Mac Belt: My First Mentor

I first met Mac Belt in late October 1960. He was a counselor with the Big Brothers in Toronto and he worked out of a grand old mansion on Jarvis Street. My appointment had been arranged by the Salvation Army. I had spent my first night away from home at the men’s shelter on Sherbourne and Queen Streets after a couple who owned a small convenience store gave me a bus ticket and a twenty-five cent coin when I showed up in their store in suburban Toronto asking for work. Not knowing what else to do when I found myself homeless in a strange city at 14, I had gone to small businesses along the street, asking if they had any work for me. My inspiration for that was the novels by Horatio Alger I had read a few years before. You know, honest orphan acts responsibly and is adopted by an older single millionaire who recognizes his innate goodness. When I arrived at the shelter, lining up behind the other men awaiting my turn, I listened to what each said to the man in the cage. They’d exchange few words, a coin would slide across the counter, a ticket would be returned, and then a loud buzzer would sound so the man could open a door beside the custodian’s cage.

When my turn came I slid my quarter across the counter and said, in imitation of the men before me, “Bed and breakfast.” Instead of automatically issuing me a meal ticket the man looked closely at me and asked, “How old are you?” “Seventeen,” I answered bravely. “What’s your name?” I had already thought of that. At home I had been called Jim, though my first given name was Ronald. I knew it best to stick to a name close to my own so I’d have no trouble remembering it. “Ron White.” He slid a sheet of paper and a pencil across the counter and asked me to write out my full name. So I wrote, “Ronald James White.” He took the paper then gave me the pink ticket. “You’ll be in the Snake Pit tonight. Down the stairs and to your right. Be careful. Sleep with your jacket on and keep your shoes under your pillow.” The buzzer sounded.

I did not sleep well in the room filled with a half dozen silent men on steel-framed single beds and was embarrassed by the dirt my shoes left on the sheet. Breakfast was porridge and toast with watery tea, milk and sugar already added, served in a dining hall filled with men intent on scraping up every bit of their gruel. As I was leaving with no plans of what to do next a teenager offered me a cigarette and asked me how old I was. When I said, “Seventeen” he said, “Me too.”  He then explained to me how to get to the Salvation Army’s Social Services Centre and said I should tell them a good story and they’d give me some more meal tickets. I wandered westwards along Queen Street in the bright cold sunshine, marvelling at the amazing height of the skyscrapers that came into view as I approached Yonge Street. I estimated that some of them were more than 10 stories high, maybe as much as 15. North along Yonge Street, past stores I knew from their commercials (“People’s Credit Jewelers” whose jingle I could not get out of my head). A short block east on College Street and I arrived at the Salvation Army Social Services Centre and waited my turn on a wooden chair, marvelling at a box filled with eyeglasses with a sign inviting everyone to help themselves or to donate. I could not imagine wearing eye glasses previously worn by someone else.

A man in a Salvation Army uniform invited me to his office, took down my information (all of it false) and then asked what he could do for me. I hadn’t thought ahead that far and blurted the first thing that popped into my head. “I want to go to school.” That, apparently, was the right answer. He asked me to wait in the waiting area. Ten minutes later he called me back and told me to go back to the Men’s Hostel and ask to see the Major.

Back at the Sally Ann, as I was learning to call it, the man in the front cage directed me to a different door, this one not requiring a buzzer. The Major was a steel-grey-haired gentleman in full dress uniform who told me that I could work in the kitchen in exchange for room and board while they worked things out. He also told me that there were regular worship services that I was expected to attend. I had an appointment at the Big Brothers in a few days; the man in the cage out front would supply me with streetcar tickets and instructions. He directed an employee, in street clothes, to take me to the kitchen to meet the head cook and then show me the cubicle where I’d be staying. It was a large industrial kitchen with massive machines. It was quiet at that time of day and the few men dressed in whites and aprons looked at me curiously as the head cook explained that I’d be working from 6 am until 1 pm, and then from 3 pm until 6 or so. Someone would wake me in the morning. “And don’t give me any grey hairs!” he admonished me. My cubicle was a tin-enclosed area, open at the top of the six foot high walls, and against a brick outer wall. There was a window that looked out on another brick wall about two feet away. I had a single bed, a cot really, a small wardrobe, and small dresser. I was given a toothbrush, comb, and a few pairs of underwear and socks neatly folded.

