where your heart is

"I wish I had a house

I'd fill it up with my life."

So sings Parker Millsap in his song "Homeless".

I think a lot about houses these days. 

The house I grew up in. We thought it was a castle. A castle with a double sided fireplace and a long living room and windows with views of the hills. A chaotic castle with four kids and friends coming and going, cats and dogs, my mom's endless projects, my dad tinkering in the basement. A castle where parties were hosted and noisy family dinners invariably ended with arguments over whose turn it was to plug in the kettle. Where battles were fought and lost. Where you knew who you were. Where you always belonged.

The house where I grew up.

Easter

The four of us in the front yard

Me and my two best friends on the front step

My parents' first Tumbler Ridge house, is now owned by my brother. My mom had so much fun designing and decorating it. I never lived in that house, but we got married there on the coldest day of the year. It was the house where we brought babies who grew into kids who played with their cousins and Christmas morning was filled with their whispers, "he came!" 
The house where my parents grew old, too old to stay in a two story house.

Our son and his granddad

Granddad and his granddaughter, Len and Anna the Jack Russell

Cookie decorating

Our first Slave Lake house.  A little house where we lived a big life on a cul-de-sac where 18 other kids lived. My husband built a skating rink in the back yard that killed all the grass. He and his dad built another bedroom in the basement so every kid could have a room and he replaced every section of the fence, one piece at a time.. A house where babies turned into toddlers who grew into children who turned into teenagers. Where puppies peed on the carpet and saplings grew into trees. 

A poorly built house that was the best we could afford at the time, with its one bathroom and leaky wood basement and weird wiring. Magic shows and sleepovers and meetings of the "secret club" and puppet shows and dog birthdays and convoluted little boy games and special dinners with the good china in the little dining room with my home office in the corner. "Family" birthdays and big Christmas parties with the kids in the basement grinding cookie icing into the carpet. It burned to the ground in the Slave Lake wildfire.

The next house in Slave Lake. 

I've said enough about it, but you can read the link if you missed it,

I wept when we left it. 

My Aunty Peggy's house. She and Uncle Sam built it in 1948. A house filled with plants and art. A house that grew and grew as the family expanded as my cousins grew up and married and had kids of their own. It was the centre of their family. Meals around the big dining room table with conversations about people you never met. After the kids moved out, she was always redecorating. We stayed in the "blue room" when we visited. She lived there for over 60 years. 

Grandparents, uncles and aunts on the front step 

Around the table 

My grandparents lived in what used to be a log cabin on a northern homestead until it was converted into a more modern two story house with a "long room" above the original cabin where we played dressups, always unsupervised. It was the sound of my grandmother starting the fire before we were out of bed. It was the smell of baking bread. It was my mom and Granddad arguing over something on the morning news playing on the old blue radio. It was evenings playing canasta with our grandparents and our great aunts. It was picnics at the river and Christmas dinners with what seemed the whole neighbourhood at the table. A haven where you felt anchored to the past.

My grandparents' house, now owned by my cousin Peter and his wife Eileen.

Little cousins playing dressups

Christmas with cousins

Granddad at the Christmas table.

My cousin's wedding in the living room

I think too about the houses our daughters now own, bought during the pandemic. They are places where they are building their own lives. Knickknacks from their travel years, and artwork and books and yards for dogs and room for entertaining and at least one baby. They have put their own stamp on their houses. I feel at home when I'm there. They seem so familiar to me. 

Len's mom is still in the house he grew up in. A house where the Vilas furniture is always polished and milkglass is dusted and the African violets on the windowsill are always blooming. It's a house where nothing ever changes, not even the calendar. She's lived there for almost 60 years and she keeps coming up with reasons why she shouldn't move but none of them are true.

Christmas 1966

The real reason she doesn't want to move is that her home isn't a bunch of rooms filled with furniture. She's contained in its bits and pieces.  It's where she has lived out the story of her life.  For her,like most of us, the idea of home is family and and friends and community. It's memories and dreams. You inhabit it, and it inhabits you. It's where you belong. How do you walk away from that?

