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Wednesday 11 July 2012

What I Know For Sure (thanks, Oprah)....

We've been living in this place for four years now, and for four years, our patio has looked out on a site designated for the Canadian Fallen Firefighters Memorial.

For two of those years, the only thing on the site, besides scrubby grass and gulls, was a sign saying "future site of...".  It was not inspiring but it was relatively clean, and people used to tramp through it to get to the Museum or to the apartment building.  It was benign.

We were delighted when last summer, work started on the site---there was a ceremony to kick things off, wire fencing went up around the site and not-very-attractive black plastic fencing lined the sidewalk on our property, and I was hopeful.  Machines moved in, workers shoved earth around in whimsical ways, the plastic fencing started deteriorating, mysterious bundles wrapped in unsturdy but noisy wrappings came and went, things got measured, measured again, abandoned and covered over with new soil.  Sort of eye-catching, but not reassuring.

Then it snowed over everything.  Architecturally interesting, but not pretty.

This spring, but late this spring, things started happening again on the other side of our torn and greying plastic fence, and we rejoiced.  We still couldn't see any resemblance to the maquette we'd oooooohhed over three years ago, but names were being engraved in the wall, a tree got planted, a 20 ft bronze fireman also got planted (which actually was quite entertaining) and the workers took to having picnic lunches at the end of our front yard.  But the work which was to have been completed in May is still ongoing, and our windows are covered in whatever gets into the air when you're blasting names into granite walls, the plastic fencing is flapping in the wind, the general untidiness is getting old and I'm losing patience.

There is a big memorial ceremony scheduled for September 12th, so if I can hold out till then, I'm sure all will be well.  I'm sure.  I'm sure.




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