Roy Strickland was short and had a high-pitched voice but he
commanded attention with an intense forceful manner. We sat in two winged
chairs in the tiny sitting room before a black and white television set and an
uptight piano. The room opened directly to the dining room which was filled
with two long tables set in an open V. He introduced his wife Irma, a tall
woman with a nervous air. She offered me tea which was served to me in a china
cup and some cookies. Mr Strickland told me that his wife was from Prescott and
said, as he repeated several times over the nearly forty years that I knew him
before he died, “You can take the girl out of the farm, but you can’t take the
farm out of the girl.” All the time that I lived at the Home he called her Mrs
Strickland when speaking to us boys.
He told me that they had studied different ways of helping
out troubled young men and had even visited The Boys’ Town in Nebraska made
famous in the movie starring Spencer Tracy and Mickey Rooney and had concluded
that the best approach was to create a family-like atmosphere. The boys were
all part of a family and had chores and responsibilities like the boys in any
normal home. I had no idea what a normal home was, but I took his word for it.
He repeated what Mr Belt had told him about my background
and said that they had reports that I was an excellent worker in the Salvation
Army’s kitchen. He asked what subjects I enjoyed in school and I was
particularly interested in. When I told him I enjoyed choral music and taking
part in productions of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, he said, “Mrs Strickland
and I saw ‘The Gondoliers’ just two weeks ago, right Irma?” He was delighted when I told him I had a part
in the chorus of that work a year earlier. He then picked up the phone and dialed,
saying, “Mac Belt, please” when someone answered.
“I think young Mr Brown here will do just fine,” he
announced. “He should fit right in. Yes, very polite and articulate.”
When he hung up he asked me when I could move in. I thought
about my work back at the Salvation Army and thought it only fair I should give
them some notice and said so. “I think three days should be okay,” I offered.
“That will be fine,” he replied, shook my hand, then offered to show me the
premises.
The kitchen was small and was dominated by a rotund young
woman named Miss Kelly, the cook. He showed me two of the upstairs bedrooms
each of which contained a pair of bunkbeds. He and his wife shared the third
bedroom, but he didn’t show it to me. Then out the back door and onto the yard
shared with the house on the next street, Empire Avenue. The driveway continued along the side of the
property adjoining the two buildings. It was also fenced off at the far end. We
entered the Empire Avenue house by the rear door and met Mrs. Jones, an elderly
obese woman with a sad air, who was the house mother. The kitchen area had been
opened up to make a common area with the former dining room. Mrs. Jones had the
front sitting room as her private bedroom, curtained off from the rest. The
whole time Mr Strickland kept up a constant chatter about how they had been lucky
to acquire two houses back to back and how they had fought the city to have the
lane way adjoining the properties closed off. He told me about the Delveccio
family who occupied the other half of the semi-detached building on Empire
Avenue. He didn’t think much of them, referring to the father as a drunk and
their kids as a dirty gang of ragamuffins. He advised me to stay away from the
13-year-old daughter who had a very “bad reputation.” The second floor had a
bathroom and three bedrooms. The rear bedroom was small and held a single bed.
The fire escape door led off of it to a steel staircase that the city had
insisted on. The middle bedroom had two single beds side by side. The front
room had a single bed along one wall, and a single under the front bay window.
“I recommend that you claim the bed by the window,” Mr Strickland
told me, which is what I did. I looked out the window overlooking the street.
Empire Avenue was mainly semi-detached two story homes, run down, with a
warehouse at the intersection where it joined Queen Street. In the distance to
the southwest I could see a large oil storage tank.
We shook hands and I returned to the Salvation Army men’s
shelter, anxious to begin my new life, nervous, but determined to make the best
of it.
I celebrated my 15th birthday at the Boys’ Home a
week or so later.
***
The history of the Toronto Boys’ Home is somewhat confusing.
I can find no mention of the home on Booth and Empire Avenues in whatever mention
of the Home I can find on the web. A Toronto Boys’ Home had been founded in
1859 as a refuge for homeless and abused boys. It was managed by a board of
directors and funded through philanthropic donations. I know that when I was
resident there a group of elderly gentleman appeared one day in chauffeur-driven
Bentleys and Rolls Royces for a brief visit. I was told that they were the board
of directors. The Stricklands had run the home at the location I knew since
about 1957 and were still there in 1967, the last time I visited it. Shortly
after my last visit Mr Strickland began a career as a school teacher, a job he
held until he retired.
