Pixie Porcellato wanted to add a little ambiance to her Quayside home – and her sons helped her accomplish her goal.
In the early 1990s, Porcellato decided she wanted to liven up the pond around her home in the Renaissance development so she purchased some koi to add a little life to the pond.
“My mom decided that the pond was not very exciting. She paid around $2,000, and my brother Brad and I went out to Richmond and bought these five huge koi fish. We put them in a cooler with a bunch of water and dumped them in there,” Ray Porcellato told the Record. “We didn’t know what was going to happen.”
Ray, who was living at the Quay at the time, said the koi quickly began to multiply. At one point, he even suggested the strata council could sell off some of the koi to raise money to help with the costs of building envelope repairs.
Ray credits another Quayside resident for ensuring the koi survived, noting the man created an area with chicken wire underneath the water’s surface.
“The little tiny fish could hide out in there and grow,” he said. “He deserves a lot of the credit for how many of the fish are in there right now.”
Quayside resident Joe Hargitt organized a Celebrate the Koi at the Quay event earlier this month so people could share stories and information about the koi.
“The day was a big success from all accounts,” Hargitt told the Record. “We had a good turnout and people said they appreciated learning more about the koi, the lagoons, the Quay, and meeting their neighbours.”
While the Porcellatos no longer call the Quay home, they’re pleased the koi continue to add to the ambiance of the Quay.
“Now that there’s hundreds of them, it’s part of the character of the building,” Ray said. “They just started to multiply, like rapidly, as soon as we put them in there.”
