[URBAN NOTE] On the transformation of Hickory Drive in Mississauga into a ghost town

[rfmcdonald]

Mahnoor Yawar and Leyland Cecco's long essay in The Globe and Mail, heavy on photos, reports on a district of Mississauga blighted by a wholly unexpected disaster, and the survivors who are apparently being abandoned by city government.

On the days that it doesn’t rain, Pietro Galea drives home to water his garden.

The 80-year-old Italian immigrant hobbles up to the house – now fenced-off – where he and his wife Maria have lived for nearly 40 years. Behind the bungalow where they raised six children, his tomato and zucchini plants thrive. He harvests some and carries the basket to his car, pausing a moment to stare at the cratered ground only two doors away.

“[The garden is] his happy place. I have a father, [and it’s] the same thing,” said Vito Picicci, an architect assessing the Galea properties. “That’s what they do in the summer. You take away their garden, they’re lost.”

Two months after a house explosion devastated the community, 37 houses remain empty after being deemed structurally unsound, and the displaced residents of Hickory Drive in Mississauga have no concrete time frame to provide hope or answers. What was once a well-knit community is now a virtual ghost town, save for a rhythmic hammering echoing from several houses. Potted plants are wilted and the grass is yellowed. The only cars that drive through the neighbourhood slow to a creep as they pass by the site where three houses once stood. The largely elderly immigrant community, overwhelmed by paperwork and bureaucracy, is bracing for a lengthy battle to return home – or what is left of it.

“Every year for everybody is a precious year. You don’t know what happens tomorrow,” said Carlo Galea, Pietro’s son. The younger Galea lives directly across the street from his family house. Both he and his parents have been forced to evacuate until their houses are deemed structurally viable.