I'm sorry to deliver a downer so soon after Christmas. You're probably already down enough after seeing the cookie damage on the scale and the first of the bills, not to mention that you didn't get a pony again this year. But I have to devote my space this week to a kind of obituary.

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I am mourning the loss of one of my favorite places on the planet: Cullen Gardens and Miniature Village, a little east of Toronto in Whitby, Ontario.

It was only 25, and it was beloved by children, parents and visitors from all over the world. The AAA listed it as a Gem in its Ontario TourBook, which is why I went there for the first time in the summer of 2001.

The AAA's endorsement notwithstanding, I figured there would be some pretty flowers and a cutesy-boo little cluster of houses with cartoon characters for the kiddies, and I could stroll through and be back in the car in about an hour.

Instead, I spent a whole afternoon wandering around in a state of enchanted amusement. And I don't use words like "enchanted" often or lightly.

The village is more like a 1\12-scale miniature province, with meticulously detailed reproductions of 160 historic and contemporary buildings in and around southern Ontario. But it's not like a dull museum display because the buildings are grouped in villages, farms, a town and a rural resort area. There are little people doing things -- holding a parade down the town's main street, putting out a house fire, hunting, repairing the road -- as miniature trains clatter along their tracks and little cars pass on the highway.

Also on Cullen's 36 acres were gorgeously landscaped gardens, topiaries, the Ontario Wildflower Garden and Bird Sanctuary, live animals, an outdoor theater with live entertainment, and a giant floral peacock. Beyond the playground was a miniature amusement park, with a tiny but elaborate wooden roller coaster and a carousel.

There was so much for children to do there. Splash pools, mini golf and a petting corral in the summer, Halloween events in the fall and the Christmas Festival of Lights as winter closed in and buried the train tracks in snow.

I was delighted (a word I almost always use ironically, but not here) by the beautiful miniatures, stunned by the flowers and really, really happy with the food in the charming restaurant. So many tourist attractions have spectacularly lousy food.

All this for an adult admission around $10 U.S., less for kids.

And most of it will close on New Year's Day, the restaurant a week later.

The story is one you'll recognize: The patriarch started a business on farmland way outside the big city. He built it up, expanded it, realized a dream and made a lot of people happy. Meanwhile, the big city grew bigger and bigger, and its suburbs crept out to tear up the farmland and woods and cover everything with roads and townhomes, gas stations and traffic lights and big-box stores. People got busy and began to take the business for granted. It was still beloved, but love doesn't pay the bills. And everybody knows developers pay handsomely for land adjacent to Wal-Marts and condo communities.

The patriarch has said he would still be running it, not selling it, if he were in charge. But he's 80, he's had heart trouble, and he's not in charge. The next generation has its own plans.

And so I found myself, heartsick and desperate, driving all the way up to Whitby on a Sunday to see the Christmas lights and the Nativity with live animals at Cullen Gardens before it gets obliterated. It was packed. There were children everywhere. The lines at the till were long but patient, and the crowd clumped and slid down the brick pathways in the numbing cold like a huge funeral procession.

A huge laughing, squealing, singing funeral procession. Kids live in the moment. And in the moment, there was music and lights and animated frogs. You can't conceive of loss when there are animated frogs.

After a last tour of the village and the candy cane forest, I sat in the restaurant for a last meal.

"How are you this evening?" the waitress asked.

"Sad," I said.

Maybe there will be a miracle. Maybe someone will save Cullen Gardens. Maybe, just this once, they won't pave paradise and put up a parking lot. Why must retail always trump beauty and whimsy?

As a mother wrote to the local newspaper, "What kind of memories will our children build walking around big box stores?"