his early teens, they had another child, another boy.

And the younger boy turned out to be mischievous to an extent his older brother never had been, head-strong, and insistent. A trial to his patient mother and impatient father. But they found it difficult to deny the child anything. Not only because they hesitated to deny him his wishes, but because they knew that to do so would elicit a racket of childish hysteria.

They had an in-ground pool installed on their good-sized lot, backing onto the ravine on one side, a neighbour on the other. He was mad for soccer, and played often in the summer months, spending evenings away from home. She was the homebody, he was often out and about with his friends, other jocks, men from the Middle East with a lot of cultural commonality.

He was fascinated by all things electronic, was one of the first people to have wireless Internet and a laptop computer, and a digital camera, and anything else that came out on the market that was different, new and technically advanced. Including tools. While he used computers, cameras and other gadgets, he seldom used the tools.

His wife, of necessity, learned to use the tools. She it was who did most of the work around the house. From re-setting their patio pavers, to mowing the lawns, and clearing the driveway of snow in the winter, to decorating their house for Christmas. He was a Christian Arab, and they had their religion in common.

They had met, in fact, in Cairo, where his family lived and and where he attended university, and where she had travelled as a curious tourist. When they first married they did quite a bit of travelling together. Although she loved Cairo, and he did as well, since it was his birthplace and where his extended family lived, they decided she would sponsor him for emigration to Canada.

They were good neighbours, but mostly kept to themselves, as did their older son. Their Jewish neighbours across the street took to them, however. It was the man who spent a lot of time talking with the young woman, discussing neighbourhood matters, items in the news, and whom she in turn, invested with her share of gossip.

She might not have been involved in neighbourly acquaintanceships like many, but she did know what was happening on the street. Through keen observation, for one thing, her upstairs windows giving her direct visual access to what was happening in her near vicinity. She was a constant source of updates to those with whom she spoke. And, as well, one of the few women on the street who was genuinely intelligent and kept abreast of national and international news.

Her husband owned a sizeable property in Egypt, and they thought that one day they would return there, to live out their lives. They very well might. He did, on occasion, return to Egypt, to make contact with family, and spend some time there, where he was born. His circle of friends in Canada was comprised largely of expatriate Middle-Easterners.

She had a sister living close by, with a family of her own. They were comfortable living on the street, and had no immediate plans to make a change of living arrangements or venue. Their older son was now completing university, working part-time at a nearby WalMart, while the younger boy was halfway through elementary school.

 

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 United States, 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.

The Street - A Composite Sketch (17)

 

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 Seventeenth part of the anatomy of The Street.

Few people spoke to them. For years, in fact, after they took possession of their new house. Simply put, they lived within, seldom to be seen without. Slipping from house directly to garage. To drive to work, then reverse the process. Three; husband, wife, son. Her son, from a previous, unfortunate marriage. An abusive man she was finally glad to see the last of. While her son was yet young, she met the man who would become his step-father at their mutual place of employment.

It always distressed her that her son and her husband, from the time he was eight, and she married her new husband, disliked one another. It was a first-time marriage for him. They had no children together. Only her son, who had a rebellious, sometimes selfish streak that she feared he had inherited from his father. She had the feeling her son disdained his step-father, as a second-generation Pole; his own father, like her, was old-stock Anglo.

By the time he was twelve, he was nudging 6 feet. A burly, muscular boy. She had to constantly remind him to be aware of his strength. In face-offs with other boys at school he sometimes forgot. Which was generally when school authorities would contact her. Sometimes week-long suspensions would result. Not always his fault, she knew. He did not, necessarily, go looking for trouble. Others would provoke him, taunt him about his size and clumsiness, exhaust his already-sparse patience.

Basically, he was a good boy. He respected his mother, even while he disparaged - quietly most often, to himself - his step-father. They simply irritated one another. The step-father did not ever assert his adult authority over the boy, wisely leaving that to his wife. Knowing if he attempted to exercise authority he would be ignored, in any event. Even when the boy once set the kitchen afire - fortunately discovered early and damage kept to a minimum - in their old home, he did his best to remain mutely in the background.