In the morning I was directed to dress in white pants, shirt, and a white apron, all of which hung on hooks in a small dressing room beside the kitchen. Half a dozen men worked in the kitchen, all intent on their tasks. I was given the job of clarifying butter, a completely new process to me. As cubes of butter melted in a sauce pan I had to scoop out the curds as they formed and floated to the top of the liquid. I was then shown how to operate the toaster, a contraption on which one placed the bread on a moving tractor feed that hauled the bread up and around a heating element. The toast would then fall out of the bottom of the machine. I had to swipe each piece of toast with a paint brush that I dipped into the clarified butter. The entire procedure was foreign to me, but I marvelled at the technical ingenuity of it, even down to using a paint brush to spread butter.

The men to be fed lined up single file, took a tray from a stack, and pushed it along a narrow counter that separated the kitchen from the dining area. An employee would dollop a ladle of porridge into bowls and the client would select one then place it on his tray; the man would move to the next station where he’d receive two pieces of toast that I had painted with clarified butter. Tea was served from a large caldron with sugar and milk already mixed in, ladled into cups. They’d shuffle off to long tables, most eating quickly with their faces close to their bowls. When finished they’d bring their trays with used dishes and utensils to a window where I was assigned to collect them, scraping the remainders into a large garbage can that I was told would be sold to famers as pig slop and stacking items into trays prepared for the automatic dishwasher. I’d shove trays as they filled into the maw of the dishwasher and then sort and stack items as they emerged at the other end. I learned that cutlery fresh from an industrial dishwasher is hot enough to burn.

When all the men had finished and shuffled off to hang around before the mission, smoking and gossiping, before starting their daily routines, I had to wipe down the tables, stack the chairs on the tables, and then mop the floor. It was time to start the preparations for lunch. After lunch (usually soup and sandwiches) had been served, I’d again clean the dining hall, finish sorting and stacking dishes and cutlery, then mop the entire kitchen floor. Dinner would already be slow cooking in the massively-sized caldrons, and I’d achingly return to my cubicle for my two-hour break. Back to work for the supper shift and then final cleanup of everything, leaving the kitchen and dining room sparkling clean awaiting the next day’s repetition. My first evening the youngest member of the staff, a chubby young man in his twenties invited me to his room. It was not much bigger than mine, but at least it had regular walls. He let me chose a tie from his collection and gave me that day’s Toronto Star so I’d have something to read before going to sleep.

So, there I was. I had left home only 48 hours before and I had already a room of my own and had put in a long day’s work.

Next day I did it all again. My main tasks were the simple menial jobs that had to be done, like feeding the dishwasher, mopping the floors, minding the toaster, scrapping dirty dishes into the slop pail. But I did it all without complaint. My fellow workers pretty much kept to themselves. They were friendly enough, but distant. The head cook was in his mid-thirties and talked in a loud commanding voice. He gave orders curtly, fully confident in what he was doing. He called me “The Kid,” and so that’s what the others called me. I didn’t mind. He’d order someone, “Joe, show The Kid how to clean the meat slicer and don’t let him cut his fingers off.” “You!” he’d shout at me, “Do it right the first time—and don’t give me any grey hairs!” The order regarding the grey hairs was one I’d hear several times a shift.

