Nothing lasts forever, including my neighborhood. Here are the memories.

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Twenty-one years ago, my husband and I purchased a 1940s bungalow on Renfrew Street in East Vancouver.

We had a three-month-old baby and a house on a busy street with pink carpet and Smurfs wallpaper. I pushed the stroller around my neighborhood when I was too tired to drive; the boy only slept while he was moving. So we walked. We get to know our neighbors. Three years later our daughter was born. We walk a little more.

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At one house, my husband met his best friend, that once-in-a-lifetime type of friend who has become part of our family. He also had young children and for a few years they rented a house on the same street. That house is no longer there.

Next to them, in a small, old house, we met a family who became dear to us. They were children of hard-working Italian immigrants who had built a home. They also had children and we spent hours together with them: the sisters, the brother, on the lawn, in the entryway, drinking slightly sparkling homemade wine. Trees were climbed, tears were shed (adults and children), and we watched our children grow up. That house is no longer there.

There was a large family that lived in a small house two doors north. They had cats and when they ran out of cat food, they came to get it. Both the owners and the cats. That house is no longer there.

A long time ago, there was a guy from Prince Edward Island, a carpenter, who rented a little house four doors north. We walked down the road to Notre Dame High School every night after dinner. He always had a greeting for the children. That house is no longer there.

Just to the southwest, next to a few houses, was what the kids and I called the Abandoned Cat House, and still do, even though it was replaced by a $3 million duplex with a house on the street and a Tesla plugged in the back. The fun the kids and I had, carrying cat food and water along the way, scooping them out, and looking for kittens.

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Welcome to East Van, where if you blink you’ll miss another house falling down. Cars multiply like bunnies outside your house. Blocks of single-family homes have been sold to developers, torn down and replaced by six-storey apartments, of which there is not enough affordable housing for anyone I know.

We need housing, we need affordable housing, we need purpose-built rental housing. There is no question. You won’t hear me complaining about dump trucks and bulldozers sitting outside my windows: it’s temporary and means people (at least those with deep pockets) will have somewhere to live.

Problems need to be solved, solutions are confusing and disruptive, and nothing lasts forever, including my neighborhood. Another metamorphosis is occurring and that’s okay. I tell myself that I can’t be the only one who regrets, even for a moment, what has happened before.

There are four new duplexes within a block. They are all shades of gray, located in the same place on the lots, with identical garages. And it seems like the suburbs are coming for us.

But in the end it is the people who create a neighborhood, not the houses. We get to know people, not their houses.

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The characters in a neighborhood are what will make you feel connected there. I see the newcomers, those who share walls and a yard with their neighbors in a duplex, and I think they too will find a solid footing here.

And for those of you on the West Side who don’t believe that will happen there, believe me, it is coming and it will change your world. Those houses, those gardens, those steps where you visited your friends, will be history.

Here’s to the longshoremen who planted grapes, fig and plum trees in East Vancouver decades ago. Here’s to the widows who live alone in the homes where they raised their families and who simply aren’t willing to move because it’s their home. Here’s to beautiful gardens that have been planted and tended for decades, only to be dug up in minutes by heavy machinery.

Let’s drink to the life of the 97-year-old Italian lady who just died. Until a few months ago she saw her in her garden and walking to the bus stop. Her family gathered under a tent in the yard to say goodbye to her.

Here’s to the unique flavor of a street where every house was a little different, built when the future was bright, the possibilities were endless, and there were yards to play on.

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The other day another house collapsed, five houses to the south. When the children were little, we walked there along the path; They had a jacuzzi and there was always a party. He waved and picked up the kids so they could wave over the fence.

That house, I was told, was basically a cabin, built with a chimney but no boiler. It was small and BC Assessment tells me it was built in 1924, 100 years ago. When those neighbors moved in, they brought some plants they wanted me to save. I still have them in my garden.

When I saw a bulldozer in that yard while I was walking last week, now alone and without children in tow, I knew what I had to do. I grabbed my shovel, dug up half a dozen plants (some foxgloves, some sedums) and brought them home.

The next day, with the sound of the house collapsing, I planted them in my garden. The dump truck passed by with the rubble, another container of rubble, another population of rats spreading through the neighborhood, another family’s story a memory.

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