You Can’t Go Home

we were here

Not when you rented the place, anyway.

Ter and I spent 17 years on the top floor of a grand old Victoria mansion, circa 1885. Two of those years were lived in #15, a two-storey loft with a gargantuan kitchen and a gorgeous view of the city skyline. The main problems with that suite were the paper-thin wall between us and #16, and the appallingly disrespectful tenant who took up residence there a year and a bit after we moved in. So after a bunch of the tenants got together and the girl was evicted, Ter and I moved next door to avoid a similar scenario down the road. (Being a two bedroom, #16 ran the risk of becoming home to another roommate situation unlike our own, where one was never home and the other was a party animal.)

Both suites were stunning for having been renovated to reflect the era in which the house was built. The walls were a soft sage green trimmed with plum, and the bare fir floors rippled gold and amber when the sunlight crept across them. We had ghosts in the hallways and tons of closet space, and a cute little rooftop deck between the gables. It was accessed by a little mullioned door on the far side of the vestibule, where we stashed our wine and root veggies in the winter (the vestibule got very cold!) Ter put pots of herbs and pansies on the deck, and often sat outside on a summer night, watching the stars until well past her bedtime. We stuffed both beds into the smaller bedroom and used the larger one—with the cathedral ceiling and identical view of the city skyline as #15—as our main living room. We used what was probably meant to be the living room as a quiet room, where we lined the built-in bookshelves with our hardcover coffee table books and plugged an electric heater disguised as a wood stove into the faux fireplace.

At Christmas, we draped greens over the doorways and put up a tree in every room. Pillar candles were stood in corners and glass bowls of potpourri scented the whole apartment with pine and cinnamon and orange.

The Julian and Therése story was written there in 1998. Lucius was born there in 2002. The Cassandra series was started and countless other projects completed. Ter did some artwork, but discovered a passion for cooking in the little kitchen that had only two electrical outlets plus the one in the stove.

We held countless afternoon teas. We walked up the road to Government House and Craigdarroch Castle, and down the road to town. The resident ghosts ranged from a mischievous schoolboy with red hair to a young girl in a flowing gown to an old lady with a bitter attitude. Ter often heard a distant choir singing in the dead of night, and once I felt someone squeeze my heel as he/she/it passed by my bed.

We had squirrels, wasps and rats too, over the years, not to mention a plague of silverfish that was never really solved because the plumbing leaked so badly. We froze in winter and sweltered in summer. Neighbours—some good, some annoying—came and went until we became the dowager tenants who had survived four property management companies.

What we did not survive was the change of ownership in 2007.

I often wondered what happened to #16 after Ter and I abandoned hope in 2011. The place needed some serious renovation, as no maintenance had been done in years and the ceiling around the skylights remained open to the shingles after the new owners put them in that first winter. Whenever a tenant left, the suite was upgraded and the rent appropriately jacked. But Ter and I pulled a fast one by handing in our notice, so they had to rent it as it was because they needed the guaranteed income. One evening close to our end date, the property manager showed up with a viewer in tow (so much for 24 hours’ written notice), and we suspect the kid took it because, at that price and in that neighbourhood, he was young enough to endure rougher conditions than open ceilings and leaky pipes.

We were done. It was not a particularly peaceful parting.

After all these years, #16 is on the market again. Advertised as 1000 feet of loft-style living with geometric ceilings and industrial light fixtures, they have ripped out both the closets and the chimney in the bedroom hallway, torn out the wall that created the first bedroom, torn out the wall that created the second bedroom, filled in the bookcases and covered over the faux fireplace, knocked out the doorway to the kitchen and opened up the “ghost crossing” where the little red haired kid liked to hide ... in short, the place is gutted. Soulless. Everything is cold and sharp and jutting. The floors look great; but I dare anyone to keep the place warm with Shredded Wheat in the outside walls and ten foot ceilings at their highest point.

Not my problem, I know. It’s just that my heart broke a little more when I saw what had become of our charming, beautiful former home; the home we had loved and made our own even though we didn’t own it.

Sadly, it’s not always a tenant who destroys a rental suite.