In Canada, owning a single family dwelling is something most people aspire to. We don't have a "cafe culture" or a "pub culture" where people gather to visit. We do that in our homes. But that's a dream that is disappearing for many Canadians.

I recently saw a graph that shows how house prices compare with income over the past 30 years.  You would have to be living in a bubble if you haven't noticed. Or maybe you, like many people in my demographic, are benefiting from the ever increasing value of house prices. You paid off your house long ago and you're enjoying your home equity line of credit or dreaming of the day you'll sell at a handsome profit. Maybe- also like people in my demographic- your kids got into the market at just the right time. Or maybe they didn't and now the only way they will ever afford a house is for you to sell your house. Or for someone to die. Otherwise, they will never own a house.

See full video here

We bought our first house in 1989 in Viking, Alberta. We imagined it as a house where we would live a full and happy life, which did not turn out to be the case.  It cost $87,500 and we lost $10,000 when we sold it. It's the biggest house we have ever owned, with huge rooms and a beautiful yard and views of the farm fields beyond in an unfriendly town we were happy to leave. We were a single income household with a baby at home and another one on the way. My husband earned $27,000 a year and we were able to put 30% down. Today, a first year teacher in Alberta on average makes $60,000. That person could hardly afford to save a downpayment for an average home in Canada at $656,000. Even two teachers working full time would struggle to make their mortgage payments in today's market.

Our first house in Viking, Alberta

Nowadays, the media questions whether home ownership is worth it. Is a house really an "investment"? Will house prices continue to escalate and if they do, how do young people afford them? Rent isn't cheap. In cities like Victoria, some live in shared accommodation. Some, like my daughters' neighbours, live in minivans in driveways. Yet economists say that for housing to be affordable for the average Canadian, house prices need to drop by 40% or family incomes to rise by 66%. No one who owns a house now wants to see its value drop to that extent- for many people, their house is their only truly valuable asset. And obviously there is no chance incomes will rise to that extent.

My great grandparents lived in a house. So did my grandparents, parents and friends. My daughters both own houses, but will my son or grandson? Generally we in the so-called "developed" world on the whole live longer, healthier and safer lives. But can the next generation live like us? Will their quality of life be as good as ours? Already, the era of the single income household has died. Will the era of the single family dwelling die as well?

There are many factors that have led to our current housing situation. Supply and demand. Population growth. Years of historically low interest rates. Single family homes turned into short term rentals. Speculation. Immigration. Foreign investment. Increasing life expectancy. Income disparity. You might call it late stage capitalism.

Whatever you call it, it's not good.

The homestead of my ancestors near Paris, Ontario. 1910.

My great grandparents homestead, near Beaverlodge AB, now a designated historic site. 

You might say not everyone has been lucky enough to live in a house where they are accepted and loved, as I was. You might also say that you don’t need to own a house to have a home. You can make a home in a rented apartment, a condo, or even an RV. Maybe you will say the planet does not have enough space for all 7 billion people to own their own house. Be that as it may, most people do want a place that is permanently theirs in which to live their lives. They want the same thing their parents and grandparents had. They want the chance to build those lives in their own houses and that sense of belonging that a house can provide. They want what we and the rest of my generation were lucky enough to have. And they deserve to have it.


People don't buy a building to live in, they buy the life they imagine living. Maybe it’s the dream of a yard for your dogs to play in, or pretty bedrooms for kids yet unborn to sleep in. Maybe it’s the idea of friends all cooking together around that big island or family gathering under that tree that you are going to put right there. Maybe it’s another life that includes entertaining more, of winter evenings around the fireplace, and summer drinks on the patio, and places for visitors to sleep. Maybe it’s the dream of your grandchildren waking on Christmas morning to see if Santa came. 

Whatever that dream is, it is out of reach for an increasing number of Canadians, and that’s not right. 

