Sixty years of sisters

My sisters and I have lived different lives in different places, but when we all got together in Vancouver this week to celebrate Betty's birthday, I was reminded of how much the past brings us together. From left, Betty (age 67); me (age 69), and Diane (age 68).

How we started out:  Diane, me, and Betty in the early 1950s, on the farm where we grew up in Alberta.

Getting ready to launch: Betty, me, and Diane in our teens. We all belonged to the local 4-H sewing club and learned to make our own clothes. All of these dresses would have been our handiwork.

We fought a lot, my sisters and me. In the early years, there was biting and kicking, and later, cold silences and competitive rivalry. But there was warmth and companionship, too, and an indelible understanding of what it meant to grow up on a small struggling prairie farm in the midst of nature. We played cowboys, we staged weddings, we rafted on the sloughs, and skated and tobogganed through the long winter months. We shared the daily misery of long rural school-bus rides, the excitement of lumpy Christmas stockings in the dark, and the ultimate annual pleasure of a week at our grandparents’ cottage on Sylvan Lake.

We were very different personalities, though, and with adulthood came different life choices about careers, families and geographic locations. Mostly, we didn’t stay in close touch, relying on our mother to keep up with all of us and pass along the high points to each other. Now that mom is gone and we’re well into the aging process ourselves, we’ve entered a new stage.

Betty, the youngest of us, turned 67 this week. Both she and Diane were in Vancouver from their homes in Quebec and the Kootenays respectively, so we decided to celebrate by getting together for the first time since mom’s funeral six years ago.

There was no biting and kicking over Betty’s birthday lunch. Instead, there was a rewarming of that long-ago sense of connection built by our childhood. We didn’t have to explain to each other why we all cook from scratch, why we would always choose a walk in nature over a walk in a shopping mall, or why plants, birds, dogs and other critters of the earth are always worth paying attention to. Our lives have been very different, but what shone through this week were the similarities that will connect us always because of our earliest experiences on that little Alberta farm.

I have always liked this picture of my little sisters and their (very cold) bride and ballerina dolls in the snow. Diane is on the left, Betty on the right.

Playing dress-up, decked with flowers from mom's garden, was part of our childhood on the farm. Betty is on the left, Diane on the right.

My little sisters at a Vancouver restaurant this week. Betty is on the left, Diane on the right. Their amusement is Betty's photos of the family dogs. 

Valentine's Day

Once upon a time, Valentine’s Day meant cut-out books of anodyne valentines, painstakingly addressed to friends in primary school. It was a touchy business; quality and quantity mattered. Later, the day was marked by the punctual appearance of a mass of red roses on the desk of a colleague, who was rumoured to send them to herself if her boyfriend of the day was being unreliable. Now, in retirement, it means casually noticing that heart shapes are suddenly showing up in odd places – oh, that time of year again out in the bustling world. Here are a few reminders I’ve encountered lately:

If you can have a Christmas tree, why not a Valentine tree? Somebody must have been thinking along those lines when they hung red and pink valentines on this tree in a North Vancouver park. My sister Betty fits right in with her bright red jacket.

It took me awhile to realize that the somewhat scraggly line of snowdrops on this Vancouver boulevard were actually picking out the shape of a heart. They were luckily blooming just in time for Valentine's Day.

The Valentine connection in this photo is semi-hidden behind the daffodils, which were too pretty not to include. See below:

"Love" and "Hate" windows, marking at least the first aspect of Valentine's Day, were for sale at Southlands Nursery. I'm curious about where they might end up -- the "Love" part would be easy, but the "Hate" part might be tricky.

The details of those windows: According to the price tag ($2,500 each or $4,000 for both), they come from an old tattoo parlour in England.

Another view of cold

My brother-in-law Bert and my sister Betty, in Vancouver for a respite from the Quebec winter, are amused by Vancouverites' complaints about the chilly weather. They're used to far worse than they encountered during a walk on Spanish Banks on Sunday. 

This was the disheartening sight out of my dining room window the day Betty and Bert arrived in Vancouver earlier this month. The pink viburnum blossoms were covered in snow. 

But Betty didn't bat an eye. She thought the sight of crocuses poking up through the snow was delightful. 

On Feb. 4, the day my sister Betty and her husband Bert arrived in Vancouver to escape the snow and cold of Quebec, it snowed here. “I apologize for the snow,” I wrote her that day. Although the snow quickly disappeared in a torrent of rain, people have been apologizing to them for Vancouver’s chilly weather ever since. “People say it’s cold; they say they hope it will warm up,” Betty laughed Sunday. “Hah! They don’t know what cold is!”

Betty and Bert do. Betty wears a cozy, loose indoor sweater that her daughter says looks like a great big hug and that she wants to inherit when the time comes. Betty and Bert carry photos on their cellphone of last winter’s snow that reached nearly the roof of a neighbour’s house. They wear wool socks and warm jackets with hoods that cover their ears.

