VICTORIA - Long before a crowd of dinosaurs and gnomes started congregating around the tree in their front yard, Lynda and Brian Fraser say there was simply a fairy door on it.
“I think we just wanted to make people smile,” Brian recalls of attaching the small red door with the golden knocker to the base of the tree trunk almost 20 years ago.
Not only was the prospect of fairies living behind the door a delight for their daughters, a family of toy gnomes that gathered outside the door and seemed to decorate it with seasonal displays (from Christmas trees and Halloween pumpkins, to Canada Day flags and Academy Award red carpets), captured the imagination of countless other kids in the community.
“[Children] would write these little notes, roll them up, and place them in the door knocker,” Lynda smiles. “And the fairies would generally write back.”
After inspiring smiles for years, you can imagine how Lynda and Brian felt when they woke up one morning to find that all of it — including the door — was gone.
“There was this big gaping wound in the base of the tree,” Brian says.
“We were just devastated,” Lynda says. “It was really quite awful.”
Instead of giving up on their display, Lynda and Brian decided to use the theft as an opportunity for their daughters to learn about resilience.
“Something bad might happen,” Lynda says. “But that doesn’t mean it’s the end of something.”
And seeing as the couple also felt a duty to the rest of the community, they decided to rebuild bigger and better.
“Because otherwise the vandal would have won,” Brian says.
Along with constructing a more robust new door, they welcomed a whole new set of neighbours.
“There was just one [toy] dinosaur,” Brian says. “[Then] a whole herd of dinosaurs outside the fairy door.”
The dinosaurs dominated for almost a decade, joining the fairies and gnomes in the seasonal celebrations, and inspiring the locals to rename it the Dino Door.
Until, one afternoon, Lynda and Brian discovered that they had all disappeared.
“That was enormously disappointing,” Brian says.
So they posted a plea on social media asking for reptiles to be returned, but they never were.
Instead, strangers who frequented the Dino Door began dropping off donations of new dinosaurs.
“They wouldn’t leave a note saying here’s a dinosaur for you,” Lynda says. “They would just appear and be part of the herd.”
And now, Lynda and Brian couldn’t be more grateful that more than a dozen dinosaurs are flourishing in this magical menagerie, a testament to resilience, kindness, and community.
“It‘s very healthy for humans to be a bit silly and have a bit of fun every day,” Brian smiles. “And I think that’s what this door does for the community.”
