A hologram of the old house appears where the new homes stand...

There is an original white clapboard home along The Kingsway. It has a screened-in sunroom off of one side and a long driveway behind, leading to a sort of garage/shed. I walk by this corner house six days each week as I take my morning walk to the coffee shop and back. I look for it expectedly and imagine the story of the house...It was one of the original farmsteads in what is now a neighborhood of 50-year-old homes that are being torn down and redeveloped into 1.6 million-dollar stone and stucco houses.

One day a developer's sign was hammered into the ground at corner of the property. I considered this new development and felt sadness that a legacy was going to be lost forever. I left a note in the mail box saying that I would appreciate the opportunity to photograph the home before it was torn down...I never heard back. Over the next six months, orange tags indicated that the land had been severed in half with the old home sitting solidly on on the south lot. The newly severed land was dug out and the foundation building began. I felt relieved that the home I admired would stay intact even as a new home was being built in its side yard. The developer was rumored to be living in the old house, his truck was mostly present in the drive and the green lawn furniture remained in the side porch indicating that all was well with the occupancy of the house.

My early morning walks were replaced by time spent painting and my drives along The Kingsway were limited to Saturday morning trips to the market, so I did not see the day-over-day development of the new home, nor did I see the day when the white clapboard home was torn down and carted away.

I gasped to see the widening hole that would become the foundation for yet another house larger than its neighbors. Sad that I had never had the opportunity to see inside, let alone capture the old home’s interior, its secrets and memories, its backbone. This second house on the property was a completely different design from the first project. Over the next 16 months, Saturday-by-Saturday, I watched the development of the framing, the intricate masonry, the level of detail. Finally, two years later, the newly planted evergreens were adorned with chains of white lights for Christmas. Both homes look occupied, even lovely, and there is no indication that a white clapboard house ever stood majestically on that spot.

Last evening I was driving home through the Old Mill area and along The Kingsway. As I approached the corner with the two new homes, I had a vivid flashback to the white clapboard home. I recalled even more detail, there were green shutters...the front door would have been exactly there and the driveway leading to the back shed would have been over here... I recall the furniture in the sunroom and the way the home sat relative to the neighbourhood. I began to think that this must be what it is like for older people who fondly remember the Toronto of their youth, of their middle years. Do they look at the CN Tower, and see the CN Tower but remember what was there before...vividly: railway lines, tall grasses and the occasional building windswept and comfy. Had I become, in my late 40s, one who remembered days past instead of looking forward to, and embracing, the future?

As a test, I drove by again today in the full light of day. Yes, the white clapboard home image hung like a hologram over the houses which now stand in its footprint. The white home will always be there as long as I remember it. As I read this story to my 16-year-old daughter, she exclaimed after only the first paragraph that she knows exactly which house I mean... Do you know the house? Do you too see the hologram, do you see other holograms? I hope the families of the new homes are very happy and feel the legacy upon which they live.