Summer is blazing by, but not without our well-fastened lasso. The final day of a memorable “we-love-our-life” kind of Canada Day weekend and what did I do? I drove around town snapping pictures of things with Ali’s little camera. It started with the drone of my weekly online-course installment this morning, and my worsening lack of focus brought about by contemplating what was cascading through my thoughts: the obvious theme of the weekend, and the key to its success is the backyard.
We don’t need beaches in Montreal, nor are we (at least I) content with the diminutive “balconville” moniker, which brings to mind the Quebecker’s obsession with reddening a winter’s dose of pasty white. I, for one, get headaches in the hot sun, but love the summer for its compromising promise of warm shade. So I resolved, following my chapter lectures and quiz, to somewhat retrace my weekend steps, to make good on promises to visit, and to breathe the garden air over drinks, conversation, and brisk photography (for which I have no knack – all the pictures in this post were mistakenly taken on the tungsten setting, undercompensating for the bluish sunlight).
Friday morning to afternoon, we were at the Ile-Cadieux cottage to celebrate my cousin-in-law’s birthday and annual wharf pitching. I absent mindedly forgot to take even cellphone pics of the event, but just as well, because the cottage on Ile-Cadieux has an incredibly rich history that has already been documented by the most reliable source alive to tell it: Alexandra’s grandmother, Pat. And what a compelling narrative. The reproduction of her text on this page is best left for a future honourable guest post. Its sheer magnitude commands it as it was a project we were thrilled to endorse from its start, and even happier still to see it completed in bound-book form.
Friday evening came along and I donned the annual red Canadian flag tie at the 2nd annual Canada Day barbecue thrown by close friends. When daylight recedes into greens, blues, then navy, all we need are citronella candles, a ten-by-ten concrete porch, a table and chairs. Oh, and drinks. Need I say more? Memories are young in that part of town, but they are already beginning to stack up.
Healthy families are the ones that will find any excuse to get together for the hell of it, and between Alexandra’s and mine, get-togethers have become weekly affairs, in good or bad weather. Take, for example, a sendoff for my little brother’s symphony orchestra tour through Europe held in my parents’ backyard. There is almost nowhere I’d rather be than in this shady yet well-lit, accessible, calming, multi-level, multi-zone, lush, breezy, private, beautiful space. It has undergone several major transformations over the 24 years they (and I for much of it) have lived at that Pointe-Claire house. The latest one started with me still at home and participating in its conception, rearranging the flagstones on the raised terrace, helping my parents locate new construction sites around Montreal so we could pass by and collect naturally excavated boulders for the garden. The landscaping, now largely complete (while nothing is ever complete in my mother’s opinion) is spot-on, all thanks to 5 summers of careful craft, masterful vision, and not a penny spent on hired help (except when my father hired one of his own employees to paint the deck).
That space was little used for a few years before that. What was once a fort, swingset and basketball court-furnished childhood hangout had been scarred by both the extension built on house and our growing-up gravitation away from those types of leisure. We realized that we needed different accommodations, a space convivial for entertainment, relaxation, and socializing. The yard currently rivals a courtyard spa, with four zones to sit and have a conversation, two out of earshot, and two breakfast nooks. And what’s more is that it’s not even a big yard by any comparative means.
Our current home in Montreal West has a yard of similar proportions with an equally calming effect, albeit a much more straightforward philosophy. Space is space. A backyard is something hidden from the street. While a front yard provides your voisinage, the back delivers intimacy, privacy, and enclosure. The front introduces, invites and provides a facial identity. The back solidifies, edifies and immortalizes relationships. It is where we cook our meals and eat our breakfasts, peering out from the second floor balcony, or down on the grass-sprouting patio. It is the cat’s haven, for she rarely ventures beyond the fence. Everything she needs is here at home. Even her best friend, our neighbours’ dog, is a mere fence-hop away, and they spend their afternoons lying together under the porch, hiding from the sun. Such are the fastidious affairs of our pets.
My paternal grandparents live in NDG and have pioneered the family craft of making do with what you have, and making it look good – an attribute I have sadly not inherited. Their front garden is a landscape of stonewalls and statues, a metal gate, pave-uni, thick greenery, flowers and idiosyncratically shaped centerpiece rocks, all within a space of about 12 by 15 feet (the back of the completely attached duplex is only a small balcony over a back alleyway). To a stranger, it demonstrates a willingness to make others smile. It brings down barriers and offers a pre-salutation even prior to the interpersonal exchange. The organization of the space – two tiny circular paths around oddly shaped rocks to each side of a straight flagstone walkway to the front door – exudes comfort and a sense of order to visitors on a block where few, if any others, take pride in updating the aesthetic features of their homes (it would be distasteful of me to get into the specifics). There is no place to sit. Only to walk by, look, smell, admire.
My maternal grandparents, another Pointe-Claire stop on the day’s journey, have the same size plot as my parents. Their backyard, however, has a different functionality ratio in that at least half the space is dedicated to growing food. Despite the reduced walking and living space, what abounds is breathing room. I will be silent now. These tungsten-flavoured pictures will tell it for me.
We grew up in backyards. Our suburban existence is characterized by the land we are able to have and fashion as a McLuhan-esque extension of our person. To them, we have outsourced our evenings, our mealtimes, our lust for sun and shade in a history dotted with the occasional kegger. That history continues as we rely on this greenspace for sanity and resolve and for escape from within claustrophobic walls.
