You will have noticed that a global Internet poll has declared a slate of new Wonders of the World, such as the Great Wall of China and the Taj Mahal. And, of course, the pyramids.

Large and wonderful all of them.

But there are smaller wonders closer to home and just as wonderful if you take the time to ponder them. Consider my list.

Horace Grebe is an ordinary-looking man of late middle age. Yet, when he walks into his local bank, the tellers quiver in anticipation and the loan officers stand up in their cubicles. For Horace is a wonder.

It is not so much that he still uses a withdrawal slip instead of a bank machine or that he writes with a fountain pen filled with real ink. No, it’s when he gets his money — usually $180 — and opens his wallet that a small crowd forms around him. The younger staff has never seen a wallet like his.

The wallet holds a driver’s licence and a hospital card. That’s it. There is no VISA or Amex or MasterCard or debit card or bank card or phone card or plastic security pass.

One of the brasher tellers once asked if she could take a photo of his open wallet and, when Horace agreed, 10 staff members whipped out digital cameras. Horace changed banks.

Then there’s Mabel Crane. When she walks down the street on her way to work, young mothers (for it’s that kind of neighbourhood) bring their children to the windows and point her out to them. She also is a wonder.

Mabel is a telephone operator. She sits at a console (which she calls a “table”) and slips on a headset and answers all calls by saying, “Hello” and giving the name of the company. She does not say, “Hi, I’m Mabel. How may I help you?” Nor does she say, “Press one for English” or “If you know your nine-digit number, enter it now” or “Your call is important to us.”

Mabel answers the phone. She says, “Hello” and connects you to the person to whom you wish to speak. And, if that person is out, she writes out your message on a small pink slip of paper and puts it in a cubbyhole.

Mabel is a vanishing breed, and total strangers have been asking for her autograph; asking her to sign herself as “Mabel Crane, operator.” She is puzzled, but she signs.

Then there is Samantha Rees-Mogg. She looks utterly normal. She is 14, cute, plays the violin in the school orchestra and is quite good at field hockey. But her parents are worried and talking about psychiatrists. It seems they gave her a cellphone for her birthday and she put it in a drawer and has never used it. So, they gave her a BlackBerry and are now thinking iPod. Her drawer is filling up.

“Who needs that stuff?” Samantha asks.

“What did we do wrong?” her parents wonder.

(And, as if her parents don’t have enough to worry about, her 11-year-old brother has no use for anything on television except the CBC news.)

In the realm of physical wonders, there’s a two-mile stretch of paved secondary road northeast of Toronto. It gets moderate traffic, the usual cars, trucks and farm machines.

The township’s roads foreman studied this bit of road in the winter, and this spring he drew it to the attention of the township council. “It’s not right,” he said. “Ain’t natural.”

So, on a pleasant summer day the township council members went out to have a look at this stretch of road. They were dumbfounded. It sure wasn’t like your normal road. Along the verge, there were no discarded green garbage bags. No used tires or broken chairs were stuffed into the greenery on either side. No plastic shopping bags. No fast-food wrappers. No soft-drink cans. No tattered newspapers.

The road was pristine.

The council returned to chambers, went into session and discussed asking to have the road declared a UN World Heritage Site. Then they thought of all the tourists this would draw and all the litter it would create. Wisely, they decided to do nothing. Nor will they tell anyone where this section of road is.

Nor will I tell you, because it’s a wonderful thing. IE