Editor's Note: We're pleased to introduce local writer, Catherine Boivin, to VanierNow (and pleased that spring appears to have returned... or is at least near).
I’ll bet you something: I bet if you went out recently and walked around the neighbourhood, you probably slipped, maybe you even fell, I bet you cursed, and if you weren’t wearing rain boots, you definitely got your feet wet.
It’s almost spring in Ottawa, and the streets of Vanier look something like the islands and swamps of the Bayou. My rain boots may be two sizes too big for me, but when there are puddles at every intersection and your winter boots have holes (guilty!), you make do with oversized rain boots. And with an extra insole and two pairs of wooly socks, I’m good to traipse the sidewalks in my knee-high yellow boots. If everyone around me walks gingerly on ice and snow to avoid the puddles, I crash right through them.
Until, that is, I once came home on a Friday evening to find the mother of all puddles. Here in front of our house near the sugar shack was stretched a puddle from the end of our driveway to the middle of our street.
I stared at the puddle. I stared at our front door. I stared back at the puddle. Would my boots make it? Were they tall enough? I stepped in, stepped again, further still; I made it across, the water reaching just a couple inches below the top of my boots.
Friday evening. It should’ve been time for a martini and a little R and R with my beloved, but not that February Friday. I felt I had to prove to my neighbours of Vanier that I appreciated them; that I was proud to live among them. We moved in just last fall, and we couldn’t be happier with our 1950s house and its view on the maple wood, but it’s the neighbours across the street who are the cherry on our Vanier sundae.
When the snows started back in December, we started shoveling. We don’t have a car, but we figured the neighbours who share our driveway might appreciate it. I suppose the elderly couple across the street took pity on us, because after every snowfall since the New Year, he’s been coming with his snow blower and clearing our driveway.
Smiles and waves never seemed enough thanks, so when I saw Lake Vanier outside our home, I decided I’d get rid of it. Maybe then we’d be worthy of the kindness Mr. and Mrs. Across-the-street have shown us.
So with a broomstick and a shovel, I went hunting for a drain in the puddle. I poked, I hacked, I shoveled water (a useless enterprise), I even dragged my feet along the road, trying to tell pavement from metal drain. All in vain.
It was Mrs. Across-the-street who came out first, calling to me from her front porch.
“I called the city.” She had an accent, vaguely Eastern European. “The yellow mark.” She pointed to a painted ‘T’ on the street. “There is the drain.”
Bingo. I walked from the yellow mark to the edge of the sidewalk and started hacking again. And poking. Prodding. Stomping. Nothing.
Mr. Across-the-street came out next, iron rod and hammer in hand.
“Called the city four times,” he said. “Never came.”
He put his hammer to his rod, started pounding, and didn’t speak again.
I joined him with my broomstick, and eventually, by some miracle, his rod sank deep into the puddle, down below the street level. It took more prodding, more hacking; eventually an eddy formed, vanished, formed again, as though Moses had come to part the great Vanier Sea; a sucking whirlpool formed, and in less than 15 seconds, the puddle had vanished.
“You have salt?”
I nodded.
He was looking down into the drain, which was full of ice except where he’d pierced his hole. “Then put salt. It help with this.”
So I put my salt, I smiled, I thanked him warmly, and he left, back across the street, silent as ever.
I looked down at the drain, then up to our house, where my beloved was waving at me from the window. As I stepped into our home, I caught sight of our neighbour returning to the drain with a hammer and chisel. Here was Ahab and his Moby Dick. I smiled to myself, and shut the door.
Martini in hand, I sat comfortably on our couch and watched the news. This was the Friday of the great 12-meter sinkhole in downtown Ottawa. Suddenly our puddle seemed pretty insignificant in the big scheme of municipal affairs. And for that, I was grateful: the city couldn’t come, but I came, and my neighbour came, and together we made our little corner of the universe that much better.
So tonight as I write this I raise my martini to you all in Vanier, and say, “Cheers!” Cheers to great neighbours, and a great neighbourhood.
Photos: VanierNow (2014)