Which doubtless infuriated the boy all the more. His mother finally sought professional counselling for her son, and that helped straighten him out. By the time they moved into their new home he was in high school. He was a fair enough student, although he saw little value to himself personally in the formal education system. Both his parents worked for Oracle, a large U.S.-based business-application software group.

The husband was estranged from his remaining parent, his father, as were his siblings, all of whom detested the man. He had been a sternly controlling tyrant when they were young. They had feared him, and resented his manner with their mother, since deceased, who cowered under him. She saw to it, however, that his father became an honoured guest in their home. Inviting him over often for Sunday dinner, finally reconciling father and son, something she was never able to accomplish between her husband and her son.

Her mother had been morbidly obese, and had died of a heart attack, while still relatively young. Her brother had Aspergers syndrome, lived quietly on his own, unemployable, a beneficiary of their mother's estate. Her sister, who had a medical condition that she knew might overtake her at any time nonetheless drove her six-year-old child to an outing, and blacked out while driving, causing a calamitous crash with tragic consequences.

One that deprived her of her little girl, killed instantly; caused spinal and brain damage to herself, which years of medical intervention and physiotherapy had alleviated. She was, however, confined to a wheelchair for the most part, and in it, she became fairly corpulent. She was determined, along with her architect husband, to have another child, and they attempted adoption, but were turned down time and again, her condition cited as reasonable grounds for refusal.

When the wife of our duo decided to take early retirement along with a tidy retirement package urged on her by her employer, she began to appear outside her home, enabling neighbours finally to approach and proffer friendly overtures. And she was gradually and gratefully drawn into the life of the street. Not in a manner that she could become active in any way in the neighbourhood, since she had her family's affliction, and was horribly obese, completely rotund.

Some of the other women on the street, those who stayed at home to look after their children, would come over to her house and sit out on her porch with her, chatting. Awaiting the arrival of their children back from school. She had initially attracted some of the women by her penchant for collecting jewellery from eBay, having succumbed to the lure of the charge she enjoyed when she bid successfully on items. She never wore any of that jewellery, sold it at minimal cost to the other women.

She had always liked cats and eventually adopted two, a delicate black-and-white female first, then a large orange Maine Coon cat. The little one was permitted to roam freely, the pedigreed one was allowed out of doors only on a secure lead, in her presence. Then came a third cat, a common tabby, and it too was permitted to go about on its own. But she did value them all, and her patient husband emitted no hint of unease at their presence.

He began, in fact, increasingly to travel. All over the U.S., sometimes having to remain for months at a time on special assignments, coming home intermittently. When he was home he was the perfect husband, considerate and helpful. He never, ever smoked in the house, only outside. He would occasionally cook with his wife; they both enjoyed cooking, finding new recipes, experimenting with different, occasionally exotic and extravagant ingredients.

And they enjoyed eating out. Sometimes making such occasions family events, inviting his father, her brother, and their son. They all shared an enormous appetite for good food. Actually, for any food. Although she was a consummate cook and was well aware of what constituted good nutrition, often when he was away she would order fast food delivered to the house. Telling herself that it wouldn't hurt to have it once in a while. Even when 'once in a while' occurred frequently.

As the son matured he had a circle of friends who, like him, decided not to complete high school, and to strike out on their own, taking casual jobs. He also had the occasional girlfriend, acquiring a busy social life, although he and his mother did not always view his choices favourably. He had established contact with his father, whom he occasionally visited, and they got on fairly well together.

The boy had always been computer literate and adept, and his father encouraged him to take computers apart, put them together, produce his own combinations and software, as well. He hadn't the typical geek personality, unlike his step-father. He was gregarious and emphatically loud. His booming voice matching his huge physical presence. By the time he was prepared to join the permanent workforce he considered himself well prepared to present his casually-acquired technical qualifications.

