Growing up in a household with two parents and five children, it may have felt like we had a pretty full house. However, given the gaps in our ages, it wasn’t until I was 15 that there were seven of us sharing one home. Moreover, for the most part, despite all the moving around, by the time there were three of us children, the houses we lived in usually had three bedrooms. Until I was 15, that meant that there were never more than two in a room. I think my youngest brother was still in a crib by the time I moved away from home.
I compare that to my mother, who lived in the same house from age one to the time she married my father. She grew up in a tiny house in Lethbridge, which was built as part of the housing stock developed for veterans after World War II. My grandparents, Leo Burgess (1920-1995) and Helen Lerner (1921-1984), moved into the house in 1949, along with my mother and her older brother, Leo Jr. (1945-2014). Two more siblings followed, my Aunt Diana (1951-1999) and Uncle Curtis (1957-2024). In addition to her three siblings and her parents, my mother’s youngest uncle, Herb Lerner (1937-2004), also lived with them for a period of time.
While it was a three bedroom house, in reality there was a tiny master bedroom on the main floor and two little shoeboxes in the attic that served as bedrooms. Because they were in the attic, the ceiling in both bedrooms was slanted to the floor. Not much fun for my mom’s brothers, who were both well over 6’5″.What was fun were the hardwood stairs that went up the middle of the house from the main floor to the attic. We treated it as a slide. Bumpy, yes, but loads of fun when we were little.
My uncles and their uncle Herb shared one room; my mother and her sister shared the other. By the time I was born, my Diana and Curtis had their rooms to themselves. By the time I was six, my Uncle Curtis had the whole floor to himself.
My grandfather renovated the interior a few times. The one I remember most was when he knocked out some of the walls between the dining room and living room. It made the place look palatial. Later they added a bay window to the living room at the front of the house. The least-best thing he did was when he installed shag carpet in the living room, covering up the gorgeous hardwood floor. It was the trendy thing to do at the time, something that definitely fell out of fashion a couple decades later. My grandfather also occasionally renovated the exterior, particularly the front and back entry ways.
We moved away from Lethbridge about a year after I was born. Nearly every summer vacation afterwards involved a road trip to Lethbridge, no matter where we were living at the time. Sometimes we visited for Easter or Christmas, as well as special occasions like weddings. Almost every time we visited, we spent half our time at this house. The other half we spent at my paternal grandparents’ house, although it seems like more often than not we spent more time at my maternal grandparents’. By then my aunts and uncles had all moved away, so my folks and siblings and I would use the upstairs rooms during those visits.
My grandmother passed away in 1984; my grandfather passed away in 1995. My mother and siblings sold the house shortly after they settled my grandfather’s estate. The new owners were quick to renovate. The house has passed through several owners since then, each one renovated to some degree. I wish I had taken screen shots of the listing the last time it was listed for sale, which showed all the work they had done. The sellers had completely renovated the interior, plus they had finished the basement, something my grandfather never really worked on beyond installing some rough framing. Plus someone had gotten rid of that awful shag carpet.
One of the great features of Google Street View is that it allows you to view the various images of a location taken over time, particularly if it is a place that Google frequently revisits. Using that function, I can see the evolution of my grandparents’ home from 2009 to 2024.
A Deck of Ancestors 