Thursday was my appointment at the Big Brothers and I had to leave the lunch shift early. All the other staff members seemed to know about my appointment and wished me luck. The man who had given me the tie suggested that I wear it and so I did. The Big Brother offices were in a Jarvis Street Victorian mansion converted into offices. A large stone staircase led up to the main door, heavy oak with leaded stained glass for windows. A Dutch door, the top half open, marked off the receptionist’s area. Mac Belt’s office was on the second floor, up a long curving open staircase. He was waiting for me at the top of the stairs. “Well, Ronnie White, welcome!” he beamed, hand out for a handshake. “Right this way.” He led me into his office. It could have been a sitting room at one time. It was very large, his desk before a large bay window had two chairs before it. “Have a seat,” he indicated, and asked if I had had any trouble finding the place while he circled his desk and sat in his office chair.

He was a short man with thin white-hair and a rotund belly. He offered me a cigarette and we both lit up. He pulled out a writing pad and took down my particulars. Name, age, where I was from, how I wound up homeless. I had chosen 17 as my age, knowing that if anyone knew my real age, I’d likely be hauled off to a police station and packed off home. Seventeen seemed old enough to be on one’s own, yet not too old as I knew I’d never be able to convince anyone I was older than that. I thought it unlikely I’d be able to convince them I was 17, but it wasn’t so far from the truth as to be totally unbelievable. My story was I was orphaned. I had been living with an aunt and uncle in Sarnia who had recently died. Again, fact interwoven with fiction. I did have an aunt and uncle in Sarnia, but they were very much alive. I knew enough about Sarnia’s streets and general layout to be able to create an illusion that I knew the city well. When he asked what school I had attended, I didn’t hesitate to name “Sarnia Collegiate.” I didn’t know if there was actually a school by that name, but cities tended to name their schools after themselves.

Preliminaries out of the way he asked how I was making out at the Sally Ann and if they were treating me well. I didn’t know what “well” meant in that context, so I shrugged. He asked about my work there, how I got along with the other men. He seemed satisfied with my one-word “Okay” replies. Did I have enough clothing? I explained that they had given me a few basic items. He asked where I got the tie and I told him that one of the men who worked in the kitchen gave it to me. He asked me if the man had asked for anything in return. I was surprised because I thought that Mr. Belt understood that I had nothing to give in return. I never realized until I was writing this that Mr. Belt had a way of asking about sexual exploitation in such a way that I never realized that that was what he was asking about.  If he had have been more explicit I likely would have refused to answer. Even if the man who gave me the necktie had wanted anything in return, it was too subtly expressed for me to pick up. In any case, I simply could not talk about anything remotely related to sex with an adult; it was unthinkable to me. Sexual interest was something hidden and shared only through hints, bad jokes, and suggestions with peers.

He then got up and laid out a table-top hockey game, with push-pull rods to control the players, on his desk and challenged me to a game. He won easily. We played a few games, always with the same result. He did that for my first few visits and then switched to checkers. He continued to challenge me to a game of checkers every time I met him over the next several years and I don’t recall ever having won a single game against him. Also, at the end of every meeting with him he gave me two street-car tickets. One to get home on and one for the next visit. We made an appointment for a week from my first meeting. He gave me a cigarette “for the road” and shook my hand as we parted.

* * *

That evening after the dinner shift was over all the men who worked in the kitchen, except for the head chef, filed into a room next to the dining room that was set up as a chapel. The folding chairs filled up with “customers” as the men who relied on the Salvation Army mission were often referred to. A woman in a Salvation Army uniform sat in a bench before the upright piano and the Major led the service. We sang hymns like “The Old Rugged Cross” and “Amazing Grace” while the woman pounded out the chords with a military meter. The Major read a few short passages from the Bible, mainly from the “Gospel of John” and “Revelations.” The men in attendance were encouraged to testify. One especially decrepit-looking man stood to announce that he had fallen into a gutter, so drunk he could not stand, when an angel from heaven came down and “lifted him up.” The Major and the pianist muttered “Halleluiah. Praise the Lord!” and the congregation rumbled something in reply. After service the men filed into the dining room where cups of pre-sweetened tea and a small slice of carrot cake was served to each of them.