What history I have been able to glean is that the
Children’s Aid Society took over running the Home in 1967 and it apparently
moved to a larger location with a larger staff. Today there is an institution
called “The Toronto Boys’ Home” located on Logan Avenue (about a block from the
Booth Street home that I knew), but I can’t find any information on it. Both Mr
and Mrs Strickland are now deceased.
I had the front room with the view of Empire Avenue to
myself. There were three boys, all much younger than me, in the other two
bedrooms. There were four boys in the main house all about my age. Jack was to
remain my friend for many years. He bunked with Michael, a very troubled boy a
year younger than me. Michael was moved in with me after about a year. We were
never close and last I heard he was going through the juvenile detention-prison
system for armed robbery, among other offenses. I didn’t take to Jack at first,
but started chumming with one of the other two boys. Kyle was my age and he and
I would go for long walks in the evenings, smoking and talking about girls. The
local elementary school held a dance every Friday that anyone under 16 could
attend and Kyle and I would go together. Afterwards he would tell me about the
girls he had felt up during the dance. I was far too shy and inhibited to be
that aggressive with girls and I listened to his descriptions enthralled. One
night we encountered the Delveccio girl that Mr Strickland had warned me away
from. She was with a friend. Kyle whispered to me that we should put our arms
around them as we walked and talked, but he never made a move.
Two days before Christmas the Children’s Aid Society moved
in to take Kyle and his roommate away. They were being transferred to a foster
home. They were in tears, protesting, “But this has been our home for the past
two years and Christmas is only a few days away.” Mr Strickland argued forcefully with the
officials, but nothing would move them. Kyle was loaded into a car, crying
loudly that he didn’t want to go.
Meals were always taken together in the dining room in the
main house. We all had pre-assigned seats. Mr Strickland sat at the head of one
of the wings and the cook, Miss Kelly, would sit at the head of the other table
nearest the kitchen. Mrs Strickland sat to Mr Strickland’s right and I sat to
the right of Miss Kelly, the house mother, Mrs Jones directly across from me.
The younger boys sat at Mr and Mrs Strickland’s table. Meals always began with
Mr Strickland leading a short prayer; the rest of us bowing our heads
respectfully. Miss Kelly prepared the mid-day and evening meal with Mrs
Strickland, and made preparations for breakfast which Mrs Strickland completed
in the morning, breakfast being served before Miss Kelly began her day’s work. The
food was always excellent and plentiful. During meals Mr Strickland would lead
the conversation, often commenting on social issues, sometimes asking
individual boys their opinions on different subjects in the news, then
lecturing us from a moderate conservative viewpoint. He would sometimes talk
about the history of the area, telling us about Dr McClure who had been responsible
for building GreenWood United Church and the adjoining GreenWood Community
Centre. Mr Strickland himself had come from a family of butchers and had worked
in his brother’s shop for several years before beginning the Boys’ Home.
Sometimes the director of physical education at the centre and his wife would
join us for lunch, and every Sunday a teacher from the high school I attended,
Denis Bolton, would join us after church and stay to chat for an hour or two
afterwards, mainly with just the Stricklands and me, and sometimes one or two
of the older boys. Denis had come from a broken home himself but I never knew
what his connection was with the Stricklands beyond the Sunday lunches.
Every Saturday morning was given over to chores. The boys
would sweep, wash, and wax all the floors in both buildings. The boys in the Empire Avenue house that I
lived in had a bathroom in the basement (the main bathroom was reserved for the
house mother) and I remember scrubbing out the shower stall with an abrasive
cleanser. Most floors were linoleum and we would smear them with paste wax,
then buff them with a floor polisher. Sunday mornings we all attended GreenWood
United Church; the older boys like me staying for the entire adult service
while the younger ones were hied off to Sunday School. Otherwise, except for
time set aside for homework, and for fixed bed times, we boys were on our own,
coming and going much as we pleased. Jack and I would spend hours in the
basement of the main house listening to Rock n Roll records over and over
again, often with Mr Strickland pounding on the floor over our heads to remind
us to keep the volume down.
