Ode to Adelaide

A love letter to our neighbours + a photo series of the home that stores our current memories.

Nestled at the foot of the Niagara Escarpment, tucked in next to the only “mountain” I’ve ever known, lies the little town of Grimsby. Prevented from becoming a sprawling suburban dystopia by the boundary lines of Hamilton to the West, Lincoln to the East, the escarpment, and the waters of Lake Ontario to the South and North respectively, it’s (mostly) maintained it’s North American small town flavour. I often refer to Grimsby as our own little Stars Hollow, with its cozy little shops, friendly demeanour, crusty breakfast diner and even its tiny gazebo twinkling downtown. It has a similar charm. And, as we came to realize, a similar cast of quirky, colourful, lovable characters too.

Our girls have a favourite Franklin story book called, “Franklin’s Neighbourhood.” Franklin is tasked with drawing a picture of his favourite part of his neighbourhood. His friends choose the library, the fire station, and the skating pond, but after some deliberation Franklin draws not a place, but all of his neighbours. We always smile because we feel the same. There’s lots to love about Franklin’s town, and Stars Hollow, and Grimsby, but the real draw is the people.

I often imagine our street as a scientist’s golden discovery in the search for an accurate cross section of small town affairs. If you took a slice of Grimsby and that slice was Adelaide Street, you’d find a pretty complete look at what exists in many average neighbourhoods, all packed into one street. The range of human experiences we got to witness there was, in my opinion, broad, deep, and varied.

One family lives near the poverty line in a rental that hasn’t seen a lick of paint in years, yet their porch is never without a diaper box filled with free clothes or household items they are passing on to the next family in need.

One lady has outfitted our daughter’s bike with streamers, and another with a horn (the gift that keeps on giving her parents a headache), while yet another family offered her an entirely new bike to use once this one becomes outgrown.

Across the street once lived a quiet couple who rented and saved for 40 years before taking the plunge into the housing market on their own. The gardens in front of their home were always immaculately tended; an act of defiance against the potential for lethargic, careless rental attitude. An inspiration to us, and likely the very discipline that will make their own home beautiful.

Sometimes we refer to our next door neighbours’ place as the hostel - a revolving door of kids, friends, friends’ kids, and kids’ friends, and assorted family members who need a place to stay for a while. One of the longest standing families on the street, and one of the few who own their home, they could tell you exactly who lived in which apartment at what time, what they did, and why they left. That’s because they are quick to say hello and slow to leave a good conversation (or pass up a chance to commiserate about the latest town gossip).

One house has been egged by a random group of teenage boys in their underwear, one has been renovated and snooped on Remax by everyone on the street. One woman insists on leaf blowing every blade of freshly cut grass off of her lawn at ten o’clock (PM!) every weekend in the summer. On more than one occasion while sitting on our front porch, we have watched as one neighbour’s beau parked his truck in front of her house on his lunch break, ran up the steps to her apartment, and met her with a passionate embrace - one that continued in passion and embracing until it moved inside, leaving the truck running on the street.

A small, spunky woman lives in an apartment with a rental rate she locked in years ago, while her creepy landlord continually tries to make her miserable enough to leave so he can raise it. They have screaming matches on the front lawn every few weeks about some issue or other, and at the end of it he drives away and she continues living there. Every winter she moves back to her home country of Vietnam to escape the cold, and every spring she arrives on our front porch to give our kids random thrift store items and tell us about the latest drama with her landlord.

Two dark, seemingly empty houses, interestingly placed across from one another, contain the Boo Radleys of Adelaide. Unknown to everyone, and virtually invisible, our nosy selves have speculated many theories of what led them into such reclusive and mysterious ways. The tamest theories involve loneliness and private tendencies, the most ridiculous, a secret underground passageway that connects a husband and wife forced to live apart as part of an elaborate Witness Protection program.

On the other side of the absurdity spectrum, two quintessential Hallmark families also occupy space on Adelaide Street. One drives brand new vehicles which they load up with hockey bags and football uniforms and generally keep to themselves. And the other consists of a sweet couple, one girl, one boy, a dog, and a cat - the poster family for the North American dream complete with every new childrearing gadget and all the snacks my kids whine for at the store. Since they moved in beside us they have become dear friends. Our kids spent all summer in each others’ backyards and sprinklers. Their kids flocked to our veggie garden to help pick “real” carrots, and our girls bounced on their trampoline. Their friendly nature, generous spirits, and easygoing approach to play dates gave our girls the best parts of that coveted 90s childhood that you can get these days. And our regular conversation across porches gave us a taste of the community we longed for.

And taking up the corner, just a few doors down, sits the public library. Our home away from home. We passed three long, dark Ontario winters there with fresh toys, good stories, and kind company. We took squirrely children there to get out of the apartment and get thirty seconds of fresh air. (When I told our eldest that we could drive to our new library to check it out, she protested that libraries were for walking to.) The librarian’s tent was the highlight of our farmer’s market excursions in the summer. Most, if not all of Kev’s sermons were written at the back of the library looking out of the window, where he’d often see us walking around the block. Though for all the things we loved about the library, in true Franklin fashion, our favourite part was the librarians themselves. Warm, patient, and never without stickers, they let our girls scan books sitting on the counter, traipse around the aisles, and chat endlessly about their days. In a moment of serendipity that brought tears to my eyes, a few days before our move they gifted the girls a copy of none other than, “Franklin’s Neighbourhood,” personally signed by their team, thanking them for being their neighbours.

Oh Adelaide, where our firstborn learned to bike on the sidewalk and our second was nearly born in the driveway. Where we learned something of the pace and potential, the cost and the care of a neighbourhood.

“What must I do to inherit eternal life?” An expert in the law asks Jesus. “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’” “And who is my neighbour?”*

On Adelaide Street, we learned to identify our neighbours, to see them in all their human strength and brokenness and kindness and fear. At times we wrestled with loving them. We asked God to show us how to love the rude cashiers and strange newcomers and the dad in our basement whose screaming made it up through our floorboards and made our hearts cold. At other times we felt the warm glow of receiving our neighbours’ love for us. And as we leave we pray that through the grace of God, we have made some small progress toward loving our neighbour as ourselves.

“Home is anywhere he leads me.”* And yet, this home was a good one to us. “Love your neighbour as yourself.” We have tried, Lord. Purify our efforts. What did you like best about your neighbourhood? “My neighbours. That’s what I liked best about my neighbourhood.”

My sister joined us for a typical Saturday morning and captured our family stage and last memories in our apartment for us in beautiful documentary style. They are a work of genius, and they are our real life, preserved for the day that I am 80 and these are the photos that make me weep for the good old days. An ode to Adelaide isn’t complete without them:

Photo Credit: Jamie Bouwman