Friday, I was told, was pay day. After the lunch shift the kitchen workers lined up in the dining room waiting their turn with the paymaster who was seated at a small table. He had a leger book and envelopes with each man’s name on them. Each man was solemnly handed his envelope and I could see that each contained cash that the employee would quickly count before heading off to the street or to his room. The paymaster looked surprised when I stood before his desk and told me he was sorry, but he had nothing for me. “But I work here,” I protested. There was nothing he could do, he told me. Later that day I was told that the Major wanted to see me. I sat across from his desk.

“I thought you understood,” he told me. “We are providing you with room and board.”

“But I work like everybody else,” I told him. “I don’t have any money.”

He reflected for a moment then said that he would give me a dollar a day in addition to my room and board. That seemed reasonable to me and I agreed. He took four dollars from his wallet and handed it to me as my pay for the four days I had worked so far. From then on, each Friday the pay master had an envelope for me containing seven dollars, one for each day I had worked that week. As I recall I was not docked pay for missing work due to appointments with Mr. Belt or other authorized absences.

Other than cigarettes which, in those days, cost about twenty-five cents a pack (the same as the cost of a bed for the night and breakfast at the Sally Ann), I had no need of any money. There was a small used book store on the other side of Queen Street where I would buy copies of The Toronto Star. I also bought used comic books for five cents each, sometimes two for a nickel. So, the money began to accumulate in my pocket. The kitchen workers warned me that the women who loitered in front of the book store were prostitutes and that I should stay away from them. None of them bothered me, as I was just another kid in their eyes. In any case, I would have had no idea what to do with such a woman even if I did have enough money to purchase their services.

* * *

On Monday I was called to the Major’s office after the breakfast and lunch shift was over. He told me that he had been pleased to see me at the evening service and asked me how I was getting along. I told him that everything was fine. He then told me that he had a special job for me. There was a woman staying at the Royal York Hotel who needed a man to carry her display cases for her whole she went on sales calls. Was I interested? I shrugged my consent, curious. I had to be clean and polite. Could I manage it? Sure. He told me to be cleaned up, dressed in a tie, at 11:00 am next morning and the man in the front cage would give me directions.

“What about my work in the kitchen?” I asked.

“Work the breakfast shift until 10:30, then get ready. You can go back to the kitchen when you get back.”

Of course my fellow workers already knew all the details when I returned to the kitchen, teasing me about working for a woman at the Royal York, hinting that I’d be doing more than carrying her cases. The Royal York was the ritziest and most expensive hotel in Toronto and a visit to its august premises was something far beyond the dreams of the kitchen workers.  Next morning, after I had combed my hair and knotted the tie about my neck, the man at the front desk gave me two streetcar tickets and told me how to get to the Royal York. He warned me to be polite and respectful.

The opulence of the Royal York was overwhelming. I politely inquired after the woman I was told to meet at the front desk and stood awkwardly to the side until a stunningly beautiful woman emerged from an elevator and approached me, hand outstretched. “You must be from the Salvation Army,” she said, shaking my hand. “I am pleased to meet with you. And you are called?” I told her my name. An almost gentle exotic perfume enveloped her. She was dressed in a skirted business suit, a white blouse with some lace work at the front, and highly polished black high heeled shoes. She had a soft French accent. “You will do,” she said after looking me over. “Come with me.” And she led me back to the elevator. We rode to her floor in silence. Once in her room, I stood awkwardly while she gestured at two small suitcases. “I will require of you to carry these for me. Can you manage this?” I agreed that I could. “Bon. Let us go then,” she said. I picked up the two cases and followed from her room back down to the lobby and out to the street before the hotel where a taxi was waiting for us.

I kept one case at my feet, the other on my lap. She explained as we rode that she was from Montreal and represented a watch company. Our first stop was the People’s Credit Jewelers store on Yonge Street. I carried her cases to a small office at the back of the store, and then sat in a chair just outside the office and waited while she conducted her business behind the closed door.  Half an hour later she emerged, I jumped to my feet and retrieved the cases from the office while she chatted with the manager. Another short taxi ride to another jeweler further north along Yonge. As I waited outside the manager’s office this time, I fell asleep, then came to with a start. A large clock on the wall showed it was 3:30. I jumped to my feet, assuming I had slept the entire afternoon and evening away. In a panic, I rushed out to the street, wondering why she had left me there and why there were so many people on the sidewalk in the wee hours of the morning. My head finally cleared and I realized that it was actually late afternoon. I returned to my chair and waited.

