I mentioned in my last post that part of why we’d moved out of Morinville is that the neighbourhood and the town both were no longer a fit for us. Back in 2005 when we moved in and had plans of staying for 5 years, it was a lovely quiet area. Perhaps that’s why we stayed longer than planned. In the beginning, we felt bad about starting up and idling motorcycles with stock exhaust out of the neighbourhood because they were a little bit louder than the cars. It was hard to sleep when we got there because it was too quiet compared to the rental in the city we’d been in for 9 months before.
Then it slowly started to change, maybe 14 years ago? Slowly enough, you could miss it if you didn’t play it back in your head once in a while. In fact, we did for the longest time. It’s that “frog in boiling water” thing. The town leadership stopped listening to its residents – if it ever did. There certainly was a scandal about a mayor who didn’t tell us about infrastructure needing to be replaced before an election around the time we moved into town. When asked why, he said “why bother, it’s not like anyone was running against me.” By about 2019, it was clear the town was off the rails.
But back to the beginning. Around 14 years ago, the neighbour who’d be partying and falling down-threatening violence-drunk until the very wee hours of the mornings on weekends all summer (and who would go on to break our kitchen window in one of those sessions) moved in. That lead to me never leaving anything I liked / breakable outside. I would check if they were out before I took the cats outside and we’d go back in if they came out while we were out. If they were partying when we had plans to go out, we’d often cancel plans and stay home instead to keep an eye on the house. We put security cameras up to hopefully catch them if there was a next time since we’d had to pay for the window (because they didn’t admit fault. That was an interesting lesson into the law). When we moved, the siding on the back of the garage was a mess because they’d been hitting it regularly with golf balls and other things.
We had a peeper in 2014, he would look in front of the house bedroom windows on the block and try to take pictures and the RCMP had been trying to catch him.
One hot summer night well after midnight, I heard someone walk up our grass and then the doorbell rang. I was looking at the person the RCMP had described in the newspaper through another window while he hid and watched the front door. This was a new trick in his behaviour. That escalation could have been seriously bad if I’d just opened the door.
I no longer felt safe in our house or yard. I was always inside before dark. I was so ready to move then but shortly after this, there was the roof and Ryan’s accident happened and there was no money or ability to move. And Ryan still liked the neighbourhood.
There were several vehicle and garage break-ins – two to our vehicles and more on the block. The last time there was significant damage to the truck but not enough to make an insurance claim since Ryan could get most of the parts at wholesale. We got to foot that bill too.
During this time, I began to develop some noise sensitivities. I tend to be intolerant to “pointless noises”. For instance, the range fan is very noisy but I can mostly handle it because it prevents me from suffocating when I cook. It’s mostly about pitch and less about volume but pitch with volume make it far worse. Really loud vehicles and leaf blowers are probably the ones that will upset me the most. Vehicles a little less so because they’re usually gone in seconds, except that one neighbour who likes to idle the weekend car/bike for half an hour in the summers, of course…
Our neighbour across the street used to be a friend but I finally just couldn’t anymore between his 2 leaf blowers, and 3 – 4 times a week March to October lawn care routine that took hours of leaf blowing and the winter blowing multiple times during snow storms which would also often equate to hours a day. This is in contravention of the town’s noise bylaws too. Not that anyone ever reported him that I know of. His (possibly modified to be louder (like his motorcycles)) leaf blowers would rattle the windows and the noise would go through the walls in the basement even and I couldn’t get away from it while he leaf-blew in the wind. When we mentioned it to him: “I know”….This was usually his answer when you’d talk about anything. “Why do you fill your Toyota Echo with premium fuel, it’s literally paying more to ruin your engine?” “I know”…
I just…
Then one day, another neighbour got a back pack leaf blower and he’d begin in the winter before 6am. (Also against the noise bylaws. This will become relevant later.) Neighbour #1 would complain to us how annoying Neighbour #2 was. Really??
