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In the summer of 1994, I moved back in to my childhood home – but this time with my husband and three children, aged 8, 7 and 2.
My parents had died at the “young” ages of 64 and 67 – my mom from pancreatic cancer, my dad from a stroke almost exactly a year later.
I am close to my sister and brother and, after shedding many tears and sharing many memories, we decided it made the most sense for me and my family to move in, to keep the much-loved home in our family.
The house sits proudly, high on a hill, in a country-like setting in midtown Toronto. It’s in a Tudor style with all the original old oak floors, panelled walls, leaded windows and creaky radiators.
Interestingly, it was many years later, in the course of getting a quote from a tradesman who had done work at the house in the 1980s, that we heard a story that validated our decision.
The tradesman recalled that a white-haired gentleman – my father – had told him to be sure to do a good job because he hoped that one day his eldest daughter would move into the house with her family.
After settling in for a few years, my husband and I decided to do some much-needed renovating.
There was a ratty old pegboard wall on the south end of my old bedroom, which was now my daughter’s room. This wall backed onto an old crumbling cork wall that was in my brother’s bedroom, now my son’s.
According to my parents’ stories from when we were kids, these two bedrooms were once a single large room – a “sitting room” for the British High Commissioner and his wife, who were the first owners of the house, in the 1930s.
After that, the Canadian actor Lloyd Bochner and his family had moved into the house. It was they who decided to build a wall to turn the room into two separate bedrooms.
Bochner also had three children.
My husband and I made some renovation plans and hired some workers, and finally the day came to start taking down the wall.
It was then that something magical happened. The workers taking the wall down called us over to take a look at some “buried treasure” they had uncovered.
It turned out that I had spent 16 years sleeping in my bed against the old pegboard wall without knowing that a secret message lay underneath it.
The message said:
“To the wreckers, vandals, or whoever –
“Know that the perforated wall which you have just removed was put up by me, Lloyd Bochner, on February 21st, 1955. This room is now occupied by my son Paul, aged 3 1/2 months.
“If you are destroying this home, pause for a moment and hear the echo of my son’s laughter. We are happy here – my wife Ruth, my son Paul, and my daughter Johanna.
“If you are to live in this home,
“May God bless you and give you happiness.”
My husband and I stood back in awe. We took photos of the message. The workers carried on with the demolition.
But the discovery rekindled old memories. I thought back to my brother and I, as kids, peeking through the upstairs railing to watch my parents’ party below, listening to the laughter of the guests.
I thought of how he and I used to imagine that a secret tunnel ran behind the wall and under the stairs in the basement, though it turned out the secret was upstairs, not in the basement.
And I recalled a visit from the youngest of the Bochner children, Hart, when I was a teenager. Hart was also an actor (in the movie Die Hard among many others) and he was born the year after the message was written.
He came to see the house, and asked if he could have a look at his old room, the one with the pegboard.
This became a popular story for a teenaged girl such as myself to tell – a Hollywood actor knocking at my door asking to see my bedroom!
(Later, my sister, now living in Los Angeles, showed Hart the photo of the uncovered message and Hart shared it with his father.)
How fortunate I was to be able to move back into that same house, and then take down the wall.
The uncovered message felt like a gift, a voice from the past – a true blessing bestowed upon my family. How many other messages are there under walls, floors and ceilings, waiting to be read?
Later on the day of the demolition, I found a small piece of the wall lying in the rubble on the floor. It had a fragment of the message on it: “home/happi.”
This piece is now in a shadow box framed and hanging on the wall in our kitchen.
Even though my children have now “flown the coop,” the fragment reminds me every day to pause a moment and listen for the echo of laughter in my home.
The “buried treasure” has become a lasting message to be mindful and to hold dear the happy moments in our home and in all of our lives.
Barbara Newman lives in Toronto.