When she completed her business, we took a taxi back to the Royal York Hotel. As I followed her through the lobby I felt dirty and out of place. Though I had been at the Salvation Army Hostel for only a week I felt as though I had become one of the grubby and shabbily dressed men. Once in her room she opened her purse and took out a five dollar bill, holding it out to me. “You have done a good job for me,” she said and then sat while I stood unsure of myself.

“So tell me,” she asked. “You look like a nice boy. Why are you resting at the Salvation Army?”

Her use of the verb “rest” momentarily confused me, but I understood the intent of the question. I told her my story of being orphaned and then my aunt and uncle dying. I was now on my own.

“So, have you the plans?” she asked.

“The Salvation Army is working on getting me back to school. The Big Brothers are helping,” I explained.

“Ah, bon. That is good. You must go at the school.”

She then told me she was returning the following week and asked if I would be available to help her again. I assured her that I would be.

* * *

Back in the kitchen the men asked about my date, implying that I did more than carry the woman’s cases. I was embarrassed. There was a man I hadn’t met before working that dinner shift. His name was David. He was, perhaps, in his early sixties, a soft-looking and apparently gentle man. He had lost his thumb in the meat slicer the day before I had started work and this was his first day back, a large bandage where his thumb used to be. He was shy, but friendly, and told me he was having trouble rolling cigarettes, could I help him out? After work, we went back to his room, which was a little larger and better furnished than the young man’s room I had been in the day I started. He showed me his cigarette rolling machine. I’d lay a twelve inch long cigarette paper the length of it, fill it with tobacco, lick the adhesive and then roll the paper and tobacco through the machine which produced an even tube. There were slots in the machine marking where I could use a razor blade to cut the super cigarette to produce three king-sized cigarettes or four regular-sized ones. I rolled enough cigarettes for David to be able to fill an empty commercial package and then rolled another half dozen for myself.

Over the next few days I spent a lot of time with David. Each evening I’d roll a package of cigarettes for him and he’d ask me questions about my background. One evening he told me that when he met me it was as if he had been digging in a mine, in the black muck, and had found a diamond. He sometimes hugged me when he told me things like that. I stood passively while he clutched me to his chest. Otherwise, he never touched me.

The other men in the kitchen had never been overly-friendly with me. They were polite, but distant, as if they sensed that I did not belong there. There was a very fat man who kept to himself working quietly in a corner of the kitchen. I never knew what he did and I don’t think he ever spoke to me. There was a very thin, intense man, who did not seem to like me and kept his distance. The chubby young man who had given me a tie the first day was more distant with me after David returned to work. He later told me that this was deliberate on his part, as he saw how friendly David and I had become and said he “didn’t want to interfere.” I did not understand what he meant and didn’t ask.

* * *

One evening after I had rolled David’s package of cigarettes, I decided to go for a walk. Though it was early November, it was a pleasant evening. As I stood on the sidewalk outside the Sally Ann, lighting a cigarette while deciding which way to head, a young man said hello and asked me my name. He was maybe in his 20’s, a bit better dressed than most of the men at the Sally Ann, and definitely chubby—something out of place where most of the men were raggedly thin. We started talking and he said he was going for a walk as well, could he join me? Why not? We cut across the park across the street from the hostel, then meandered along the streets. He pointed to a restaurant with an awning over the front door and said something about it being a fancy place. I thought he meant to enter it and turned, but he stopped me saying it was far too expensive for us.