I seriously wanted to make introductions. “Mr. Pot? This is Mr. Kettle. Mr. Kettle, I’d like you to meet Mr. Pot!”
I gritted my teeth and hid inside. Or sometimes I’d lose my temper and holler something rude after two or so hours but it’s not like anyone could hear me over the din. I began to avoid yard/garden work if he was outside. So did Ryan. One of the best birthday or Christmas presents I ever got was noise cancelling headphones. That let me ignore 80% of the things that made me crazy at home (I’d never hear a golf ball coming anyway…). But that’s the thing, since around 2010, I’ve mostly worked from home other than the odd I.T. contract so I couldn’t get away from the noise and the bad neighbours.
This wasn’t an evenings and weekends thing, it was all day long, all week long.
Then in 2018, the Canadian government legalized marijuana.
*record scratch noise* OK, what?
No, I don’t blame the federal government for our neighbourhood. And this isn’t going to be a political post! I don’t even care if someone smokes it unless it’s in my house or face and I can’t get away from it.
What concerned me is that on our way to the local lake to take photos, we started noticing that alcohol and drugs were big revenue for the town or they must be because it seemed like every second business that was approved in town was either a liquor store or a weed store. No department stores but all the weed you can handle. Then the town legalized drinking at the lake. Just, why? Doesn’t water and alcohol seem like a liability problem? Or driving to and from the lake while under the influence?
I’m not a NIMBY nor am I a teatottler. I do think that 10 or so liquor or weed stores in a 2km drive (and more in the opposite direction) is excessive. One concern is that with addiction comes increased crime. This is a well accepted and researched statistic. Our neighbourhood didn’t need more of that. Not only that but what would prospective new residents to the town think when you’d see a pot or alcohol store every single block? Many people would be put off for the same reasons I was. Others may think that “everyone” in <insert nearly any town in Alberta these days> were addicts if they could support that many shops. For years the town had been making noise about becoming business friendly and attracting a commercial tax base to take the load off the residents and then it seemed like all we saw moving in was this. We’re not the only residents who noticed this either. Frequently town posts on social media would have residents asking if there was any other business the town was interested in other than booze and drugs – along with the usual complaints about the roads.
Around this time, the Cultural Centre that had been built in 2010 was beginning to lean harder on taxpayers. There was noise about adding its construction costs and its operational costs to the taxpayers bill – after we were assured it would support itself with world class bookings and user fees.
No, I never believed it.
At the same time, the town was finalizing the details for the leisure centre that would support itself with user fees and help from the county but council failed to secure a written agreement from the county and didn’t get what it had budgeted it would from the county – and circumstances being what they were, I side with the county on that decision.
Surprise, it didn’t support itself with user fees. Part of that was likely the competition from the other local rink that had been previously owned by the town but deemed to expensive to fix so it was sold off. The private owner had done the repairs and was making a good go of it. Also, user fees were high enough at the new leisure centre that most of us couldn’t afford/justify memberships. Many who had supported the leisure centre had wanted a pool. What we got was a walking track, a rink and weights.
Fast forward to 2023. The town leadership starts making noise about “paying off the leisure centre faster by putting it on the tax bills…” because a recession is the best time to put that on residents.
These sort of poor and short sighted decisions were epidemic and it really seemed like it always fell on the residents to dig the council out of bad decisions.
In the budget earlier this year it came to light that the town had put off for 10 years the replacement of critical water infrastructure that if a failure occurred would result in the entire town being without water. 10 years after an engineering assessment said it was beyond life expectancy, it became a possible line item in this year’s budget. But we needed a leisure centre that couldn’t support itself and that residents couldn’t afford to use but could pay for on their taxes before the residents of the town needed water security. This screenshot is from the proposed budget -not an approved budget (at that time).
In the meantime, the road infrastructure was also in poor shape and it seemed like the only thing the town leadership was interested in was vanity projects like the MCCC (Morinville Community Cultural Centre) and the MLC (Morinville Leisure Centre). I honestly didn’t think we could afford to support the town anymore. Our taxes were already in excess of $3600 a year and they’d be going up with all of this added on and our street was still a mess.