He did have a succession of fairly good starter positions. But for one reason or another, he never stuck with them. He would somehow manage to insult people, or feel he had been insulted, and feel compelled to leave, or he would be dismissed. Sometimes clients would complain to his employers that he was too forceful, too loud, that his manner made them fearful. Simply perception; it was his way to be loud and emphatic. He found it difficult to contain himself, to tone down his excesses. His too-confident, and loud manner offended.

By then he was driving a sporty late-model car with a special paint job, and his mother had helped him into a very nice house of his own, packed with electronics, up-to-date appliances, good quality furniture. Oh, and a kitten. Oh yes, a live-in partner as well. A very attractive young women, lithe and blond whom his mother took under her wing, to teach her the basics of good cuisine, inducting her into the cult of the informed, capable cook. And housekeeping, that too.

Coming from a materially and culturally deprived background, once scathingly described as 'poor white trash', the girl seemed willing enough, and the woman lavished gifts on her. She wanted her son to have someone with whom he could be happy, although she wasn't quite convinced he would find happiness with this young woman. Still, because this was her son's choice, she opened her arms to the girl. It was something to see them together, the delicate tall young woman and the horribly obese older woman.

Her weight, in fact, worried her, even while she did nothing whatever to diminish it. She suffered from high blood pressure and from depression, and took medication for both. She worried herself sick about acquiring diabetes; her doctor had told her she was 'pre-diabetic'. Heart problems like her mother, another concern. She worried too about her husband. Merely excessively overweight, but he began experiencing health problems, became balance-impaired, some inner-ear thing.

They cut out sugar, used artificial sweeteners. No more white flour, white bread, rice, pasta, pastries. Too little too late. It was not necessarily what they ate but the prodigious amounts that they normally consumed. They simply could not envision themselves subsisting on 'small', portions inadequate to their appetites. So he was also diagnosed with high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels, and took medication accordingly, and cheerfully.

Their son's kitten grew into a cat, one that roamed widely. He was distraught when, one night, it failed to return home. Eventually he replaced it. When he discovered that his live-in girlfriend, with whom he had experienced several partings and reconciliations resulting in tearful reunions, was having an affair with his best friend, father of a young child, it was enough. She left, he was disconsolate; she defiant.

Her lover left his partner and child for her. The affair did not last, however. His sense of self-preservation kicking in, he refused, though it pained him, to restore her to his affections and his home. He has since attempted to replace her, but succeeding candidates, both from good backgrounds, backed off before matters proceeded to the serious level of accommodation. His mother is wondering whether she will ever have grandchildren.

His rash impulses led him to challenge another motorist to a street race which caused an accident resulting in slight injury to the other motorist. He was charged with dangerous driving, attended court, had his license suspended for a year. And honoured that suspension. Later taking possession of a more powerful vehicle, a late-model, second-hand BMW which he coddled and took great pride in. And drove responsibly, not wishing a repeat of his previous stupidity.

His step-father fears that with the global economic downturn his job may be imperilled. That has not yet occurred. When he is at home he tends faithfully to his wife, presenting her with tea in pretty porcelain cups, driving her to the veterinarian clinic and the pet food stores on week-ends, with her beloved pets. She still has a pretty face, regardless of the weight. She is a decent and kind person, exudes warmth and kindness.

They remain a firm fixture on the street. The husband has decided he will learn to mow the lawn himself, no longer hire someone to do it, nor remove the snow from the driveway in winter. He will, henceforth, do these tasks. Time for belt-tightening; funds becoming scarcer. Not the other kind of belt-tightening, however.

The Street - A Composite Sketch (16)

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 Sixteenth part of the anatomy of The Street.

They were older when they married, than most of their generation. Why she hadn't married earlier than he, however, was a mystery. She was pretty, personable, gregarious and best of all, had a thousand-watt smile that brilliantly illuminated her presence. She was lively, enthusiastic, eager for all that life and her future might promise. Her father was in the armed services, and the family had moved often. She had seen something of the world.