As we headed back towards to Sally Ann along Queen Street he stopped before a restaurant and said, “Come on.” I assumed he wanted a coffee or snack and so followed him into the restaurant. “Come on,” he beckoned, heading towards the back of the restaurant and to a set of stairs that led downward to the restrooms. I had no idea what was going on but I followed obediently. A man behind the counter looked alarmed. At the bottom of the stairs my companion turned so that he stood close to me and started manipulating my genitals through my clothing. He had a strange glassy look in his eyes and was breathing heavily. I was 14 and immediately responded with an erection to his attentions, but I tried to back away. I had a very small pocket knife that I grasped in my pocket and opened.

“Stop,” I said, as confidently as I could, starting to draw the knife from my pocket.

He looked puzzled. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Don’t you like it?”

“Just stop,” I repeated.

Fortunately he stepped back and said, “I just thought you might like it.”

I stumbled up the stairs and walked quickly through the restaurant. Once outside I walked away from the Salvation Army as I was worried he’d follow me. I circled around a few blocks and checked carefully to make sure he was not in sight when I slipped back into the safety of the Sally Ann.

I said earlier that David never touched me inappropriately, but that it not quite true. One day he had me lay on his bed next to him while he hugged me. As usual, I lay stiffly and unresponsive as he hugged me and went on about what a beautiful jewel I was. Suddenly he reached down and quickly touched my genitals saying, “Has Ronnie got a hard-on?” I definitely did not and would have been frightened if I had, but his touch was very brief and he immediately drew his hand away. Otherwise, he sometimes hinted that he’d like to do more than hug me but he never went any further. Looking back I can see that he was deeply conflicted. He liked and respected me enough to keep his desires under control, but it must have been very difficult for him. He told me he was seeing a psychiatrist and said that the doctor had advised him not to touch me. Remember that homosexuality was seen as an illness then and homosexual acts were against the law. That also might have been playing a role in David’s restraint, but I never thought of him as a “dirty old man” and he never repelled me the way that the chubby young man had in the restaurant restroom. Even in my naivety I saw David as a lonely person fighting a silent battle with demons I did not understand.

***

At my next appoint with Mr. Belt my story unravelled. He had a writing pad before him on his desk and told me that it was necessary to contact my former school to get my records if they were going to get me back to school. “Let’s see,” he started, “Sarnia Collegiate, I think you said. Right?”

I knew there was no point to further lying. I could not look at him. “No,” I whispered. “I didn’t go there.”

He waited quietly while I struggled to find the right words. I looked out the window, at the walls, at the table hockey game leaning against a wall in the corner.

“I didn’t live in Sarnia,” I said in a strangled voice, having to force each word.

He waited.

“I’m not 17.”

He waited.

“My parents aren’t dead.”

He waited.

“I don’t want to go home,” I said in a rush.

“No one is going to make you go home,” he said quietly.

“But I’m only 14.”

He repeated himself, “No one is going to make you go home, Ron. That is your name, right?”

“Sort of,” I said, and then explained about how I had been called Jim at home, but that was really my middle name.

“Do you prefer Jim or Ron?” he asked.

I paused for a moment and then, deciding that if this was a new life I was choosing for myself, I was going to use the name I preferred.

“Ron.”

“Okay, Ron it is.”

He then proceeded to write down the correct information about my name, school, and background, including my former address and telephone number. He never once asked me why I had left home and in the six years I knew him before he died he never once asked about my home life. I had said I didn’t want to return there and that was good enough for him. That is how I wanted it and I was grateful that Mac Belt, and the other mentors I got to know in the coming years, respected my right to choose my life’s path.

“I hope you realize,” he said when we were finished, “that I am going to have to contact your father. There’s the matter of school taxes to sort out if you are going to go to school in Toronto.”

When I heard that I was going to go to school in Toronto I felt a momentary elation. It was something that could actually happen. If contacting my father was the price to pay, so be it. I trusted Mr Belt and the Salvation Army major to protect me. They had made it clear that they were on my side.

Mr. Belt then told me he was working on a plan and that he would let me know when he had something definite to share with me. And then he pulled out his checker board, which I learned was his way of saying that the working part of our meeting was over and that I could relax.

