Once in a while, when we're setting out for our afternoon ramble in the ravine we access up the street from our house, we will come across an elderly couple, likely our own age, with the man, standing perfectly erect and in obvious good health, patiently waiting while his wife, dessicated with age and ill-health, laboriously takes footstep after footstep with the aid of a walker. He is obviously devoted to her. Or feels it his responsibility borne of a long partnership through life to see to her ongoing welfare.

I always call out a "hello", and because my own hearing ability is somewhat impaired I'm never certain that there is a response, since this man has a habit of looking straight ahead, and not ever in my direction if ever we confront one another, which we have done in the past, under different circumstances. My husband, who has a habit of naming people the way he sees them, calls him "the Nazi", and he tells me that there is invariably some manner of mumbled response whose gist he cannot quite make out.

So yesterday, embarking on our walk a little later than we'd intended, we did briefly see them on the street and the usual occurred. Perhaps the man feels resentful that another couple living on the street close by his own home are able to enjoy life without the constraints of physical disability. Who knows?

I do know that he has exhibited toward me a chronic churlishness that does no credit to his world view. Each time I have knocked on his door over the years representing myself as being associated with a door-to-door neighbourhood canvass on behalf of some well-known charitable health organization -- to fund research and medical-protocol coping strategy assistance for people suffering from ill health effects or from chronic conditions, or from a frightening health diagnosis they must learn to cope with -- he slams the door in my face.

Initially, he would ask me first in French, then in perfect English if I speak French, and if not, why not? I responded to him on the first occasion that I would be comfortable speaking with him in English, failing that using my second language, Yiddish, which would be of no use whatever to him. He grimaced grimly, I recall, but perhaps with an imagined hint of sympathy. But no donation was forthcoming.

On another occasion, he sternly addressed me with the lecture that he fully expects anyone who comes to his door to speak French, and only in French will he respond to any requests. We have other neighbours on the street for whom French represents their mother tongue, and they have perfectly good relations with all their neighbours.

We have as well people on the street who originally hailed from Egypt, Hong Kong, Russia, India and Bangladesh, and never has any of them balked at communication on the issue of language. But then, this is an issue that has many counterparts; culture, tribalism, clannishness, nationality, ideology; all of which can become socially lethal instruments used in malign ways to separate people and create animosity and rage between them.

It is the long, sad story of human failures to cherish the commonalities between people and societies when many among us deliberately choose to focus instead on the cultural, ethnic, geographic variations to evoke our darkest emotions to advance instead the differences that divides us.