Vancouver’s warm weather has always been a boasting point for residents, who like to send photos of early-blooming flowers and greenery to eastern relatives still buried under snowbanks. We don’t like it to let us down– hence the apologies.

But for Betty and Bert, it’s all relative. When she first arrived, Betty was delighted at the beauty of purple crocuses poking up through the snow of a white-blanketed garden. When we went for a walk on Sunday, she laughed at my suggestion that it was a bit nippy (the water had frozen in the birdbaths, always my measure for nippiness). “Look around,” she said. “It’s green; the lawns are all green.”

Blooming winter heather in the sunshine is exactly the kind of photo Vancouverites like to taunt their eastern relatives with in the depths of winter.

Or, hellebores blooming against a picturesque tree trunk.

Or, a very early rhodo.

Snowdrops in full bloom also remind easterners that their banks of white are still snow.

Well, yes, we did have a lot of rain this winter -- enough to create a little lake in the local park near me. In fact, one Vancouver website said on Feb. 6 that we had had 28 consecutive days of precipitation, making it the longest run of wet in more than 50 years.  January had only one moisture-free day, and 55 per cent more rain than usual. But these are things we don't usually include when we send our pretty-flower pictures east. 

Mean streets

Cars and pedestrians make an uneasy mix, a point I've been thinking about a lot since two of my friends have been hit in crosswalks in the last 13 months. This photo, taken by my partner John Denniston in the 1970s in downtown Vancouver, seems to illustrate a certain nonchalance by pedestrians that might be fatal today. 

When the walk sign gives the go-ahead and the cars are all stopped, drivers at some Vancouver intersections may occasionally be startled by the gimlet eye of a certain grey-haired pedestrian before she sets foot out onto the street. That suspicious old party would be me. I’ve always been a cautious walker, but that caution has been elevated to near paranoia by the fact that two close friends have been clobbered at pedestrian crosswalks within the last 13 months. Both had the right of way, but that didn’t prevent left-turning drivers plowing into them, one in broad daylight, one during a nasty grey twilight in pouring rain.

My friend Linda was hit in the early afternoon of Dec. 9, 2018 at a four-way stop in the Fairview Slopes area. A car that had stopped and was waiting to make a left turn suddenly accelerated while she and another pedestrian were in the crosswalk. The other pedestrian escaped, but the car sent Linda flying up into the air, shattering a hip, cracking many ribs, fracturing a shoulder, cutting her face and chipping a tooth. After surgery and a year of intensive rehabilitation, she’s back to walking the mean streets again – but very, very carefully.

My friend Andre, who was hit in the late afternoon of Jan. 31, 2020, gives at least some credit to Linda’s experience for helping him escape injury altogether. In his case, a left-turning driver ignored the walk signal and plowed into him as he crossed Broadway at Quebec Street. The collision knocked him out of his “admittedly loose-fitting” shoes, but he saw the car at the last second and managed to roll off the hood before sprawling onto the street. Ever since Linda’s accident, he has been “doubly aware and alert when crossing streets,” he wrote her later, “and I’m sure that alertness is what gave me the chance to react and to roll off the hood. Your misfortune helped to avert mine, and for that I am very grateful.”

Why two friends would be hit under similar circumstances within such a short time frame is a puzzle. Are Vancouver drivers getting worse? Is congestion making people more impatient? Is the design of modern cars, with those wide, view-obscuring side pillars, making it harder to see pedestrians? I would need studies and statistics to know whether two such accidents are indicative of anything more than coincidence and bad luck. But they explain why at least one ultra-suspicious pedestrian waiting to cross the city’s intersections these days is giving all drivers in all directions a long, hard stare.

Backyard entertainment

Every year, I wait until it snows before I feel justified in putting out food for the birds. But squirrels think it's for them too, and their tactics in getting it are so entertaining that I figure they earn it. This squirrel and a buddy made short work of a wheel of seeds I had hung from a tree limb, manoeuvring it up onto the branch for easier eating. Photo series by John Denniston.

The initial approach; squirrel and dangling food.

Okay, got it.

And. . . here's how you have a meal hanging upside down.

If I had my way, I would fill my back yard with bird feeders that would attract every known variety of bird in the city. But alas, there's the issue of rats. I hate to recall the number of expensive bird-feeders I have thrown out over the years because no matter how sophisticated they were, or how careful I was, vermin were the result.

Snow changes the equation, however. When birds might be starving because their usual food sources are covered up, who cares about rats? Every year, I secretly look forward to the brief period of icy weather when I can feel justified in putting out bird food. When the time came this year – late because of our unusually warm winter – I was reminded again of why I’m always fascinated. Bird food transforms the back yard from a quiet place to a playground where something is always happening. It’s entertainment at a bleak time of year; a reminder of how you don’t have to go far from home to glimpse another world.