Early in the New Year, after I had been at the Home for
about a month, my father appeared on the scene. We knew he was coming to “straighten
everyone out”—my father often had to straighten people out. The meeting was
scheduled to take place in the offices of GreenWood United Church. Mac Belt stayed with me while my father
shouted abuse at Mr. Strickland. Though embarrassed by my father’s display, I
was somewhat used to it after seeing him berate my teachers over the years for
daring to suggest that I had some talent that should be encouraged and other
similar offenses. What seemed to anger him today was that Mr Strickland had
said something about my being intelligent, which prompted a scornful dismissive
reaction from my father. Why I was so stupid, he shouted, I had misspelled two
words in a letter I had sent home (which Mr Strickland had encouraged me to
do). When he was finished shouting at Mr Strickland, he had a round with Mr
Belt while Mr Strickland tried to reassure me.
Once he had shouted himself out about all the disgrace and
embarrassment that I was to my family, it was my turn. Roy Strickland gave my
arm a squeeze as I entered the room and whispered at me not to worry. The angry
and much grieved man my father had presented to my two champions had changed
into a calm and concerned father. He asked me quietly if I was happy at the
Home, and asked about school. He wanted to know how I got to school, so I
described the route I took, along Queen Street to Pape Avenue, then along
Gerrard to the school at the corner of Jones and Gerrard. He then told me that when Jewish boys in New
York City ran away from home their families held a funeral and never spoke of
them again. If this was a threat of some sort it did not move me. The meeting
was then over. The men all shook hands and my father left, leaving me in the
care of these two men.
A few years later my father kept his promise, if that was
what it was. My sister sent me an interview with my father that had appeared in
a local paper. In it my father bragged about his children’s achievements,
including the children of his mistress (who were not his, as far as I knew),
but never mentioned that he had another son—me, though I was a straight A
university student at the time.
***
As for school, I attended Riverdale Collegiate Institute, Mr
Strickland’s alma mater. I began just before Christmas enrolled in grade 10,
the grade level I was in when I left home in early October, but by the end of
January I went to Mr Strickland to ask if he thought it okay for me to ask to
be put back to grade 9. I had missed so much of the school year, and Riverdale
had started Latin classes a year before I had. It was simply too much for me to
catch up from my 5 or 6 weeks of Latin with students who now had a year and a
half. He agreed that it was probably a good idea, so I approached the principal
at the school and he, too, agreed with my request. I completed the year with reasonable enough
grades.
When I had left the Salvation Army I had a small sum of
money and I used it to purchase a cheap guitar. I learned the basic chords for
current popular songs. I was especially fond of The Everly Brothers’
“Dreamin’,” which I played over and over. Near the end of grade 9 I was sitting
in the front row of the auditorium during a performance of the school orchestra,
a few feet away from the first violin section. I watched fascinated as the
violinists all moved their hands in precise uniformity from one position on the
fingerboard to another. During a break I asked one of them how he knew where
the notes were. He laughed and said, “Practice.” I wanted to learn how to do
that. The guitar had fixed tabs that marked where to stop the strings to get
specific pitches, but the violin fingerboard was devoid of any such guidelines.
I asked the orchestra teacher if I could
join the orchestra class in the new school year if I took violin lessons during
the summer. Baird Knechtel agreed. I asked Mr Strickland and he agreed to pay
for lessons. He arranged for lessons with an older jazz musician who had a shop
filled with pianos, guitars, and various percussion instruments. He rented me a
violin for the summer and, not only did he give me sheet music and show me how
to finger the notes and move the bow, but he let me experiment on other
instruments in his shop after the lesson was over. I liked the electric guitars
and would pick out tunes on the piano for hours. He never complained, and even
let me take guitars home. In the fall I joined the orchestra class.
