Letter from North America: Part 4: Calgary

The final part of our holiday was really a family affair and this account concerns the two weeks (almost) that we were guests of my brother, Kevin, and his wife, Ann, at their newly-completed home on the outskirts of Calgary.

The house is set in a new community, surrounded by gently rolling hills for about as far as the eye can see. If there’s one thing Canada has lots of, it’s space. The space starts where the city ends and goes on seemingly for ever, or at least as far as the distant Rockies.

Kevin and Ann had recently returned from Chicago, where they’d been based for several years. They are enthusiastic about the work of the architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, and spent a lot of time and effort planning and building a house in his style.

When we arrived at the start of June, the house itself was complete. Landscape gardeners were building paths and laying out the grounds. Islands of trees and shrubs rose among the planned areas of lawn. Bringing in a garden team is a common practice in Calgary, where the growing season is short and the climate tends to dictate the pattern of life.

The team worked long days, often with bare torsos in the warm sunshine. They brought in heavy machinery to manicure the land into the gentle slopes needed to deal with the snow accumulation and run-off. Grown trees and shrubs were planted and the areas mulched; an irrigation system was installed and finally several large loads of rolled turf were trucked in to give an instant lawn.

Well, not quite instant! It took two days and half a night to roll out the sod. A digger would carry a palette of turf around to the workers, who lugged the rolls further. (Only specialist nurseries actually plant grass!) Everything in the garden has to be done and dusted in the short summer months.

Particular care was given to the building of a water-feature on a sunny patio at the corner of the house. Water bubbles out of the top of a large rock and tumbles down the side into a reservoir beneath a layer of river stones. A garden table, chairs and brolly were moved in once the feature was complete - to the evident satisfaction of the owner.

On the road, trucks equipped with a large, pyramidal apparatus grunted up and down bearing fully-grown trees. We walked up to a nearby property to watch them in action. Large triangular blades on this apparatus are used to dig a hole. The process takes less than a minute.

Then the truck carts off the soil and returns a little later clutching a tree in the grip of the same apparatus. The tree is lowered into the hole, the blades of the machine are withdrawn and the truck moves on to dig another hole. By nightfall, a bare patch of ground can be converted into a mini-forest. The process is quite extraordinary to behold.

REAR VIEW
The Benson house occupies two and a bit levels. The lower level, a walk-out basement, is given over to family visitors - three married children and 6 grandchildren in Calgary as well as more distant relatives.


The lay-out is open plan, with a spacious lounge, dining-room and kitchen/ kitchenette both upstairs and down. The lower lounge doubles as a mini-movie theatre. Our hosts live upstairs, which is the entry level to the house.

Kevin has his office one level higher in a tower, which rises from the centre of the house. The three levels are connected by a small elevator, wonderful for shifting furniture or suitcases, as well as stairs. A three-car garage - some houses have four - is integrated into the design.

We loved the house, as did the other visitors. I found it a little scary how soon we came to take its spaciousness for granted. The building is as comfortable to inhabit as it is pleasing to the eye, which is more than can be said for many of the mansions around it. The latest insulating methods have been employed to keep running costs low.

Our days in Calgary didn’t really have a pattern. Barbara and I generally tried to take a walk, often around the lake at the centre of the community, with a refreshment stop at the small shopping centre on the far side. Once or twice, we were joined by my sister, Catherine, who flew in from Germany for the family reunion, and later her daughter, Anita, who is completing her Master’s studies at Essex University.

ANITA

Kevin was caught up in the bureaucracy of his return from the US to Canada. The most complicated bit was migrating back his vehicles – three cars and an RV. Canada is hugely fussy about the condition of any such vehicles, which have to undergo any manufacturer recalls before their return.

Once the tax has been agreed and paid at the border, the vehicles are subject to two inspections – provincial and federal – before new licence plates are issued. The process is ponderous, drawn-out and largely dependent on the goodwill of the officials concerned for its success. It is also subject to deadlines. So we did a lot of running around to motor dealers and inspection stations, with numerous stops at Starbucks outlets. Spare hours were spent in large (Chapters) book stores, a real pleasure.

It would be fair to add that Kevin is a car enthusiast. His Audi R4 is the delight of his life (along with his wife, Ann, naturally). Ann drives a comfortable Mercedes and the diesel-engined Jeep is the family workhorse, often employed to tow a trailer that lives at a barn on a rural property some ten minutes away.


The trailer was hitched up during our stay to fetch a load of flat-pack cupboards/ drawers from one of Calgary’s big retail outlets and later to remove piles of cardboard wrappings to a recycling centre. I gave Kev a hand to put the cupboards together, and to line them up along the back wall of his garage.

My brother maintains a very-well equipped workshop. He and Ann often spend weekends away assisting an American car-racing team in which they’ve been involved for a number of years.

The rest of the Calgary family live within easy reach and often dropped in for a meal.

The “grandies” would occupy themselves with the collection of toys that are kept for the purpose. Parents and grandparents, when not involved in building models or playing games, kept an eye on proceedings and occasionally the peace.

We lived in style. Jones and I needed mobile phones to communicate across the vast bed that we occupied in the principal guestroom. (She was virtually invisible under the covers, as you can see.) A bottle of aged malt whisky awaited our evening attentions and the wine cellar was raided nightly for refreshments to accompany the meal that Ann generally cooked for us. Alternatively, Kevin would barbeque on the spacious upper deck that overlooked the back garden. Our part was to be appreciative.

The garden merges with a copse that fringes the rear of the property and slopes away to guarantee its privacy. A path winds down to a fire-pit, intended for roasting marshmallows or similar (on such occasions that the myriad mosquitoes permit).

Deer are to be seen wandering through the area and we twice spotted coyote nearby. The latter, whose eerie howls sometimes fill the night, have emulated Britain’s foxes in making themselves at home in urban areas. People are well advised to keep their cats indoors and to walk small dogs only on leads.

Twice we joined my niece, Penny (and husband, Mike) at the community “soccer matches” that involve hundreds of children in their suburb, including their two young sons. Up to age 10 or thereabouts, boys and girls compete together. Teams are colour-coded and coached by a parent volunteer.

The kids rush up and down the field with great vigour, cheered on from the side-lines. Goals are greeted with all the enthusiasm of a World Cup final. It’s a hoot. Before or after the game, or both, we'd gather at Penny's house close by for a light meal and a game of cards.

And so the days passed, melting one into another - like the snow that fell one night - until the Friday of our return. It wasn’t a good day.

On our way to the airport we ran into wicked traffic congestion – the result of several accidents – that extended our travelling time from 40 minutes to nearly two hours. Although we arrived 50 minutes before take-off, we found the flight closed and missed the plane.

So we had to beg an additional night’s hospitality (willingly conceded) from our hosts. We were able to rebook for the following day and had the unexpected and welcome consolation of an upgrade on the way home. The dogs were at Faro airport to meet us, along with our trusty house-sitters. And there, for the moment, our travels end.