My family’s role as caretakers of character homes: 

Home has always been a work in progress. As a child, I lived in a four level row-style house, built in 1907. Father tore the walls back to the studs and rebuilt it board by board. I was fascinated by items found hidden in the walls: a cigar box of love letters, yellowing turn-of-the-century newspapers and a map of an old city, marked with an ‘x’. By the time the new walls were in place, all I dreamed of were the stories of those who once lived there. 

When we set out to grow a family of our own, we were drawn to a miners cabin built in 1889. Coal has a way of settling into the floorboards, but it was the marks on the door frames from decades of furniture moved in and out that accounted for the hard working families who once called it home. 

In 1912, a house was built by an unknown architect in the fashion of the time, a Queen Anne Revival. It was clad in cedar shingles with stained glass windows that filtered coloured light onto the stairs. It would pass through many hands before ours, often under threat of demolition, but its charm would be its saving grace. We rolled up our sleeves and got to work restoring it. Then one day, under the roof of its copper capped turret, I pushed my small desk against the window and began to write.