What's in the back yards of your city?

[Martin Mtl]

Originally Posted by O-tacular

I also found it funny that my cousins from Montreal found our back alley so interesting. I guess they don't have rear lane ways there.

Yeah, back alleys in Montreal, imagine that. It would be so crazy.

[vanatox]

Originally Posted by Martin Mtl

Yeah, back alleys in Montreal, imagine that. It would be so crazy.

Just replace Montreal by Boucherville in his comment and it might make sense (if the person has never left Boucherville...).

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Martin Mtl

Yeah, back alleys in Montreal, imagine that. It would be so crazy.

I thought that as well at first, but what he meant was his relatives in Boucherville or some other suburb. In Calgary some of the newer suburban areas have back alleys. In Quebec in general they don't. But yes, we know all about the alleyways in central Montreal.

[Martin Mtl]

I know O-tacular was facetious, and so was I.

[SignalHillHiker]

I was surprised and confused by Winnipeg's back lanes as well. I'd never encountered that before. Since returning home, I've scoured St. John's for comparable lanes but I've only found one:



We have lots of narrow lanes and back lanes and alleys and all of that - but this is the only lane I could find that is comparable to those of prairie cities in that its only purpose is to provide secondary access to residential properties and a place to put out the garbage.

All the others have separate homes, businesses, etc. that can't be accessed from the main streets surrounding. So they don't really count as back lanes in the same way to me:



I still can't believe cities that have these are paying for two paved streets for every single-family, detached home. Insane.

[Surrealplaces]

Grass, trees, flowers, and vegetable plants...oh and kids.

Backyard by Surrealplaces, on Flickr

[north 42]

Many of Windsor's older neighbourhoods have back alleys, but the city has been trying to close the ones that are not needed, and sell it to both or either homes so that they can just add it to their backyards.

[kwoldtimer]

Originally Posted by north 42

Many of Windsor's older neighbourhoods have back alleys, but the city has been trying to close the ones that are not needed, and sell it to both or either homes so that they can just add it to their backyards.

The problem with that is the holdouts - if the city can't sell off the entire laneway, it's going to end up with "stranded" bits of land that it's still responsible for. Legally, I don't think they're able to just give it away.

[north 42]

^ you're right! Everyone on the block must ok the closure or it doesn't happen. It really does help with property crime when that are closed though, as many are overgrown and are great places for thieves to sneak around and not be seen.

[kwoldtimer]

Where I grew up in Kitchener, most of the neighbours, and all the European immigrant neighbours, had fruit and vegetable gardens in their backyards. My Mom was always adamant that we would have flowers, not vegetables (it said something to her about status in a working class neighbourhood). The kids in my neighbourhood used to snack well by raiding neighbours' gardens - I can still remember eating raspberries and strawberries from the bush, pulling up fresh baby carrots, eating peas from the pod, etc, etc. There was such an abundance of produce that most folks didn't care about the thievery, as long as we didn't damage the garden. Our neighbour across the street always had so many tomatoes, beans, and cucumbers that he would end up giving basketfuls away, just to keep up the the harvest.

Backyard gardens like that seem to have much less common. Probably too much work nowadays for most people.

[MonkeyRonin]

They're still very common in any of the old school European immigrant hoods. But yeah, it's mostly just the old timers that do it. Having a few pots with some tomatoes or herbs, or having a pear tree or a raspberry bush in the yard are pretty normal, but in today's world of dual-income households it's just not possible (nevermind at all beneficial) to maintain a veritable mini-farm in the backyard. Seriously, some of these operations are huge:

[SignalHillHiker]

I love the look of a back garden filled with vegetables. There's something so... rural, European about it.

[Trevor3]

Sheds, sheds, and more sheds coupled with the occasional garage. Firepits are very common here too.

My parents backyard has a shed, firepit, firewood pile for said pit, and a couple of fruit trees. The neighbour has a shed and an old truck half grown over with trees, and the next neighbour has a 3-car garage which he built directly behind the 2-car garage attached to his house. In his defence, he did run a car dealership and he has a small collection. And this is a nice, relatively new but established subdivision.

Everybody has a shed but it's a reflection of lifestyle. People spend a ton of time outside, so usually those sheds have an ATV or snowmobile in them, plus things like snowblowers, lawnmowers, and entertainment pieces like a woodstove, couch, dartboard, and a radio to shout over during the party.

[SignalHillHiker]

That festival in Burlington had a "shed crawl" where people went shed to shed in the town to drink and listen to live music.

They're definitely a part of our culture.

Man cave = shed here.

[tyeman200]

My backyard is nothing special, really. Live in a more modern neighbourhood (built in the late 80s-90s). Behind my house is a man made ditch, and then a couple factories. Oh, and new neighbourhoods which are being built.

[MTLskyline]

St. Lambert was built as a streetcar suburb and mostly grew between the 1910s and 1950s. Pools did not used to be very common, as it tended to be a very senior-oriented community when I was growing up there. A lot of young families have moved into the area in the last 10 years or so, and pools are becoming increasingly common. Still not the same level as newer Quebec suburbia like Gatineau, Brossard, Terrebonne or Laval, but there is definitely a lot more than there was.

St. Lambert is really defined more than anything else by the quantity of mature trees. A lot of them are ash trees, many of which, sadly, are at risk from the Emerald ash borer. Just as things were starting to recover nicely from the 1998 ice storm and the much earlier Dutch Elm disease.

[Architype]

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

That festival in Burlington had a "shed crawl" where people went shed to shed in the town to drink and listen to live music.

They're definitely a part of our culture.

Man cave = shed here.

Shed architecture (often with a gambrel roof) is not indigenous to Nfld. culture. (lol.) BTW the Vancouver version of a backyard shed is a garage, since every street has a back lane for driveway access (although not necessarily in the outer suburbs). The good thing about that is that now many can legally be converted to small living units, often with a second floor (laneway housing), thus increasing density.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=lanew...aneway+housing