I should explain that Riverdale Collegiate was an academic
school. Children headed for the trades or early marriage were routed to, in the
boys’ case, Danforth Technical School, where they studied auto mechanics,
welding, and other useful trades, while
girls attended Eastern Commerce, where they studied shorthand and typing,
enabling them to get temporary jobs in the business world before settling down
to being wives and mothers. The students at Riverdale were headed towards
university and whatever careers that would lead to. Girls would likely become
teachers, a career they would be expected to give up once they married. Boys
would be expected to be business leaders and engineers. Accordingly, we
concentrated on Latin, with exceptional students studying Greek. We would also
need a good grounding in British history and British literature. Classes were divided into streams, depending
on the options one selected, or, more likely, were selected for them. The least talented students studied art; the
middling students took vocal music; and the more elite took instrumental music.
The instrumental music students were further sub-divided into band and
orchestra; the string players, especially the violinists, being the crème de la
crème of that class. That is why in grade 10 I joined the class of the
brightest and best students that Riverdale housed.
Before I get too far into my Riverdale experience I should
talk about what was going on in the world around the Boys’ Home. While I was
taking violin lessons and working a paper route, my companions in and around
the Home were living in one of the toughest parts of Toronto. The East End,
especially around Queen Street, could be described a poor working class area at
a time when there were actual jobs for the unskilled and semi-skilled. As such
jobs disappeared, the area became more violent, but, at the time, most men
worked in warehouses or factories, women as waitresses or hairdressers. Most
boys attended Danforth Tech and the girls Eastern. Jack was my link to that
world as he had an easy manner that led others to trust and befriend him. In a
sense he was my mentor. He regaled me with stories involving local gangs and
the tough kids, seemingly knowing all their activities. When Jack visited with
one of the locals he usually took me along, though I tended to hang out in the
background, keeping quiet and observing.
We spent a lot of time during the summer months simply
walking around the neighbourhood, talking. A popular hangout was the paved
playground of a local elementary school. One time Jack had discover a cache of
old 78 rpm records and between the two of us we cooked up a scheme to force
firecrackers into the spindle holes, light them, then fling the records high
across the school yard, laughing hysterically when the firecrackers exploded,
causing the records to wobble in their flight and crash to the pavement. Then
we discovered how to make simple zip guns. We’d block off the end of a pipe,
then drop a lighted firecracker down the resulting barrel and a marble on top
of that, aim, and fire. A few of our guns were so powerful that they blew holes
through the doors of the portable classrooms. I designed a lighter gun,
fashioned from television antenna parts that used lady finger (very small) fire
crackers and BB’s. This gun would easily fit in a pocket, was quick to make,
and could be more accurate than the cannons some boys created.
One evening Jack, Michael, and I had taken our guns to an
alley between rows of houses, firing at lighted windows. We then saw two
shadows coming down the alley towards us. We they drew near, one of the men
said, “Which one of you has the sling shot?” We turned to run, our route
blocked by a third man we hadn’t seen coming from the other direction. Michael
was collared while Jack and I ran. We walked the streets for an hour or two and
then crept into the yard between the two buildings of the Home. Jack threw some
pebbles at the window of the room he shared with Michael. When Michael
appeared, Jack loudly whispered, “Did you tell?” When Michael nodded we knew
the jig was up and walked into the main house to face the music. Mr Strickland
dismissed me with a curt, “You should know better.” So, I went to my room to
wait further action. Michael and Jack were grounded (forbidden to leave the
house except to attend school and church), but Mr Strickland never said a word
on the subject to me.
In a way I was a moderating influence on the other boys. One
evening I discovered Michael and Jack in the process of trying to hang a cat
from a branch of the small tree in the yard between the homes. I didn’t show
how upset I was. Instead I convinced them that it would be more fun if we put
the cat into a mail box. “Can you imagine the mailman’s surprise when he opens
the box?” and so they carried the cat to the corner where they dropped it into
the parcel slot, laughing hard at the thought of the mailman’s reaction when he
picked up the mail in the morning. I
figured that the cat would be fine after a night in a nice roomy steel box.
During that summer I was fifteen a local man in his thirties
befriended me. He was a youth organizer for the Orange Lodge. I had no idea
what the Orange Lodge was and knew nothing about its history. The man, I’ll
call him George as I don’t recall his real name, would talk to me about music
and play recordings of classics, especially Handel, on his record player which
had the amazing ability to play stereo recordings. He had a recording of a
train that sounded as though the engine were passing through his living room.
