NOTHING WILL LAST FOREVER, INCLUDING MY NEIGHBOURHOOD

New modes of housing desperately needed, but change takes a toll, says Lora Grindlay.

Twenty-one years ago, my husband and I bought a 1940s bungalow on Renfrew Street in east Vancouver.

We had a three-month-old baby boy, and a home on a busy street with pink shag carpet and Smurf wallpaper. I pushed the stroller around my neighbourhood when I was too tired to drive — the boy only slept while in motion. So, we walked. We got to know our neighbours. Three years later, our daughter was born. We walked some more.

In one house, my husband met his best friend — that once-ina-lifetime kind of pal who has become part of our family. He also had young kids, and for a few years they rented a house just down the lane. That house is gone.

Next door to them, in a tiny, old house, we met a family that became beloved. They were children of hard-working Italian immigrants who had built a home. They also had kids, and we spent hours together with them — the sisters, the brother, on the lawn, on the stoop, drinking slightly sparkly homemade wine. Trees were climbed, tears were shed (adults and kids), and we watched our kids grow up. That house is gone.

There was a large family that lived in a small home two houses north. They had cats, and when they ran out of cat food, they would come over to get some. Both the owners and the cats. That house is gone.

Way back, there was a fellow from Prince Edward Island, a carpenter, who rented a small house four houses north. We would walk down the lane toward Notre Dame Secondary every night after dinner. He always had a wave for the kids.

That house is gone.

Just southwest by a few houses was what the kids and I called the Abandoned Cat House — and still do, even though it was replaced by a $3-million duplex with a laneway house and a Tesla plugged in out back. The fun the kids and I had, taking cat food and water up the lane, putting it out and looking for kittens.

Welcome to east Van, where if you blink you will miss another house coming down. Cars multiply like bunnies outside your home. Blocks of single-family homes have been sold to developers, torn down and replaced with six-storey apartments, not enough of which are affordable for anyone I know.

We need housing, we need affordable housing, we need purpose-built rental housing. There is no question. You won't hear me complaining about the dump trucks, the excavators idling outside my windows — it's temporary and means people (at least those with a thick bankroll) will have a place to live.

Problems need to be solved, solutions are messy and disruptive, and nothing lasts forever — including my neighbourhood. Another metamorphosis is underway and that's OK. I tell myself that I can't be the only one to lament, even for a moment, what has been here before.

There are four new duplexes a block away. They are all shades of grey, positioned on the same spot on the lots, with identical garages. And it feels like the suburbs are coming for us.

But in the end it is the people who create a neighbourhood, not the homes. We got to know people, not their houses.

The characters in a neighbourhood are what will make you feel grounded there. I see the newcomers, those who are sharing walls and a yard with their neighbours in a duplex, and believe that they too will find some solid footing here.

And to those of you on the west side who don't think it will happen there — believe me, it's coming, and it's going to change your world. Those homes, those lawns, those steps you visited your friends on, they will be history.

So, here's to the longshoremen who planted grapes, figs and plum trees in east Vancouver decades ago.

Here's to the widows living alone in the homes where they raised their families, simply unwilling to move because it is home.

Here's to the beautiful gardens that have been planted and tended for decades, only to be dug up in minutes by heavy machinery.

Here's to the life of the 97-yearold Italian lady down the lane who just passed away. Up until a few months ago, I would see her in her garden and walking to the bus stop. Her family gathered under a tent in the yard to say goodbye.

Here's to the unique flavour of a street where every home was a little different, constructed when the future was bright, the possibilities were endless and there were yards to play in.

Another house just came down the other day, five houses south. When the kids were young, we would walk there up the lane — they had a hot tub and there was always revelry. I would wave, lift the kids up so they could say hello over the fence.

That house, they told me, was basically a cabin, built with a fireplace but no furnace. It was tiny, and B.C. Assessment tells me it was built in 1924 — 100 years ago. When those neighbours moved out, they brought over a few plants they wanted me to save. I still have them in my garden.

When I saw an excavator in that yard while walking last week, alone now without any kids in tow, I knew what had to be done. I grabbed my shovel, dug up half a dozen plants — some foxgloves, some sedums — and brought them home.

The next day, to the sound of the house coming down, I planted them in my garden. The dump truck rolled by with the rubble, another bin of debris, another rat population spreading around the neighbourhood, another family's history a memory.

Here's to the unique flavour of a street where every home was a little different.