Living in Canada – Episode 1
The Notice on the Tree
On a Saturday’s morning, back in July 2024, Mike looks out of a window and tells me: “Look, there is a supermarket cart here in front of the house” What? Seriously? Yes, indeed there it was, on the sidewalk, in front of the house. How odd! Who left it? When did they leave it? Then, we said let’s check out the security camera. Wow, how lucky! We had only installed it a couple of weeks ago. Yes, just two weeks ago. For a little more than 10 years that we had been in this house, it had never occurred to us to install one, after all it is a fairly quiet neighborhood. However, the voracious insistence of real estate agents, who want us to put the house on the market, had fed us up and we decided to install it so that they could see that we were recording them and have the evidence to report them at any given time.
A couple of young women who, from their dress and appearance, were unmistakably Hindu who had left the cart there on Friday night. The video showed how they took their purchases out of it and continued on their way without it. What to do? We didn’t know where they lived? People passed by and got upset when they found the cart in the middle of the sidewalk. In reality, it was something that had not been seen in the neighborhood, or at least on our street. We reported it by phone and in person to the supermarket and they said they would come… They never came. Finally, one morning, the cart was gone.
The following Friday, in broad daylight, the two women reappeared with another cart from the same supermarket and, again, abandoned it in the same place. This time, angrier at the cynicism and conceit of these women, we decided to put a notice “DO NOT LEAVE SUPER CARTS” and the image of them in full action on the tree where they had left the carts. At that moment, it made me terribly upset because I thought how the tranquility and beauty of our surroundings are so fragile that can be broken by such simple actions; if done daily, they end up ruining everything.
That same day we went to talk to the people at the supermarket and we told them that they were causing us a lot of problems. That they should go pick up that cart and be responsible for ensuring that they keep their carts in their area. A few hours later they went to get the cart and, apparently, they had already put locks on their carts. As for the women who caused all this, they saw her photo on the tree and, for now, they have not done it again. However, I think we did not deserve a tree with a prohibitive notice. What’s next? Bars on the windows, fences in the gardens, signs not to litter? How much does it cost to appreciate an environment free of restrictions or to show a minimum of urban civility?
What reading do you give to this episode? In truth, these are things that I no longer expect from people, I simply take them for granted. In many neighborhoods where I have lived, people know how to respect and coexist. But when something like this suddenly happens, I start to think how easy it is to break down a peaceful environment.