He invited me to lodge meetings which were held in a store front on The
Danforth. I didn’t pay much attention to contents of the prayers to defeat the
Roman Papists and the stories of heroic young Irishmen loyally fighting for
their king and country. George did warn me that I should not get too close to a
French Canadian girl from North Bay visiting family that I was hanging out with
because the Pope would take my children away from me. Again, I did not pay it
any heed. The girl was visiting for only two weeks and I was too shy to do any
more than hang out with her and her friends.
George played records for me and took me to the Canadian
National Exhibition for a day of eating junk food, riding fairground rides, and
going through the spook house which ended in a viewing pit where one could
watch people emerging from the disorientating dark, with a sudden gust of air
blowing the women’s dresses up over their heads. I was thrilled at the brief
sight of stockings, garters, panties, and some bare bellies as their women
shrieked pushing their dresses back down into places.
George talked to me about becoming a drummer for the Lodge,
an idea I found appealing. He then invited me to march in the annual parade,
carrying a banner through downtown Toronto, orange streamers attached to my
shirt shoulders. I suspect, on reflection, that at this point Mr Strickland
must have stepped in and warned George off because he stopped calling on me. I
was busy with my paper route and violin lessons and practicing, as well as
hanging out with Jack and didn’t notice his disappearance from my life.
In the fall the old tired woman who was our house mother
retired and her place was taken by a thin intense woman, Mrs Hall. While the
previous house mother sat in her little room most of the time, Mrs Hall was an
active woman who took an interest in her charges. She gave her opinions in a
sharp voice in short sentences. Meanwhile, Mr Strickland started classes at
the University of Toronto where he had been accepted as a student studying
towards a degree in psychology. He would sometimes joke at the dining room
table about being the only 40 year old in his classes, older than some of his
professors. He also started studying the violin and a few years later loaned me
his instrument on the understanding that if I ever gave it up I would return
the instrument to him. I did just that when I saw him at the Home in 1967 as I
was preparing to move to Montreal to attend university myself. He was, at that
time, just beginning his new career as a middle school teacher.
In the first few months in Grade 10, in the elite class, I
was accepted by the predominantly upper middle class students who generally
lived to the east of the school, towards Scarborough. It was a sharp contrast
to the slummy Queen East where the Boys’ Home was located. I was invited to
join a string quartet as I read music easily and could switch from first to
second violin, or even play viola if called upon. We met weekends at the homes
of members in relative comfort, being given soft drinks and cookies by the
mothers of the students who tolerated our scratching discords. Our music teacher, Baird Knechtel, approached
me saying a former student was willing to provide music theory lessons for
free. Was I interested? I was, and every Saturday morning I went to a young
university student’s home where he taught me the rudiments of harmony and
counterpoint, playing excerpts on the piano of different classical works to
illustrate his points. Like all students, I’d put off doing my exercises until
the last minute, then dash off a few lines, plucking out the lines on my violin
or guitar.
I also started dating a classmate. I accompanied Jennifer to
school dances and we often went to the movies. She was a bit overweight and I
was her first serious boyfriend. She was also regarded as the class brain.
She’d listen to me for hours, it seemed, as I described an opera I wanted to
write. I’d phone her after dinner, using the phone in Mrs Hall’s room, and we’d
chatter away, sometimes deciding at the last minute to dash off to a movie or
to meet for coffee. Despite all the time I spent with Jennifer and the
readiness she showed in meeting me, I never touched her. Even holding hands was
something I could not work up the courage to attempt. Well, we danced, but did
not press close together like some other couples.
At the same time a shy Chinese girl in our class took a
liking to me. She wouldn’t look me in the eyes when she addressed me. On a whim
I invited her to join me for one of my theory lessons. She sat quietly while my
teacher and I sat on the piano bench. He talked to me exclusively. The next
Monday Mr Knechtel took me aside and said that the lessons were for me, not for
my friends. I never said anything to the girl about it; I simply did not invite
her to join me again. But, in the spring, a retiring music teacher announced
that it was a shame our school song was set to the tune of an American military
march (“The Battle Hymn of the Republic”) and offered a $50 prize to the
student who could write a new song, as selected by the school’s music teachers.