Possibly because I have more time now, possibly because our cat is gone (sadly, our incomparable Mr. Darcy died of leukemia more than a year ago), possibly because the bushes have grown closer to the kitchen window, I’m noticing the backyard wildlife more than ever this winter. How some birds arrive in flocks, swooping like fireworks past the windows, filling the yard with their darting and chattering, then suddenly, as if rush-hour was over, disappearing. How when the temperatures rise, the flickers monopolize the newly melted birdbaths, fluffing themselves up to twice their size, while their patient mates await their turn. How everyone else disappears when the raucous, swaggering blue jays arrive to make kamikaze dives at the feeders, spilling seed on the ground so they can eat it there. Squirrels, the clowns of the back yard, immune to ridicule, contort and connive to get at the feeders, hanging upside down to eat their meal if that’s what it takes.

This entertainment will end when the bird feeders empty in the spring and the birds and squirrels return to their usual fare. As will the rats, who no doubt are enjoying this winter bounty as much as anyone. Quietly, and at night, so I don’t have to know about it.

My photo of squirrel, feeder and apple tree. Mr. Squirrel was reluctant to leave his potential lunch.

This was the wheel of seed the squirrels were attacking. The birds didn't seem interested in it, so I didn't mind the squirrels getting it. Eventually, one cut through the string, grabbed the whole thing in its mouth and took off for the hedge, closely chased by an indignant buddy. That's the last I saw of it.

The real bird food. It's protected from the rain, and covered with cayenne pepper, which deters squirrels but does not affect birds.

Messages in the snow

The rain has melted all this away by now, but the state of Vancouver's sidewalks during our first blast of winter last week got me thinking about how snow-clearing reflects our attitudes toward each other and the community. 

This sidewalk-clearing job does not meet the city's bylaw requirements that property owners or occupiers clear all adjacent sidewalks of ice and snow to their complete width. But somebody has at least made an effort.

This stellar clearing job, just up the street from my house, makes it easy for pedestrians and those using mobility devices. My neighbourhood walks in the snow last week showed that while most people are at least trying to do some clearing these days, very few actually comply with the city's snow bylaws. 

The sidewalks of Vancouver after a snowfall are the stuff of a sociologist’s dreams, a treasure trove of material about who we are and how we behave as a community. They show how seriously we take the city’s stern warnings (actually, a bylaw backed by fines) to clear the sidewalks abutting our homes. They hint at class differences – the wealthy Shaughnessy area, for example, is renowned for its negligence in sidewalk-clearing – and point to the high level of vacant properties in certain areas. They show the contagion of neighbourliness – often, whole blocks will be models of snow-clearing thoughtfulness, as if people don’t want to be the only ones not living up to the standards of the street. They also show that some people clearly don’t care: if theirs is the only impassible patch on the block, so what?

 Our sidewalks also reveal how very differently people interpret – or are aware of – the snow-clearing bylaw, which states that the full width of a property’s adjacent sidewalks must be cleared of all ice and snow by 10 a.m. the day after a snowfall. Some people follow this to the letter – every inch is scraped bare to the pavement, then scattered with salt to keep it that way. Others have a very different interpretation. A single small shovel zigzagged lightly through the snow, as if to provide a hint of a path, suffices. This woodland-trail idea usually leaves plenty of snow, and potentially ice, underfoot – the message is that pedestrians should walk single file and hope for the best. Wheelchairs, four-wheel walkers, baby carriages and shopping carts are out of luck.

 Businesses are usually brisk about clearing their sidewalks; they get more customers that way. In my Dunbar area, the sidewalk abutting an entire block that had been torn down to make way for condos was cleared immaculately the day after our worst snowfall, as if to encourage positive vibes about the new development. But businesses are as variable as people. On Tenth Avenue, the ankle-deep snow on a sidewalk abutting a block-long vacant site where a Safeway once stood hadn’t seen even a tiny shovel two days after the snow began. Presumably the current owners figure their negligence will have been forgotten by the time a new condo tower springs up there.

I think a sociologist could have fun with Vancouverites’ variable responses to snow-clearing. It is, after all, a community service that means people care enough about their fellow citizens to try to keep them out of emergency departments. And those who clear their entire sidewalk of every speck of snow are acknowledging that some people use canes, wheelchairs, shopping carts and baby strollers to help them get through the day.

 The curious thing to me is why some people – and businesses – are so prompt and assiduous, while others are the opposite. Given that snowfalls amount to periodic emergencies in Vancouver terms, are people here any different than those elsewhere about helping their fellow citizens in a crisis? Does this city’s polarization between rich and poor, long-timers and newcomers, renters and owners, enter into it? Maybe the neglected sidewalks are due to large numbers of vacant properties – residents who are on holidays or living elsewhere for the six months allowable before the vacancy tax kicks in. Maybe the homeowners are elderly or disabled, and simply can’t shovel.

