Category Archives: Community

Crazy Quilt Properties

08 Sunday Jan 2012

Posted by in Beginnings, Community

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Everything from the wall out was Umberto's

One of the reasons so many lovely Italian ruins are rotting away has to do with the division of property amongst siblings when parents die. Frequently the structure is owned by many family members who can’t agree on whether to sell it, or for how much. In our case, the house, and the land on two sides of it, was owned by one person. But if you put your hand out the west windows you were in a neighbour’s airspace. Likewise a small blob of land against the north wall – the entrance to the property – belonged to someone else again.

In order to own all the land around the house, we had to cobble together three different real estate deals with three different sellers.

For Sale: house with (some) land

The map at left shows the deal; the green parcel came with the house (which is the dark green square in the middle). The pink bit was Umberto’s and the pale blue bit was Antonio’s. Since we’re used to the neat rectangles of Ontario’s seigneurial land system, we still have trouble figuring out exactly which trees are ours. But our neighbours know. They can’t understand why we find it so difficult.

One of the most interesting aspects of the land deal, given our North American ‘this land is mine and that land is yours’ perspective, was the yellow bit. It’s land held in common with Gino, who  happens to be the landlord of our apartment up the road. We have to get each other’s agreement when we want to do something with it, such as putting down gravel to make parking easier. I’ve discovered this doesn’t mean you always get to share costs. Gino can say yes to an improvement but declare it of no value to himself and decline to help pay. This could be treacherous, but I’ve noticed my neighbours have a pretty good fairness barometer. It’s part of their community balancing act, a continual tit for tat with each other.

Howdy, neighbour

In line with this balancing act, Umberto’s land was being kept clean by grazing cows, and after we bought the land we asked him to keep the animals there because they were the easiest way to keep the vegetation under control. They have since been replaced by another neighbour’s horse.

I like these bonds of community. I believe that every co-operative gesture on our part will come back to us, and so far it has. In Toronto, as a landscape designer, I frequently watch clients argue over 1 inch along a fence line. The people of Varese are also keenly aware of which piece of sod is theirs, and which half of the tree they own  – but between ownership and usage they apply practicality and communal good. You scratch my back, at some point I’ll scratch yours.

It may be a Catholic country, but they really get karma.

Ligurian Heart

28 Wednesday Dec 2011

Posted by in Community, History

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Godzillavilla is in the Val di Vara, an area of Liguria where you still hear few languages other than Italian, even in high tourist season. It’s not quite on the international destination map.

The little town that could

Sometime around our fifth year in Italy I’d come across an article in Io Donna, a women’s magazine, about the valley and its main town, Varese Ligure. The photos were beautiful, its story more so. Like many rural valleys that twist their way into the central spine of the Apennines, it had experienced a population exodus post-war. Young people had moved to the larger towns for work, rejecting life on the land, and the towns became phantoms of their former selves.

By the 1980’s it was a dire situation. Then Varese Ligure’s enlightened government had a brilliant idea, well ahead of its time: since their valley was in the middle of nowhere and offered pretty much nothing, why not make something of that?

Making the most of the middle of nowhere

Through a remarkable application of both will and action, in 1999 the Val di Vara became Europe’s first valley to be certified ISO 14001, the international benchmark for environmental management. Chemical free, energy-sustaining, and boasting fine organic cheeses, produce and meat, it has become an organic haven in an industrial world.

People returned to take up organic farming, bee-keeping, and cheese-making. Varese Ligure, an ancient borgo with its own perfect castle and a unique, circular town plan, began to be spruced up. Good restaurants opened. Artists and craftspeople arrived. And so did we, drawn to its energy, inventiveness, and the purity of its landscape.

Varese Ligure’s story reflects the character of its people. What better folk to be around when attempting something as audacious as bringing Godzillavilla back to life? I’m hoping some of their resolve and resourcefulness rubs off on me. If they can resurrect a whole valley and its towns, surely resurrecting one old house is possible.

Varese's castle, still privately owned


The Value of Community

28 Monday Nov 2011

Posted by in Community

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It always feels good to be back. Godzilla had fared better than the apartment in terms of infestations – just the usual squirrel poop we’ve come to expect, since the place is wide open.

What I like best about returning, apart from seeing the house and getting all pumped up about it again, is the welcome we get from the community. We aren’t there as much as we used to be and we’re obviously peripheral to the tight-knit local group, but everyone notices when we return, even for a couple of days, and greets us.

The local grocer

There aren’t very many people in our little hamlet and a lot of them seem to be related. The family who runs the local bar and restaurant (Albergo Picetti)) is a good example. The father sold us part of our land. One of the sisters is married to our contractor. The other sister is our neighbor, whose husband helped us get rid of the junk in the Clean Team episode. They just moved in Monday to a new house that took them six years to build. We used to joke that it was a race to see who got their house ready first, but their six years now looks miraculously fast compared to us. Seeing that they’d actually moved in, we stopped by to admire their new digs, their new baby, and have a coffee.

Our apartment overlooks the bar, so when we hang out our windows we can shout greetings back and forth to the people coming in and out, in typically noisy Italian fashion. That’s how people know you’re there, when you stand around in your window. I’m not always completely certain who they all are, but they know us as the Canadians who have inexplicably developed a fondness for their remote corner of the world. Even the old men who have been playing cards at the bar for decades mutter their recognition, sometimes smile, and make a space for us to have our beer.

I love this sense of familiarity and community, however peripheral we may be. The cheese man at the grocery store greets us with the informal ciao now, a sign of acceptance in the formality of Italian society. He shook my hand when we were leaving and asked when we’d be coming back; he knows we always do.