July 19: About a month ago, I wrote about the changing character of some streets in Leaside as owners and developers demolish older homes and replace them with modern interpretations of “today’s home”. As I said then, I have a fundamental disagreement with simply demolishing a perfectly serviceable home and effectively throwing it in the garbage. It seems to me that a creative designer / architect could renovate the existing house to have the conveniences of a new house. And that’s a win / win / win: better for the environment; better (perhaps arguably), for the character of the neighbourhood and I think, less expensive than a demo/re-build.
So here’s a typical Leaside home. Solid brick. Likely 3 bedrooms, 2 baths and a finished basement – the sort of place many of us would love to call 
home. There are literally dozens of houses much like this one, so for a developer, there’s a pro forma way of going about the process of making money. I suspect they can make close to a half-million bucks on each project. Based on some recent transactions, I suspect the math is something like: Buy the house $1.5M; cost of construction $0.5M; sale $2.3M+. I realized this particular house was not long for this world when I noticed that the hydro was unhooked.
Sure enough, in short order, t
he hoarding appeared and interior demolitions began. To their credit, the owner allowed Habitat For Humanity to go through the house and remove anything useful.
And then the inevitable power 
shovel appeared and sat for a few days. If, as I suspect, houses have secret voices that only some of us can hear, this one would be saying “No wait. There’s something wrong here. It’s not time yet…”
But, apparently for this fine old home, 
it was time and it disappeared in a matter of hours. When I stopped to take this picture, a man who identified himself as the owner appeared and asked if there was a problem. I assured him that there was not, but he called five times and left messages – which I ignored. I finally spoke to him to end the harassment. What he learned I don’t know, but he seemed extremely paranoid about something – perhaps the apparent lack of building permits and protection around the City tree for starters ?
So work is underway on this particular project. I suspect we will be presented with another clichéd version of the traditional home they just demolished. Call me an anthropomorphizing sentimental old goof if you will, but I’m sad to see these fine old homes disappearing. Guilty as charged.