Our current house

Family

Friends

Nicola vs Chair: Part Two

Just before we moved I started restoring an old platform rocker. You might have read about it. If not, here's the link.

I did not complete this job before we moved. The chair sat in the garage in the new house for almost another year before I got back to it. Another coat of paint.  Still a little pink bleeding though on one arm. Len installed the high quality seat made by our friends Bruce and Kelly. It fit like a glove and is rock solid. I bought upholstery fabric, didn't like it, sold it and bought something else. I ordered foam, made a cushion and reupholstered the back using a staple gun. Then added the trim. 

When it was all done,  I sat down. And I smiled. It is a comfortable chair.

But I won't say I was 100% satisfied. There were drips on the paint. There's still a pinky undertone. I did not paint the underside which is still rough and reddish brown. I did a pretty amateurish job on the upholstery. But it was serviceable. The biggest problem was that it felt like you were going to topple over backwards when you sat in it.

Our friends Glenn and Sheila came for a visit. We made sure they didn't sit in the chair. But Len did. As we were enjoying our cocktails on the veranda, there was a popping sound followed by a crash as Len went straight over backwards, narrowly avoiding punching a hole through the screen door. Somehow he managed to keep his drink aloft like a pro.

Closer investigation revealed that one of the springs had snapped. Back the chair went to the garage. New springs were ordered. In the meantime, I found almost the identical chair- in a much better state of repair- in Calgary for $90. We could have bought it, but we didn't. Stubbornly, I wanted to fix the chair. I needed to fix the chair. It had become a symbol to me. But a symbol of what?

The springs arrived, costing almost the same as a better version of the chair. And they weren't the same as the old springs.  Len discovered the old screws holding the springs to the chair did not match. And they were painted to the chair. With some mineral spirits and elbow grease, they were removed. After a few missteps, the new springs were attached- two per side, much less bendy than the originals and with six screws per side.  Much better than one loose rusty spring and two mismatched screws.

Looking more closely at the underside of the chair, we could see evidence of previous repairs. Blocks of plywood had been screwed in to hold the bits together. A couple dozen rusty old tacks had held down the two layers of upholstery. A mysterious wire seemed to be holding one leg in place although it seemed unnecessary. We left it where it was.

I continue to ponder what the chair means to me. I know it has something to do with preserving the past in a new place and something to do with creating a home.

In many countries people don't move far from where they were born. Their memories and their history surrounds them. Their sense of place and where they belong is set. For better or worse, their history is inescapable. In Canada though? Most of us have come from somewhere else.  We carry our history and geography inside us-invisible to the world- although the result may bleed through. The stories of our ancestors, their successes and joys, their tragedies and injustices- both endured and inflicted-are known only to them. Our sense of who we are and where we belong is something we make for ourselves. This fact of our existence may be freeing, but it's also sad. 

I imagine when the chair was new. I imagine a family bringing it to a pioneer home in the Peace Country. I think about the first person who sat on it, perhaps smiling as I did. I imagine the woman of the house standing back and admiring her new furniture with a sense of completion, maybe feeling that now, she had arrived.  

Since that first family owned the chair, generations of people have seen something in it worth preserving. With its mismatched screws and bits of plywood and mysterious wire, it has survived many transitions. It is part of the past yet it continues on into the future. Just as we humans move forward, carrying our past with its secrets and joys and broken bits held tenuously together. Knowing what we know, we try to be our best selves wherever we are.

My great-grandparents' farm near Brantford

Our Dawson Creek house

Our Slave Lake house

So here we are in our new home, in a town with dozens of temporary residents in fancy vacation homes. We are making friends in this place where every day is a holiday and who you are in another place and time doesn't count for much. What counts is who you are now and what you're going to do today. 

Winter came. We moved the chair from the veranda to the bedroom where our new grandson would sleep. The house-now fully furnished with bits and pieces cobbled together - is home. 

I am home.