I hadn’t thought anything of it, but the Chinese girl approached me and asked
if I’d write something with her. I went to her home on a Sunday and sat at her
upright piano where she showed me what she had written. It was a horrid mess.
She had no concept of how to put together a tune, let alone notate it. She had
five quarter notes in a 4/4 bar, for example, and the melody made no sense; it
simply wandered randomly. I tried to work with her on cleaning it up and
finally said I’d work on it at home.
I took the score home and tried to put something together
from it that wasn’t so profoundly embarrassing. After I was done, I was very
unhappy. Then Mr Strickland came to my room and belted out the beginning of a
rousing piece. “Why not something like that?” he asked. I took his fragment and
in a short time had a full-blown song, chorus and verse, that moved strongly
and authoritatively from beginning to end. It was cheerful, uplifting,
everything a school song should be. I handed in both scores; the one with my
and the Chinese girl’s name on it, and the one inspired by Mr Strickland with
only my name on it. It won. I remember in the assembly when the song was
introduced to the student body while I stood on the stage and was presented a
cheque by the departing music teacher, I saw her in her seat, a look of hurt
and betrayal on her face that I have never forgotten. I knew in that moment
that she did not realize that the winning song was not the one we had worked on
together. I didn’t know what to say to her and I was embarrassed by the
entire situation.
The Stricklands approved of my relationship with Jennifer.
They invited us to join them for theatrical revues at amateur theatre groups,
for a professional performance of Treasure Island, and for a performance of Mendelssohn’s
brilliant Violin Concerto in E minor played by Yehudi Menuhin with the Toronto
Symphony Orchestra. I was supposed to be in by 11:00 pm Friday and Saturday,
but when I took Jennifer to school dances I ran into a problem with that. The
dances would end at midnight and by the time I had accompanied Jennifer home by
streetcar, then made my way back to the Home, it could be 2:00 am. Yet, Mr
Strickland never said anything, even though Mrs Hall would stay up until I was
home. When I wanted to take Jennifer to the school prom, the Stricklands took
me to the home of one of Mr Strickland’s rich brothers so I could try on and
borrow a tuxedo for the event.
And so throughout that school year I led two lives. There
was the life at school in the class of bright musicians and friendly upper
middle class values, and the life in the tough Queen Street East territory.
Michael, Jack, and I stole records and magazines regularly from the local small
stores. We were all good at the quick slip something under one’s jacket
routines. One hot sultry day I loaded a gang of young kids into a small confectionary
and we emptied the freezer of its treats while the kids milled around creating
a distraction. We all shared in the booty in the school yard. But I had my
limits. One night Jack and Michael had decided it would be great fun to break
into the Riverdale zoo, but I wanted nothing to do with it. I had no problem
with stealing small items, but senseless vandalism never made sense to me. I
begged off saying I had homework to attend to. When they were out of sight I
telephoned the police and left an anonymous tip. Later Jack and Michael told me
that a cop walked through the zoo while they were there but they hid, waiting
him out. They told me they had a riot chasing an ostrich, and I thought that
they were lucky it didn’t turn on them and eviscerate them—which an ostrich is
perfectly capable of doing. One night they broke into a shed. The only way I
could think of to stay uninvolved was to act as lookout. After ten minutes or
so the two of them scrambled out the door they had wedged open, a wall of
flames visible behind them. As we quick marched away from the area, we heard
fire engine sirens and could see black smoke billowing skyward. They had found
a can of gasoline and Michael had poured it on a bench and set it ablaze.
Michael was deeply troubled. He bought a rifle that he kept
hidden in an alley not far from the home and one night he used it to hijack a
taxi, joy-riding to Sudbury. He did not return to the Home after that escapade.
Eventually he wound up in adult prison. Jack had some more sense than that.
Generally, he managed to avoid getting caught for the petty criminal acts he
was involved in, and once Michael was gone he, as far as I know, kept his nose
clean. In the spring of the year I was in grade 10 Jack left the Home to move
in with a young socialist couple we knew through the church, John and Jean Lee,
who were to assume a large role in my life.
