Old Harry

The east light dances through the stretch of pine trees that fill the backyard of my father’s home. The sunrise is captured by the rain and as it freezes, it captures every needle of every branch with it. And sheltered in the shadows of the poised, veteran tree is Old Harry, wolfing down a banquet of kitchen-savings I tossed out last night.

I named Old Harry years ago—it seemed the heavy-set, slate grey, part brontosaurus and part jack rabbit has been around forever. Then again, it could be a lookalike sibling or descendant, but I have never witnessed a family of harrys, nor more than one Harry at any given moment.

I’m thinking Harry’s family tree is tied to the Saunderson farm. For a century, the farm stood on the rise of the old shoreline of an ancient channel of the Ottawa River. Hard to understand that today, driving through a maze of industrial development that leads to a 13 square mile protected area known as Mer Bleu. It’s a sphagnum bog with a boreal-like ecosystem normally not found this far south. It bears testimony to 12,000 years ago—the time that Lake Iroquois covered most of Prince Edward County—when the Champlain Sea flooded the Ottawa valley and its tributaries.

When Mrs. Saunderson made the decision to sell the huge tract of the family farm sitting on the hard clay ridge that bordered Mer Bleu to a housing developer in the 1950s, the section of Ottawa that includes my present, temporary quarters, became a suburb of winding streets with names like Hamlet and Othello—alas, fair moon and relic shorelines, the bard and bungalows and neatly curbed streets with nary a sidewalk to impede.

Whenever I visited my folks in the past, I would grab an early day coffee and retreat to their small sunroom, just as I am this morning. I would ponder the light and take in the chickadees and black squirrels, and most certainly wait for Old Harry, who, on the road to his many stops, would faithfully make his way along the neighbour’s fence, then through the hole in the dense white cedar hedge that borders my folks’ backyard.

But this morning is different. The bird feeder is in need of cleaning and filling; Mrs. Saunderson, who continued to live in the old farmhouse and would drop by to visit, has passed away; Joan, our caregiver, has just arrived to give Dad, who now lives alone, a start-of-day hand at bathing and dressing and meds and breakfast and dishes. I take over after lunch ‘til bedtime. In between phone calls and meeting with help professionals to guide our way, I block out the times when I focus on my work. I am here in Ottawa to help my century-old dad navigate his way through critical life change. Can’t say I’m the best equipped to be the one to help with steerin’. All I know is I’m willin’ to try.

The year Dad was born, 1914, the auto industry was America’s Silicon Valley. Henry Ford had re-invented the assembly line, and Model Ts were spilling out every 90 minutes. The prior time had been eight hours a car. There have since been few facets of our lives not affected by the automobile. The car became a gamechanger everywhere.

Fast forward to the urban design of the 1950s, around the time when my folks bought the house I’m sitting in. There was the disappearance of back alleyways which once accessed stables; where our small amount of refuse was gathered and collected; where backyards had chickens that roamed the kitchen garden.

Out front emphasised the rise of lawn culture that had its beginnings in societal Britain: Houses of the 1950s were set back from the street to showcase the lawn, meanwhile front porches—previously close to sidewalks, where neighbours met and conversed daily—were eliminated. The car necessitated a paved driveway, also at the front, and an extension—the garage—needed to be added to the house to house the vehicle. And something I am reminded of on mornings when I walk the neighbourhood: Back then, since it was expected that most people would use the car to travel downtown to work, the idea of walking in such neighbourhoods was barely considered. There were scarce notations on the drawing board for sidewalks. I’ll be fine without them for the time being.

Besides, with a boreal bog and Old Harry as a descendant of the farm and a half-century bungalow to note, our humanity is tied to change. As imperfect as life can often feel, I remain open to the possibilities of graceful transition around here, as gracefully as August becomes October. It won’t necessarily be like the magic hat that care worker Joan arrived with the other day; the one where a rabbit appears. But I’ll hold to the up-story of possibilities.