Her father was a typical Anglo-Canadian, her mother francophone. Never was French spoken at home, so she and her sister never learned to speak, much less understand French. She always said that it was because, at that time in the history of the Canadian Armed Forces, the French were denigrated, discriminated against. As a young adult, still living at home with her parents and younger sister, she too joined the forces, trained as a dental assistant.

She was a tall young woman, brunette and full-figured unlike her mother who was small-boned with blond hair, who had been a hairdresser. Whenever her parents visited, in their mobile home, her mother would perm her daughter's lovely long hair. The young woman's husband was quite like her physically; tall, broad, good-looking. And there the similarity ended; he was her personality polar-opposite.

Reserved, introspective, socially maladroit. He would go out of his way not to be noticed. Shy, she said, if anyone ever commented. Rude, they would mutter under their breath, a social misfit. His anti-social mannerisms gained him neither respect nor friends when, newly married, they bought their house on the street. She was good-hearted, would go out of her way for people, and always cheerful; he dodged contact.

People soon learned to expect no neighbourliness from him, observing how he would cross the street to avoid greeting someone. His next-door neighbour once seeing her using an inexpensive garden tool asked if he might try out its effectiveness before committing to purchasing one of his own. She would have to ask her husband, she responded. And her husband ruled negatively. His parsimonious churlishness became legendary on the street.

His own father was a sweet-mannered and friendly man, an Italian-born pastry chef. It was assumed that their son's chronic social unwillingness had been inherited from his mother, a sharp-tongued harridan. However that might have been, there seemed little discord between the two young people. She always insisted her husband was her 'best friend'. A best friend who, she complained on occasion to close friends, occasionally said cutting and hurtful things to her.

And then they became parents, had a little girl. When the child was four, there was another baby, a boy. Both robust and healthy children. With remote, unfriendly temperaments, it became clear, as they grew into childhood. The girl quiet, reserved like her father, the boy with a nasty, incendiary temper. The father was as removed in the raising of the children as he was at integrating socially. If ever one of the children required an urgent diaper change evidenced by a pervasively nasty odour, he would shout for his wife to attend to the mess.

He was, after all, the breadwinner. She the stay-at-home mother and housewife. Both enterprises which she fulfilled admirably, but which elicited little respect from him. They paid off their mortgage far sooner than most on the street. A factor of their late marriage, both having acquired respectable savings as single, gainfully employed people, enabling them to amass a whopping down payment on the house, with a relatively modest mortgage.

They were careful to keep expenses to a moderate level, bought nothing they did not need. She prowled about at garage sales, was proud of the bargains she came away with, that he labelled 'junk'. She tended a nice little summer vegetable garden, harvesting globe peppers, tomatoes, beans, lettuce. She rarely used their electric clothes drier, hung laundry in the backyard in all seasons. Nor would she use their automatic dishwasher, to her husband's great satisfaction.

He more or less ordered her life, and she was, or seemed to be, satisfied enough to acquiesce. He had forbidden her from ever going into the ravine, to walk about there, lest some misfortune be visited upon her. You never know.... She enthusiastically made friendly overtures to people she met, other mothers, when her children began attending school. At first she used to invite people over for coffee in the evening, and that soon came to an abrupt halt.

The children both did well at school. Their mother bored and occasionally irritated her friendly neighbours by continually seeking praise for her children's performance. When anyone complained to her of her son's nasty behaviour she thanked them for their concerns but refused to discipline him. She once confided that she feared, if she spanked him, that he would strike out at her. She felt confident he would outgrow his deplorable behaviour.

They eventually traded in their creaking old car for a family van which she was allowed to drive locally. His lack of confidence in her abilities caused her to fear driving on city highways, ensuring she would stay within the confines of the neighbourhood. He, on the other hand, used public transit to the federal government office where he was an IT specialist and trouble-shooter.

One of his unmarried uncles, who often visited, gifted them with a good upright piano which was proudly placed in their living room. Thereafter, the children's lives were further enriched with piano lessons. Their mother had always arranged for play sessions for her children when they were young and drove them hither and yon. As they grew older, she no longer walked with them to their school bus stop in the morning, reversing the process in the afternoon.

