21 February 2024 – Move over, Pussy-Cat. The owl has a new companion.

I’m at the corner of West 10th & Columbia, heading east, and I am stopped in my tracks by an owl.

A real owl would seriously stop me in my tracks; this one is not real, but still unexpected and worth some attention. He is dangling from a traffic sign that promises you death & dismemberment if you even think about parking here.

It’s only after I move closer to contemplate the macramé shades-of-the-70s owl, that I really take in the heritage house in the background.

Which certainly deserves my attention.

The Owl and the Painted Lady! I murmur to myself.

And, with that, I forget Edward Lear and think about Painted Ladies. Painted Ladies in heritage neighbourhoods.

The best-known reference, especially outside Canada, would be to San Francisco and its line of brightly painted Victorian homes along the eastern side of Alamo Square Park. Former Torontonian that I am, I think instead of the Painted Ladies of Cabbagetown.

Of one in particular. Rather, the story of one in particular, told to me by the friend who lived next door and whose teenage daughter played (literally) a starring role. Picture the scene. We are in a Victorian home, among others of that vintage, on this street, in this comfortable neighbourhood.

The daughter is practising Bach on the piano in the bay window alcove, with the windows wide open in the summer heat. Next door, a painter is climbing up and down the ladder as he works on that home’s wooden fish-scale façade. The girl pays him no mind, not until she looks up to find him standing right outside her window. She is surprised at the sight; even more surprised when he — politely but firmly — describes very specific ways for her to improve her technique. Who the hell does he think he is? is her first sulky teenage thought. She stifles it. Because, damn it, he does sound like he knows a lot about music.

Turns out, he does. The woman next door tells her mum that the painter, in his previous career, had been a member of the original Orford String Quartet (1965-1991, reborn in 2009 as the New Orford String Quartet with different members). In his new career, he is now creating visual rather than aural music, shimmering cascades of colour rather than sound.

I sink into this memory for a bit, think about my friend’s home, and my admiration for the eventual beauty of that house next door. Then I snap myself back to the here-and-now. I am about to walk on, when I notice a sign on the street-corner lamp post. Always a sucker for signage, I trot across the street to read it.

The Vancouver Park Board seems only to have run the contest those two years — main criterion “community spirit… as demonstrated through block beautification” — and this block of West 10th won both times.

I’m afraid I short-change you for the rest of the block; I take no more photos. But back in 2009, somebody walked the block with delight, and posted the results to his public Flickr stream.

So enjoy the photos, chase up some Orford (original and New) performances online, and then rejoice in all the ways we humans can create beauty.