A change of lifestyle – from N.D.G. to Mile End
Valerie Legge, 55, a professional violinist, raised her two children in N.D.G. where she had a detached home and a garden. She also owned a place in the country, but two things prompted her to drastically change her lifestyle. Her children (now in their 20s) left home and she started suffering from carpel tunnel syndrome, brought on, in part, by the repetitive movements required to play the violin.
Abandoning her music career, Legge became a life coach, and, in 2010, decided to move to Mile End. She found a onebedroom, ground-floor apartment with a “postage stamp size” front and back garden. She also opened a new business, O Jus, on Parc Avenue — a juice bar selling healthy drinks and smoothies. You certainly don’t do things by halves! What drew you to Mile End?
It’s home to so many creative people. Around here you find musicians, designers, independent filmmakers. … The main thing was the neighbourhood feel. I like the fact that when I go into the local stores, people know me.
There are lots of interesting little enterprises, too. I must admit I knew very little about business. The juice bar has been a bit of a learning curve, but I love having daily contact with my customers. It must have been quite a change downsizing to a relatively small apartment?
Well, when I opened the business, I knew I wanted to be living in a home and to me, a “home” means a place with a garden. I like to dig, to put my hands into the earth. I also wanted to be on the ground floor of a duplex. This is actually a fourplex, but the front and backyards are for my use alone. I imagine that in Mile End affordable places with a garden are relatively rare?
I found the apartment on Kijiji. I visited it on a Wednesday and there were already a lot of people looking around. The tenant was a Moroccan restaurateur who had decided to move back to his home country. When I saw the apartment, I knew right away that this was where I wanted to live. To hurry things along, I offered him a package deal, which included buying all his furniture. That clinched the deal. I moved in three days after signing the lease. That was fast! What did you do with his furniture? Surely you had some of your own?
Believe it or not, he left absolutely everything, including clothes in the closets and food in the fridge, so I had a month during which I had to empty two homes into one! I got rid of almost all of his stuff but I kept the back room. I call it my “Moroccan salon.”
(We walk into the living room, which is off the kitchen/dining area. As is typical in traditional north African homes, where the place used for socializing doubles as a guest room, the living room has divans arranged in an L-shape along the walls. Covered in blue, red and gold satin, they have matching cushions to support people’s backs when they’re eating or relaxing.)
The floor is covered with an Oriental-style rug on which stands a coffee table fashioned from old barn boards. A dainty light fixture with tiny mosaic shades, suspended from spindly metal “branches,” hangs above it. Legge found the lamp in Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar and carried it home “very carefully” in her hand luggage.) You were telling me that you’d done a lot of travelling and that many of your other things also come from various countries.
I spent my early childhood in what is now Zambia, I studied violin in Japan and worked a bit around Europe. (She indicates a cluster of woven African baskets on a built-in shelf by the kitchen, an Oriental wall hanging and some Thai temple rubbings.)
I’ve also inherited some things from various members of my family, like the writing desk in the hallway and the cedar chest. (She opens the lid to reveal layers of handmade quilts and embroidered linens. They were a dowry for her great aunt who, in fact, never married.) The rocker with the bergère rattan seat in my office-cumbedroom was my grandmother’s nursing chair. (The largest room in the apartment, it’s divided by an archway hung with a curtain for privacy. It’s painted a sunny yellow and the window looks out over the front yard.)
None of my artifacts could really be considered valuable — not even the old ones — but they hold special memories for me and they all have a story to tell.