1 STRATHCONA CRESCENT - SOLD

The Essentials

An elegant Strathcona Park bungalow that feels about a mile long from one end to the other. It’s a hike. Three bedrooms on the main floor and a fourth down below, beyond the rec room.

The Bigger Picture

It doesn’t matter that it’s not a working fireplace. I picture Ralph Fiennes resting before it, cross-legged in a high-backed armchair. A royal blue silk robe, or else some hunting tweeds. He’s staring off into the middle distance, the windblown cedars and spruce in the garden vying for his attention. It’s a contemplative moment for him between takes. The caterer is in the kitchen cutting away crusts from the lunch sandwiches, and they’re fixing the floodlights at the far end of the hallway from which Kristin Scott Thomas will soon make her entrance.

All of which is a florid way of saying that this elegant Strathcona bungalow is, I swear, the sort of place you’d film a pretty mini-series full of long silences and character-full faces, leisurely cutaways to scudding cloud set into a ridiculously blue sky. It’s the sort of place everyone pretty much gets along and where after a couple of well-directed hours the world is changed slightly for the better. Which in these mad times seems markedly better than no change at all.

Some of that cinematic feel has to do with the natural flow of the house, the endless oak floors and all the original burnished trim, the myriad windows meeting conspiratorially at every corner. The decorative fireplace and the wooden starburst above your head in the kitchen. It is a period piece and at the same time it is utterly timeless.

There are three bedrooms on the main floor (the principal is big enough, by the way, that you could run laps, although you’d look a bit silly doing it), and a formal dining room that could serve as a fourth, though we might remove the wall between it and the kitchen and get everyone talking to each other again, the food preparer and the dinner devourerers.

The basement is nicely finished too, with highish ceilings, and there is even another bathroom down there. It’s where the teenager sleeps, is my guess, her Xbox ticking over in the corner, the Velvet Underground and Nico leaking from extravagant headphones.

The single garage is detached but there is a modest covered walkway; it’s as if someone holds an umbrella over you as you walk slow-as-you-like through the rain. The gardens run off gleefully in all directions, then swoon gently curb-side. If money ever ran tight, you could probably sell tickets to watch it happen.

It’s a really lovely, interesting home, is what it is, in one of Kingston’s finest neighbourhoods, convenient to both the downtown core and the west-end shops, and it’s been updated regularly. There are no dark secrets here, just film stars lounging, and we’re thrilled to be able to show it off.

(The tour and photos have been removed to protect averyone’s privacy now that the house is sold).