So when the road in front of our house finally bubbled to the top of the 5 year plan, I didn’t really believe it would happen even when they came out to survey in early 2024. After all, it’s been on the 5 year plan for at least the last 6 years. Our street had been constructed wrong back in the 90s and the sidewalks flooded every spring due to poor drainage (in fact, the crown of the road was visibly inches above the sidewalk), leading to hours of backbreaking several inches deep ice chipping to keep the walks safe and clear for pedestrians. Some years, the ice was so thick that after chipping, you’d drop from street height onto the sidewalk with a thump then get stuck trying to get up your driveway. The town had been aware of this problem and several other streets like it since at least 2010 and likely earlier but Cultural Centre.
Somewhere in here (maybe 2021ish?), another neighbour moved in beside us. And here’s where the weed became a problem. She and her husband were constantly smoking and in the dead of summer, we couldn’t have our windows open for fresh air because the house would reek of weed. We started off cordial but eventually, I found her stressful. Either she’d be talking about weed (that she got from a friend, not the legal sources) all the time or giving me assignments (“there’s a stray cat in our yards, you should trap it”, What?!? Why me?) She knew about the cat because she was always in our business and knew everything that went on in our yard and listened all the time. It got to the point where I’d look out the windows and make sure she wasn’t home or outside before I’d do yard work. Still she’d sometimes sneak up behind me and start talking which would startle the crap out of me. Then, she started breeding invasive birds that were causing problems in the neighbourhood. Well, not an official breeding program but when you feed them, give them housing and allow them to uh… reproduce, that’s a breeding program to me. There were several dozen of them living in her gazebo and eating everything they didn’t crap on in our yard.
I asked her to please consider the rest of the birds who were native species in the neighbourhood/town/province/country. The house sparrows she was breeding were killing everything else in the neighbourhood, other than Merlins and corvids. I suggested simple non-lethal changes she could make that would discourage them. She said she’d do as she pleased in her own yard. OK, so be it. It’s not like I was letting her tell me what to do in my yard. After all, I didn’t trap the cat.
In the meantime, there was a particular male house sparrow that would sit outside our bedroom window and shriek for a female. He’d start up before 5am.
They sound like a security alarm being armed to me and so they yank me out of sleep and get my attention making me think “I better get out before the alarm goes off!”) We ended up cutting one of those trees down to stop him. And it did for a bit.
So one May day I put in a call to enforcement to ask what measures I could take in my own yard and bylaw enforcement proceeded to threaten me with fines. (It’s a $500 fine to use a trap not supplied by the town. The town didn’t have a trap for birds.) I didn’t carry out any actions and in fact didn’t want to. I was calling prior to anything to get clarification. I later found out that this is typical for that particular officer – to the point of making up fines if one resident I talked to is to be believed – but the sour taste was in my mouth.
So in June, when Ryan finally decided it was time to move – likely because I was stressed out and grumpy most days when he’d get home, I pounced on finding us a place. Luckily this time was completely different that all those times since about 1999 when we’d tried to move to an acreage and it just wouldn’t come together. This time, it was the fastest find and purchase I think we could have managed. It’s possible if we’d taken more time or had more to choose from, we may have chosen differently but I don’t think this house is the worst choice we could have made regardless. The worst would have been staying put. I wasn’t giving him the time to change his mind.
At the end of June, the construction started. They were going to tear out the sidewalks and curbs, fix the sewer lines and rip the road out. (I heard at one point after we’d moved out that they had to go 4 feet down because it was so badly constructed. The same person told me that the town hadn’t made any allowances for emergency services during the construction either.) But by now we were moving and we needed to know what the road would be like on the day(s) we needed to move. The communication that the construction company supplied us with told us what would happen in July (Sidewalk and curb replacement) and at the end of August (Sewer repair) and provided a number to call with questions. I called to say we were moving in the middle of August and we would like to coordinate that so we’d not be in their way and vice versa.
