Stuart McLean

The Vinyl Café

C/O CBC Radio

Toronto ON

 

Dear Stuart,

 

 

I’ve been listening to your program for many years and it seems to me that the Vinyl Café is nothing if it’s not about community.  About celebrating the countless generosities, the special gifts, the selfless acts, the gentle kindnesses, that, in their unexpectedness and simplicity, bring us closer to one another. 

 

And though I’m writing to you today from the ancient French city of Béziers, the first stop on my family’s year-long, round-the-world journey, it’s not the good people of southern France that I’m writing to tell you about.  Instead I’d like to share a story about a very special place called Harling Point and about the very special people who live there, and who’ve made it possible for us to be here.

 

 Harling Point is a small coastal neighbourhood tucked onto a tiny peninsula, about an hour’s walk from downtown Victoria if you take the meandering seaside route.  The neighbourhood is picture-perfect by just about any measure, bounded on three sides by water, and by a golden, broom-swept bluff on the fourth.  Victoria’s historic Chinese Cemetery, which served as the main burial site for the island’s Chinese citizens at the turn of the last century, anchors one end of the point, and its grassy fields sweep gracefully unchecked to the sea.  The cemetery, in turn, is fronted by Penzance, a short street with sweeping views and bungalow-sized cottages that Victorians once flocked to when escaping the city for the summer.

 

The whole neighbourhood is made up of only about seven blocks, and the street we live on boasts apple, cherry and plum trees, and also the neighbourhood park.  That’s where most of the people in this story can be found just about every Tuesday evening, all summer long.  It’s our community potluck night, a night when everyone’s welcome, and, when the sun is blazing and the wind’s not gusting, you might find up to 100 of us sharing a meal and a game of soccer.

 

Harling Point was named after Dr. Frederick Harling who lost his life just off the point while trying to save two children from drowning.  It’s a community in which we’ve lived for just about eight years, and one that’s aptly named, given the spirit of selflessness and generosity we’ve come to know. 

 

My story begins about a year ago, when we announced to our friends and neighbours that we were leaving our jobs, pulling our two kids out of school, putting the house up for rent, and taking off for a year.   It was a decision that was a long time in the making.  With both of us working full-time – my partner as a high school teacher and me as a manager of a non-profit – and with two active children enrolled in all kinds of activities, we’d been feeling for a while that our lives were spinning out of control.  Spending a year overseas, we felt, would allow us to indulge both in our passion for travel and in our need to reconnect as a family. 

 

It was early days when I made the announcement, and I was feeling pretty organized.  Though Peter would be working for a few more months, I’d be free from the end of March, and would have plenty of time to get ready.  I had my lists, my laptop, my coffee, and time.  How hard could it be?

 

And yet.  

 

Who knew that there’d be so much to do? Shots! Visas! Passports! Flights!  That was just the beginning of it. 

 

Pruning the trees, fixing the dishwasher, patching the roof, painting the house – and that wasn’t all.  We had to find a house in France, a school for the kids, an NGO in India that would allow us to volunteer for a few months . . . The days turned to weeks and the weeks flowed to months.  As time marched on, at first at a snail’s pace, and then at light speed, I found myself adding more things to my TO DO list than I was taking off. 

 

But then, just as I was beginning to experience my first anxious, sleepless nights, help gradually and subtly began to materialize.  Out of kindness, out of friendship, and probably out of pity, the neighbourhood rallied around us with one, then another, and then countless offers to help out.

 

Fiona and Fraser

Here were our close friends Fiona and Stephanie, each with three kids of their own, grabbing our children from school, taking them swimming, feeding them dinner.  There was my sister Margie who lives just four houses away, hacking ivy off our fence while Liz, our next-door neighbour hauled it to the dump.  There was my brother-in-law Lonn, scraping the paint off our windowsills and running round the house painting over five-year-old crayon scratches.   There were our neighbours Brent and Mia lending us their home when we realized we’d have to vacate our own a month early to make way for our tenants.  And here was Stephanie again clearing out her garage, just so we’d have a place to store our car for the year. 

 

 

 

More surprising still were Steph’s brother and sister-in-law Jeremy and Janet who

Jenn and Janet

were visiting the neighbourhood from Calgary with their six-month old daughter, Jenn.  From these strangers came the astonishing offer to collect us from the airport in Calgary (where we would have a 24-hour layover en route to London), and to bring us, at 1:00 in the morning, to their bungalow-style home, where warm beds, a hearty breakfast, and a car for touring the city the next day awaited. 

 

Then the day arrived.

 

And there they were, our good, good neighbours, children and adults alike, pulling weeds from the garden and hauling them to the curb, clearing our pathways of wayward branches even as our renters pulled up the driveway.  And there was Karli at the door with her gift of home-made almond roca, hoisting garbage, grabbing a sponge, helping me clean out the fridge.  There was our newest neighbour James bounding through the door with a bottle of his home-made travel-size shampoo and conditioner for us to slip into our packs; and there were Stephanie and Fiona cooking up our pre-boarding dinner while we ran around the city finishing last-minute errands. 

 

I can’t tell you, in the end, how many people fed us over the summer.  How many sleepovers our children had that stretched well past noon the next day. I can’t count how many hands were extended in friendship, nor fully describe the gratitude we felt as those hands carried us gently to the airport. 

 

I can tell you that we wonder still today, four months into our journey, whether we’d have made it out the door without the help of our community.  And though we’re thousands of miles away, the ties of friendship hold us close. 

 

In the week before we left, the neighbourhood threw us a party.  There were banners and cakes and children streaking through the house.   There were the obligatory farewell toasts, and hugs and kisses of well wishes.  But then the spotlight turned, and a cheer went up, for Megan was getting married – and we toasted this young woman who was a child of Harling Point.  And then we turned to Tracy and to Chris who’d moved in just the week before, and welcomes were offered, and jokes were cracked, and there was laughter all around.  

 

It seems there’s always something to celebrate in this community, whether a family’s round-the-world odyssey, or indeed, their return.  But it’s also a community that is itself worth celebrating.  I realize that it’s too late to nominate Harling Pointers for an Arthur Award this year, and that your Christmas concert will have come and gone by the time you read this letter.  But perhaps you and some of your listeners might like to drop by on a Tuesday night, to meet some of these remarkable people, to share a story and a meal.  They might not be able to cut your grass, or to watch your Toronto home while you’re on tour, but rest assured that in this celebration of community, they’ll make you feel right at home. 

 

So long for now Stuart.

 

Rita Parikh