Their daughter, as a pre-teen, conceived a fascination with horses and her parents agreed to weekly riding lessons. Their son was ferried back and forth to soccer league games. As the girl grew older she worked out an arrangement where she would muck out the horse stalls in exchange for free riding lessons, making her parents proud of her enterprising thrift. When they reached their teen years, they would sometimes invite school friends over. A slow succession of various friends who would issue reciprocal invitations. Never repeated.

Their house was broken into one fine summer morning. She had just driven off to the local supermarket, came home a bare hour later to discover the front door wide open. It transpired that the side garage door had been forced, entry gained to the house through the adjoining house door. She felt nauseated, violated, alarmed to note the frightening disarray in her normally spotlessly arranged interior.

Their prized DVDs were taken, along with the player. A few other items, a digital camera. Upstairs, in the master bedroom, bureau drawers were pulled agape, contents spilled out onto the floor. Her jewellery gone. She felt like retching. Ran outside to see her neighbours to the right just setting off for a ravine walk. No, they responded, alarmed at her frantic questioning, they had noticed nothing amiss.

They later replaced the two shattered doors. Had an alarm system installed to forestall any future intrusions. After the passage of a few years the trauma of the break-in became a bad memory she seldom called up. The insurance was useful, and they replaced everything that had been stolen. She still mourned the loss of her jewellery, some of the pieces had been, she said, family heirlooms. Junk, he said morosely.

Their daughter became enthused about theatre arts, was involved in her high school's theatre productions. Their son began to call daily on a much younger boy living across the street, for companionship. The father bought a convertible, a rag-top. Suddenly become enthused about washing the family vehicles - they had rid themselves of the old van, bought a new one - where previously his wife had been tasked with that labour.

He insisted on buying a rotary mower for their property, never bothering to sharpen the blades properly. After he would laboriously mow the lawns on a week-end, she would discreetly haul out the old electric mower on the following Monday to repeat the process. Their lawn was over-run with weeds. Instead of hand-picking them in early spring, she would set to in mid-summer, and just gave up. Solved the problem by liberally sprinkling clover seeds on the lawn.

Her daughter gave up horse-riding. Kept talking about graduating high school to take drama courses at university. The mother happily sewed up a lovely ball gown for her daughter's graduation prom. The two car dealerships from which the new vehicles were purchased went out of business. She was hoping her husband might agree finally to a vacation, a week away somewhere, as a change from the camping excursions to nearby provincial parks he always insisted on.

For his part, he planned to conduct a father-son discussion about the inappropriateness of finding companionship with a boy six years younger than his errant son.

 

The Street - A Composite Sketch (15)

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 fifteenth part of the anatomy of The Street.

They were of old Anglo-Irish background, roots established in the country in the late 19th Century with an original influx from the United Kingdom. They bore the evidence of their roots on their blond, stolid visages, proudly. They moved into their excitingly new, well-proportioned and up-to-date-accoutered new house as its original owners on a raw new street.

Had chosen their lot carefully, to back onto the cherished notion of the ravine. Although in the 23 years they lived there so far, they never thought to venture into it. Even when, years later, they brought a golden retriever they named Sam into their home. Not exactly, come to think of it, into their home. Sam had his very nice doghouse in the backyard and that is where he remained, but for the infrequent walks he was taken on, around the neighbourhood.

Not even when his elderly father, unable any longer to live on his own, moved in with them, and himself looked about for things to do to make himself useful, was Sam taken out for walks. Instead the elderly man, uncertain on his pins, would be seen in the winter, shovel in hand, chipping away at the accumulated ice at the end of their driveway. Or taking solitary walks in the neighbourhood. The resemblance between father and son was striking. The son and daughter-in-law were glad to look after his elderly father.