Me: “So your timeline says what you’re doing in July, then at the end of August, can you tell me what the middle of August looks like if you’re on time? I don’t need exact dates, just a roadmap of the attractions we plan to visit… the order of operations, not the itinerary”
Them: “Nope”
Me: “OK, will it be a problem that we’re moving?”
Them: “Oh yeah, for sure.”
Me: “OK, well will there be a road?”
Them: “Couldn’t tell you.”
Me: “Have… have you done this before?”
In the end, we managed after weeks of back and forth and no small amount of stress to come to an agreement that they would leave the sidewalk in front of our house until August 19th which gave us the window to move. They even put it in writing.
Except that the very next day, I woke to this. He’s cutting the asphalt. None of the other driveways were done up to this driveway. Just this one. We were in the middle of the street.
There were at least 2 more “oopses” that felt very passive aggressive after we’d reached an agreement that had me wondering if we’d get vehicles in and out or not and they seemed to take particular delight in starting work every day in front of our house for some reason, despite the fact that they had the least amount of work to do in front of it in the short term.
Or parking in our driveway and going for lunch but not ask if I needed to go anywhere. That said, after that first oops, I had been cancelling appointments anyway because I felt like if I left, the sidewalk would be gone when I got home. I felt a lot like a caged bird.
Our moving day didn’t actually affect them much because they were so behind schedule by then that they hadn’t started pouring the sidewalks on our side of the street. The sidewalk was gone about the 21st and they had only just poured a few days before by the time we gave the house up to the new owners less than a week later. All that stress basically for nothing.
Starting in front of our house every morning wouldn’t be much of a problem if I wasn’t a night owl and they didn’t start at 7am. As it was, the main piece of equipment they used shrieks and squeals something fierce, so after the first “oops” when I’d hear it first thing in the morning in front of the house, I’d jump out of bed and go running for the door in case they tried again to take the sidewalk.
Ryan didn’t understand why I was so stressed out until one of the days we went back to clean the house and he heard “Jenna”, the excavator in motion for the first time. At that point, he remarked that Jenna sounded like a “Panzer tank”. I’m convinced when we watch the movies with those tanks in them that they leave them that noisy as a form of psychological terror because that’s what Jenna did to me. I didn’t sleep much for close to 6 weeks and when I did, I usually woke up in a panic. Even that day, I felt my heart rate speed up when I heard her moving.
When we got to the new house, I realized that the construction company broke me. I’m a very reluctant morning lark now, or more so than I was and I rarely make it to midnight anymore. Seems harmless, right? Forcibly changing someone’s sleep schedule can lead to bad things so I’m hoping that I will swing back to my usual eventually.
The construction sure gave us perspective when we got here though. It’s not as silent as it was the night we viewed it but it’s normal acreage neighbourhood noise and so quiet compared to the 6 weeks before the move.
Even with the filth we had to clean up, I’m so happy we’re here.
Oh! And all those comments about the noise bylaws and about the neighbours breaking windows and break-ins /crime and other “I’ll do what I want” things we put up with?
I learned a couple of days before the conditions were removed off the sale of our house that one of the new owners of our house was a bylaw officer and apparently the buyer’s Realtor made it well known to the neighbours.
Yeah, my name was mud by the time we left.
With this written, I now officially (if the Shaw refund ever shows up!) put our chapter in Morinville behind us and move on to our new chapter in our new home. May it be boring from here on out.
*The header photo is of the moon above our house.
Today’s post title: Fast Car – Tracy Chapman
[Verse 2]
You got a fast car
I got a plan to get us outta here
I been working at the convenience store
Managed to save just a little bit of money
Won’t have to drive too far
Just across the border and into the city
You and I can both get jobs
Finally see what it means to be living
[Pre-Chorus]
You got a fast car
Is it fast enough so we can fly away?
We gotta make a decision
Leave tonight or live and die this way