Don't Fence Me In!

 Oh give me land, lots of land, under starry skies above;
Don't fence me in!
~Bing Crosby

As I look around my adopted neighbourhood, I find myself wondering if the Canadians realise how much ol' Bing captured their way of life in that simple couplet. Perhaps not in the "lots of land" concept as high rise apartments and condensed living are quite apparent, especially in the larger cities such as Toronto and Hamilton, but certainly in the oddity of the neighbourhood fencing.

I live in a small-ish town now - about 30,000 people - and I often find myself thinking of that song as I travel around. It's disconcerting to realise that there more often than not is a lack of privacy between yards.

I currently live in a townhouse, so naturally my backyard is accessible to my neighbours. Yet more than that it's also accessible to the outside street. When I look out my back door, if I didn't have a plethora of greenery, I can see straight out on to the street, and those on my street can see right into my house. During winter when the greenery is gone, I watch the cars dash up and down my snow dusted street with the hope they're too busy concentrating on the potentially icy road than they are on peering into my private domain.

Yet on visits to other Canadian houses I have seen that fences are not what I was accustomed to in Melbourne.

It's a long long fence between you and me, baby.

As you can see, this is a very old picture. In fact, that baby is me. You may suspect that I am some kind of prodigy (and that The Husband is a perv), but you'd be wrong. I'm oooooold now. Yet this is the style of fence common between houses where I am from - 6' tall and solid wood. There are no gaps, and it's a fair climb for a little one to see over. In fact, this fence was later painted in sump oil by our next door neighbour as he tried to keep the wood from rotting. This didn't stop my sister and I from climbing it to talk to the little boy next door, but Mum was never very happy at the mess we made of our clothes in the process.

We were boxed in on three sides, our yards our own domain untainted by the presence of others. Some even boxed themselves in from the front as well to make the box complete. We only had a knee high fence at the front, but it was generally enough to keep people from tromping over our dried out lawn.

Now, contrast my first experience of a Canadian backyard.

Such a pretty backyard!

As you can see, there are gaps between the upright slats on the left side. There is a bit of privacy there, but not as much as I was accustomed to in Australia. And along the back there's only a thigh high cyclone fence! Yet weirdest of all to this privacy conscious Aussie, there are gates between the yards! That fact blew my mind when I spotted them. From the vantage point I took this from, I could actually watch those in the yards behind the house mowed their lawns and puttered about doing their yardly things.

There's a sense of community this promotes that is much more difficult to achieve when we're all separated from one another. Yet it's also nice to have a life apart from these others who simply live in the same geographical area.

This may be an oddity of the smaller town mindset as opposed to the suburban one I hail from, but it's certainly been something to adjust to since coming here. I miss my boxes in boxes.