I don’t remember why I gave up the paper route. I had a
part-time job in a local supermarket for a while, and for a short time worked
at GreenWood Community centre handing out towels for showers and cleaning up
the gym, but, in the spring I was working after school and on Saturdays for a
small shop on King Street near Bay. The shop sold prizes for church bingos and
rented bingo equipment to them. Walk-in customers were very rare. Usually a
priest would show up by appointment and make his selection of prizes: stuffed
bears and small plastic trinkets. I looked after the stock room and would be
tasked with putting together the orders, packaging them up in boxes for
shipping. The shop was in a basement, but I enjoyed the privacy and quiet of a
secondary store room on another floor in the building reached by freight
elevator.
With the money I made from my jobs I bought clothing,
usually following Jack’s advice, and paid for dates with Jennifer. On days off
Jennifer and I would hang out with another couple from our class, Guy and
Carol. The girls were experimenting with making new-fangled foods like pizza
and we’d laugh at comedy albums by new comedians like Bob Newhart. Guy and I
would play guitars for the girls and sing the soppy love longs I was writing.
We picnicked on Toronto Island where I finally asked Jennifer to go steady with
me (even though we had been dating for more than six months, it was not
official until the question was asked and answered). And I dared to kiss her
quickly on the forehead. The Stricklands agreed I could throw a party for the
entire class towards the end of the school year.
And it all ended.
In my life before I left home I was often the subject of ridicule. When I wanted to attend a concert put on by the Kitchener-Waterloo symphony orchestra, my father scoffed at me for liking that “long-hair nonsense.” As I was becoming aware of the world and trying to articulate it, my sister laughed at me, calling me a conceited stuck-up. My father punched me in the head at the dining room table, sending me flying from my seat because I remarked that one could circle the globe in 90 minutes as the satellites were doing (this was before anyone had actually done it). I was “too big” for my “britches” and “a smart-ass.” When I referred to my friends at school as “bourgeoisie” my father punched me in the head. If I quoted a Latin phrase I was a “show-off.” One time he knocked me unconscious because I said that I didn’t believe that Steven Truscott had killed Lynne Harper (the courts eventually agree with me). I obviously thought I was “smarter than the police.” In the summer before I left home several times I took every pill I could find in the house and swallowed them down mixed with apple-sauce. No one ever questioned where all the pills were going. At the start of the school year in grade 10, I’d go home with a classmate whose family was immensely wealthy and we’d get drunk on his father’s liquors. It was a 5-mile walk home for me that sobered me up enough that I could sit through dinner without anyone catching on to the fact that I was so drunk I could barely sit straight. I had already run away from home twice. The first time it was winter and I fell through the ice while crossing a creek and wound up being treated in hospital for hyperthermia. The other time I broke into a cottage where I spent the night, but when a farmer offered to buy me a bus ticket, the police showed up at the terminal. The third time I was smart enough to head for the closest highway and stick out my thumb, getting far enough away before anyone realized I was gone. Years later, a therapist told me that the smartest thing I had ever done was to leave home when I did; that it had likely saved my life.
And those same uneasy feelings that I somehow wound up living on the wrong planet were starting to overwhelm me, only this time I had an out. Jack had moved out of the home and was living with John and Jean Lee. I often visited with them, sitting in the garden behind their house while John talked to me about philosophy and politics. He had calculated what percentage of the federal budget went towards supporting the military and so withheld that percentage from his income tax returns. He thought that capital punishment was barbaric and that nuclear weapons should be banned. He had travelled to China and told Pierre Trudeau about his adventures, convincing the young Trudeau to make a similar trip. But, mainly I was interested in philosophy. John told me about Kant’s thesis of the “Prime Mover” an idea that haunted me for years. I was slowly becoming aware that we were being prepared in school for a world that was rapidly disappearing. Something new and exciting was in the air. The American president, John Kennedy, was talking about sending men to the moon. And, meanwhile, we were studying Latin declensions at school.
I broke up with Jennifer, walked out of my job with the bingo supplier, and packed my belongings while Mr Strickland watched silently. Jack helped me carry my stuff the few blocks to the Lee’s home. It was the summer of 1962.
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