Just as we set out walking down the street with Jackie and Jillie this afternoon, there was our dear friend and neighbour Mohindar, walking up the street, returning from a walk to the supermarket. Not so good, was his response when we asked how he was. Last time we had seen him he mentioned chest pain. But this is something he always experiences. After his open-heart surgery five years ago he complained of chest pain but the cardiologists who looked after him found no reason for him to experience pain related to his surgery.

Last week -- he told us this afternoon -- he'd had one of the two stents replaced. When he was examined after his complaints it was discovered that one of the stents inserted during his angioplasty had failed. But it was also explained to him that the pain in his chest had nothing to do with his heart. Mohindar as it happens, is one of those people perpetually vexed with mysterious pains for which a cause somehow eludes medicine. He is not, however, a chronic complainer.

We spoke of other things, while Jackie and Jillie did their best to be patient, sitting around, waiting for us to continue. We spoke about the seismic geological testing going on now up the street at the ravine entrance. And he informed us that three or four blocks from our street, at another major intersection, work similar to that which took place several years back, pounding steel supports down to bedrock to stabilize the hillside beyond our street, is now taking place there as well. The nearby houses, he said, are in direct danger of sinking. Again, of course, Leda clay and its infamous instability that bedevils this area.

We finally bid our friend adieu and continued on down the street over to the main street that links us to another entrance to the ravine and in we went. The initial descent at that point takes us to a large open area where the creek used to be, and still is, but is now buried within a gigantic pipe that is covered with a dirt overlayer, with the shoulders of the ravine rising on either side. The open area, almost like a meadow, where trees were planted to take the place of the mature forest that had been logged out to make space for the remedial work that commenced after the hill collapse, excites Jackie and Jillie.

They run about with curiosity amok everywhere there. We aren't long in that area before we rise to one of the trails we ordinarily take. But before we did, my husband, looking down at where the creek openly runs, saw fish swimming about, that caught his eye. We knew that years ago someone had emptied a tank of goldfish into the ravine, across from where we stood, on the opposite side of a major thoroughfare where the ravine and its forest and the creek continues. They had flourished for years and grown a respectable size, when the collapse had occurred.

And then, they were seen no more. Some, however, obviously survived, at least some of their spawn did and we were delighted to see them. Swimming about in the near-frozen creek we saw several of them. Carp are fairly hardy and can grow to a respectable size. And should areas of the creek be deep enough that when it freezes over shortly the area under the surface ice provides haven and the fish are able to survive winter in a kind of hibernation.

We continued on, and our two little dogs romped about freely as they always do, enjoying the opportunity to be out in an environment that is so welcome to them, as it is to us. We saw a few people out walking with their own dogs, none of whom we were familiar with, their presence owing primarily to the fact that the ravine had, as it were, been opened for more area residents to be aware of its presence and accessibility when the entrance that we had taken advantage of had been opened several years back during the reconstruction.