Living On Three Continents: Caravan
Susan Siddeley is amazed when she sees a caravan parked on the roof of a building in the centre of Toronto.
Caravans belong on grassy cliff tops.
“Right?” as they say here in Canada. In Yorkshire this means lined up in neat rows around Flamborough Head, Filey and Primrose Valley.
In land-locked Ontario you can see caravans tidily parked in camping resorts by smooth-surfaced lakes. And in Toronto the latest models are temptingly displayed for visitors to scramble through, oohing and aahing, at the Annual Home Show.
Caravans may have originated as covered carts, which gathered together to travel across deserts, but the ones I’m talking about are the dinky, affordable living spaces, promising holiday adventure, waterside.
Last summer, looking out from the third floor of our house in Toronto and seeing a caravan parked on a nearby roof, made me think I was going gaga. A caravan in the middle of the city would be unexpected; a caravan on a roof had to be an illusion.
It didn’t disappear.
A look through some binoculars confirmed that the oddity gracing Cabbagetown’s skyline was definitely a caravan - a rounded, silver one. Amidst the Victorian gables of this historic part of the city, whose name derives from the staple food of early Irish settlers, the presence of a caravan, three floors up amongst the stumpy chimney blocks, needed explaining.
Notebook in hand, I went round the front of the street to inquire. I didn’t get very far. Company offices occupy the lower level of the building in question. The owner of the top floor apartment wasn’t available.
“I only work here,” shrugged a receptionist, “but I believe the vehicle was winched up the side of the building with a crane. They say it’s a vintage model - a 1950 Airstream. All I know is that the owner uses it as a guest bedroom.”
Wanting to get to the bottom of the matter, I went computer surfing and found a holidaymaker’s paradise. The words, ‘aerodynamic’, ‘classic’, ‘craftsmanship’ and ‘less hectic times’ leapt off the many web pages featuring older caravans.
I tried to imagine sleeping high up on a roof - a visitor at that - hemmed in a tiny space with mini fittings, separated from the nightly scream of downtown sirens and the rumble of streetcars by just millimetres of metal and couldn’t.
The compensations of staying in a caravan are surely being within sight and sound of the sea and relaxing a peaceful setting - even if the these are experienced through a small window with rain streaming down it - as often happens on holidays in the NE of England.
I went upstairs for another look. The elongated, silver dome gleamed in the sun as screeching birds circled all around it; white birds with grey backs and curved, yellow beaks - gulls! I’d forgotten about them. They fly in from Lake Ontario to join flocks of pigeons and starlings scavenging garbage on Toronto streets and in large car parks.
I knew then, that if I closed my eyes and thought of Thornwick Bay, I’d be back on the Yorkshire coast …
At least until the next fire engine belted by below.
NB: Last weekend, in the Condo Section of Toronto’s ‘Saturday Star’, there was a photo of an Airstream in a living room.