***

When I returned to the Sally Ann the man in the front cage told me that the major wanted to see me. The major, as always, was seated behind his desk. He curtly told me to sit down and then stared at me for what seemed a long time.

Finally he said, “Well, I hope you have learned something about lying.”

I had no idea what I was supposed to have learned but I agreed with him.

“Fine. Go back to the kitchen.”

Of course all the men in the kitchen already knew what had transpired. David, especially, looked stunned.

That night in his room he kept shaking his head, “Fourteen! Fourteen! My God.”

I was deeply embarrassed and for the next few days was wary about possible fallout, but, when nothing happened and things fell back into routine, I relaxed.

At my next weekly meeting with Mr Belt he showed me a letter he had received from my father. I read through it quickly. “I will not be held responsible for the actions of an immature child.” read one of the lines. I gave the letter back to Mr Belt.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“He thinks I’m a child,” I complained.

He then told me that he had made arrangements with a home so I could go back to school. He described it briefly as a home for troubled boys in the city’s east end. Its managers, Mr and Mrs Strickland, were dedicated people who had established the home in response to what they perceived as a need. After studying several such institutions they had settled on a form that they thought worked best. If interested, I had an appointment to meet them the next day. Of course I was interested, so Mr Belt gave me some streetcar tickets and careful instructions on how to find the Toronto Boys’ Home on Queen Street East behind the Greenwood Community Centre. “Wear your tie and be polite,” were his final words of advice.

***

I sat at the front of the streetcar, nervously watching the street signs as I rode east along Queen Street. I marvelled at Parliament Street with its gaudily painted wooden houses with curly-cue decorated balconies. Then Sackville and Sumach Streets with more slum housing. We crossed the Don River, bordered by decrepit buildings overlooking a foul-smelling oily slick with dead fish floating belly-up. We passed old factories, warehouses, railway tracks, and bars and convenience stores in crumbling brick buildings. At Logan Avenue I disembarked and walked west past WoodGreen United Church to Booth Street. The boys’ home was the first house on the west side of Booth. It was an ordinary-looking two story semi-detached home with no sign or indication that it was anything other than a working-class family home. A high fence separated it from the WoodGreen Community Centre and its driveway was fenced off with a high chain-link gate. Four wooden steps led up to the roofed porch and the front door. A very short, intense man with slicked black hair greeted me enthusiastically and invited me into his home where I was to live for the next eighteen months.

***

The woman from the Royal York hotel sent me money orders for twenty dollars each for the next two Christmases. She phoned once when I lived at the Home and I took a streetcar to the Royal York where we shared a coffee at the bar and she asked about my school life. I received a wedding invitation from her, but I did not know what to do with it. At 15 I could hardly be expected to go to Montreal for the weekend. Still I kept the ornate card for a few years.

I saw David once again shortly after I started living at the Home. He told me that he missed me, but wished me luck. He hugged me for a very long time. I never saw anyone that I had known at the Sally Ann again.

I continued as one of Mac Belt’s clients over the years. At first we met weekly in his office and played checkers. When I was hospitalized he visited me weekly and worked with the Ontario government to get me a full scholarship for Upper Canada College (which I turned down). He got me jobs over the years and expressed disappointment when I messed up. He would sometimes invite me to his home that he shared with his wife, for dinner and to watch the hockey game. He showed  score of a composition I had written to a member of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and reported back that it was thought highly of and that I showed a lot of talent and potential. For several months when I was 18 he met me weekly for lunch near the Big brothers office. But once I settled down into a job that I held onto and moved in with a girlfriend, I no longer kept in touch…and then, in June of 1967, six and a half years after I had first met him, I called the Big Brother office to share the news with him that I had been accepted into university.

The woman who answered the phone sounded startled when I asked for Mr Belt and passed the phone to a gentleman who asked me what my call was about. I told him it was personal. He then said that Mr Belt had passed away about a year before. He had always believed in me. I’ve always regretted that he never found out that his faith had been justified.