In my experience – and I have walked through all of Vancouver’s snowfalls for the past four decades – the state of sidewalk-cleaning is improving, although a very small percentage of it meets the city’s bylaw requirements. Word may be getting out that what was once considered a voluntary, do-gooder act is actually a requirement backed by penalties. Offences are easy to prove; all it takes is a photo of a snowy sidewalk a few minutes after 10 a.m. Last fall, 244 Vancouver property owners ended up in bylaw court for failing to remove snow during a particularly precipitous two days in February of 2019, according to a CBC story. Penalties range from a minimum of $250 for an owner-occupied house to $400 for tenant-occupied properties and up to $800 for development lots. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/snow-shovelling-vancouver-bylaw-court-1.5365469

But about those semi-cleared sidewalks: a B.C. Supreme Court judge ruled in November of 2019 that homeowners can’t be found liable for accidents on poorly cleared sidewalks. In that case, the homeowners had shoveled and salted, but because of the thawing and freezing cycle, their efforts had inadvertently made their sidewalk more treacherous, resulting in a man falling and injuring himself. Too bad for the injured party, but a reassurance to me; I was alarmed last week to realize that my careful shoveling was actually making the sidewalk more dangerous.  https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/ice-snow-removal-sidewalk-lawsuit-1.5374652

My own Dunbar block is one of those good-neighbour ones, where people mostly scrape their sidewalks bare. Nor is it unusual for one neighbour to shovel part or all of a neighbour's sidewalk, as long as they’re out there. The next block up the hill is nearly as good, but on the corner is one new house, barely lived in, that regularly lets the street down with only a narrow, winding icy pathway cut through the snow. The reasons behind this one little stretch of impassibility, its impact, and the contrast with neighbouring properties – what a goldmine for a curious sociologist to explore!

The snow-clearing job in front of my house. Nope, it doesn't meet the letter of the city's rules to remove all ice and snow, but it's not bad. 

Winter at last

After an unusually mild and pleasant fall and early winter, Vancouver is getting its first serious dose of snow. That's set off the usual panic, with schools and universities closed, the transit system in chaos and dire warnings against venturing onto the roads unless strictly necessary. The University of B.C. even had to cancel its annual snowball fight because of, well, snow. Since the campus was closed, who would be there to fling snowballs?

Here are some photos from our day:

Part of my snow-clearing routine is brushing the snow off the hedges. If the snow gets too heavy, it can break and deform the shrubs. Photo by John Denniston.

John, suitably dressed for winter, tackles the front sidewalk.

The view from the front steps this morning, snow-covered car in background.

The back yard in snow, with mom's old bench well piled.

Snow on witch-hazel blossoms.

The bench looks comfy with all that white fluffy coating, but it wouldn't be.

The bird bath in winter. It won't do the birds much good, but it serves as a good measure of the amount of snow that's fallen.

Little libraries go upscale

Little Free Libraries, those "take-one, leave-one" street-side boxes of free books, seem to be more ubiquitous, and more sophisticated, than they were a few years ago.

 People seem to be making big efforts to beautify the boxes. A closer view of this one shows how it mimics the roof lines, window treatments and siding of the house it fronts. Details like this tend to make passersby stop and look.

In this case, it's my friend Linda, who can't resist a peek inside the little doors.

Aha! A potential score.

In the end, she didn't take it, but it was a good book that a friend had read. The quality of the contents of the boxes may be rising along with their good looks.

When I first began blogging about the sights that drew my attention on my daily walks, I wrote about Little Free Libraries. They’re little boxes full of books, usually just outside a private residence or an institution, that invite passersby to take one and/or leave one behind.

A couple of years later and back to a more regular walking routine, I’m noticing there are more of these little libraries than ever before. And they seem to have upped their game. The boxes are often more elaborate, sometimes mimicking the style of the house or houses around them. One I saw recently was even decorated with tiny Christmas lights. I don’t know whether the quality of the books has increased as well, except that I recently picked up two myself, something I had never done before.

I suspect there are many longtime households, just like ours, that are beginning to realize that they can’t take their books with them. Putting up a cute little box that mimics the place where all those books are over-stuffing the shelves may be a good way to entice passersby to stop, look, and even take some of the load away.

Here's a plainer box that fits in with the more modern houses behind it.

It's well-filled, but despite our inspection, we didn't take any.

A little library, also with windows, a roof line and roof tiles reflecting the row of houses behind it. 

Notice the Christmas lights, top and bottom ...

...and, a door handle that belongs in a jewelry box!

This library is more like the ones that were being built a few years ago. Adequate, but not fancy.

A closer look at that well-weathered box. It may be rustic, but the books inside appear to have some heft.