They were both outgoing, relaxed and comfortable with themselves and the world outside their shared domesticity. As is natural for a young couple settled into their own home, financially assured with well-paid jobs, they planned a family. She took maternal leave several times from her emerging upward-trajectory federal government position with its discreetly determined new affirmative-action plan to bring more women into officer-class positions.

He worked in general construction, on contract, through contacts in the trade, himself a veritable Jack of all trades, although his preference was always with concrete work. Still, he imagined himself adept at anything, from drywall installation to flooring, and never lacked for remunerative contracts. He had a good reputation, was valued because of his reliability, more than for the quality of the execution of the work he was tasked with. When something needed to be done, look no further.

His industry stopped there, was not extended to normal wear and tear in the upkeep over the years, of their home. Although he was often given casual contracts right on the street, by those of his neighbours who wanted their driveways patched, a stone patio installed, or new kitchen cupboards to replace the old, or a hardwood floor put down. Those, that is, who wanted to get these things done on the cheap, who paid him under the table so he wouldn't have to declare added income.

They got the workmanship they deserved. Even so, he was not faulted for anything. For not accomplishing really professional work, because he never claimed to be a professional floor installer, or stonemason. Not his problem, after all, if people came to him because they wanted the work done, but were unwilling to pay the going professional rate. They came to him for a less expensive alternative, and that's what he gave them; a fair enough exchange.

They had two children, a girl and a boy. Exuberant and polite children who, as they grew, played with other children on the street. And upon whom somewhat less parental discipline was imposed than for others, by their nonetheless doting parents. The entire family was somewhat less conventional in their social outlook and values than what might be considered the norm. Without intending to, they occasionally stood social convention on its head.

As, for example, when in high school the son, not academically inclined, took with alacrity to establishing a line of business of his own. And as a result he was busy and fulfilled. The neighbours swiftly concluded what brought to the neighbourhood a fairly steady succession of brief house calls, particularly as their own high-schoolers casually informed their parents that he was dealing drugs. Nothing serious; mostly pot.

Before long, vehicles other than the two owned by the family - a half-ton pickup for the father, a bright-red BMW for the mother - were noted to be permanently present in the double driveway. (In fact, one of the few upgrades the father brought to his property was a widening of the driveway. Clumsily executed, put passably utilitarian.) Over the years the vehicles and their owners changed as the live-in 'friends' of their son and daughter reflected changing partners.

Some of the neighbours privately abhorred these unorthodox and illicit activities, but none conveyed their opinions to the family, and a polite facade of friendliness was maintained, only remotely strained. Though the neighbourhood peers of the boy and the girl no longer maintained a pretense of casual friendships. Where other young people their age were planning university and college attendance, these two went their own way. They did not lack friends of their own, just not from the street.

The property became progressively more run-down. The roof finally replaced only when it became impossible to ignore the loss of its functional integrity as a result of inconvenient leaks. Poor old neglected Sam died. The girl brought home a miniature pug and Sam's doghouse was discarded, left out for trash pick-up. The pug was babied, its comfortable role as a house dog not exempting it from acquiring an irritable temperament that amused the family no end, while annoying the neighbours with its incessant snarling and barking hostility.

Eventually as the husband-and-father grew older he got fed up with the rough and tumble of working on construction sites and looked for alternate employment. Finding it at a home for seniors long established in the community. With them he took a permanent job as a janitor-handyman. He was respected, his wide-ranging capabilities valued by the administrators of the seniors home and he basked in the appreciation of his hybrid fix-it talents.

His wife had been steadily promoted, moved forward in the junior ranks of government bureaucracy and eventually made it to departmental director. Her husband considered her perfection incarnate, inordinately proud of her achievements. Older now, their physical conformations taking on a stoutness, hers became reflected in the over-ripe excess of forbidden fruit.

He was her slave. Her response was fondly accepting; they were demonstrative in their affection with one another, extended to their children. Who could do no wrong. They were, in essence, people content with their lives and their lifestyles. Well adjusted members of society, in their lights. Happy together as a tight, emotionally-balanced nuclear group. A successfully intact family. Who could fault them?