The Third Mentor: John Lee

In the spring of 1962 while I was in grade 10, Jack left the Boys’ Home and moved in with a local couple, John and Jean Lee. Jack had a lot of enthusiasms. I recall once he described in great detail the vetting process Leonard Bernstein went through to become conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Another time he described Joe Frazier’s hands before he fought Cassius Clay. On my 18^th birthday, a few years later, Jack bought me a book written by one of Picasso’s mistresses,  Françoise Gilot. Jack had a self-depreciating humour and a love of detail. John Lee became, that spring, another of Jack’s enthusiasms.

John and Jean were radicals. They were openly socialists and strongly opposed to the Viet Nam war, still in its nascent stages. They opposed the death penalty, still in force in Canada, and fought for nuclear disarmament. They believed in sexual openness and Jack reported actually seeing Jean’s “bush” as she worked about the house dressed carelessly only in a robe. He told me that they allowed him to cover the walls of his room with Playboy pinups and that John once told him that he and Jean had made love in his room inspired by the posters.

While my world was falling apart, I sat in their luxurious garden talking with John. He told me of the philosophies of Emmanuel Kant and his concept of a prime mover. They were both devoutly United Church of Canada at that time, though John later converted to Quakerism. At that time John had a master’s degree and was working for Ontario Hydro, but he eventually received a PhD and taught sociology at the University of Toronto and York University, wrote books, and became an outspoken champion of gay rights. Jean was employed as a social worker, later to become head of Social Services of The Hospital for Sick Kids. They had two small children: Ruth, aged 18 months then, and Peter, a newborn. Their house was filled with art works, records, and literature, especially magazines, like Paul Krasner’s “The Realist,” Pierre Trudeau’s “Cité Libre,” and other “socialist” material. They were educated, disciplined, and passionate in their beliefs.

Jack had moved in with them at a time when they had taken in a troubled boy, Philip, and were attempting to modify his behaviour to help him adjust to the world. John kept a detailed journal about Philip for about two years. I met Philip and found him to be aloof and withdrawn. I learned many years later that he was imprisoned in Spain because of involvement in the drug trade. Philip left the Lee’s home shortly after Jack had moved in and Jack invited me often to their home.

As my world of upper middle class musicians and disappointed caregivers was melting away, I found welcomed relief at the Lee’s. They had a large painting in their living room that John told me had been executed entirely with a trowel. They had recordings of the music I was discovering and I spent hours listening to Beethoven’s piano sonatas. But, mainly, they treated me like an intelligent being and spoke to me on their level. They knew about my emotional difficulties and, if they were concerned, they never let on.

At Jack’s urging, I finally asked them if I could move in. They agreed. Mr Strickland said nothing. I packed my belongings into a few cardboard boxes and Jack helped me carry them the few blocks north to the quieter residential area where the Lees rented an older three-story house. The Lees and the children occupied the top floor. I don’t recall ever being up there. The 2^nd floor was for me and Jack. I had the front room with bed, bureau, and desk with chair, and Jack occupied the middle room. The 3^rd room was the bathroom for the entire household and jutting off the back of the house was a small sunroom built over the rear porch. It housed a comfortable old couch and TV set. The Lees never watched television, so it was my and Jack’s rec room.

The Lees soon packed their kids and Jack and I into their car and we headed off to a campground for a week. The camp itself was owned by the New Democratic Party, itself a new organization recently developed out of the old Canadian Confederation Party, or CCF. It was used for retreats and regeneration of party workers. This particular week it was being used by members of the Student Christian Movement, a campus-based national organization that set up summer work camps across the country where students would live together and work on community projects or study different social issues, such as mental health or unionism. John and Jean were active participants in the organization which was to assume a much larger role in my life in a few years.

There was a bunk house, but most of us stayed in tents, some large enough to include cots for half a dozen people. Meals were prepared co-op style, which meant that everyone in camp had certain specific tasks to perform throughout the week to ensure that everyone contributed. We ate indoors at long tables and discussions of the current political situation were animated. Of primary concern were the Bomarc missiles that the Americans had installed at North Bay, Ontario and in La Macaza, Quebec. They were meant to carry nuclear warheads to thwart any Russian bomber attack on the United States. The missiles would be launched into a group of bombers and their nuclear warheads detonated to destroy all aircraft with the massive percussion wave. They would also destroy anything that happened to be on the surface below them at the time, as well as poisoning everything for hundreds of miles downwind from the radioactive fallout, but that was dismissed as collateral. Far better to fight a nuclear battle over sparsely-populated northern Ontario and Quebec than over American soil.  There was good reason that the policy of the Cold War was called MAD: Mutual Assured Destruction madness. John Diefenbaker said no to the nuclear arms, making the Bomarcs almost useless, but Nobel Peace Prize winner Lester Pearson, leader of the opposition Liberals and soon to be Prime Minister,  was in favour of giving in to the demands of the Americans. The students were angry and talked about setting up a sit-in to blockade the missile sites. They did so the next summer and I was there with them. They made the cover of MacLean’s magazine and a picture of me alone holding a sign graced the cover the Student Christian Movement’s national newsletter in the fall of 1964. But I had a lot of life story to experience before then.

In the fall of 1962 I entered Grade 11, charged full of determination to make a success of it. I practiced my violin long and hard. I had always been made to feel ashamed of my hand-writing, so I went through the alphabet determining how to form each lowercase and capital letter so that it was clear and easily makeable by my clumsy hands. I discovered a combination of printing and cursive that worked for me. I created my signature—with a stylized uppercase R, J, and B overlapping each other and the rest trailing off into indecipherable squiggles. I had a study schedule that I followed rigorously, trying to make sense of Latin and French, my sorriest subjects in high school. And, on the weekends Jack and I watched science fiction movies on the old black and white set, while toasting entire loaves of bread that we slathered in peanut butter.  We were both inspired and enthralled by “The Forbidden Planet,” accepting its premise, in keeping with popular interpretations of Freud, that humans harboured a dark and violent secret nature that had to be controlled by the intellect. One evening when I was out Jack told me that a group of students gathered in front of the house and sang the new school song I had written the spring before. When I asked him what he did he said he just stared at them until they left.

In September, the school principal set up an appointment for me to meet a sociologist at the University of Toronto who was doing a study of juvenile delinquency, which was the popular term then to describe any youth who did not fit the approved stereotypes of the times. I met the young woman in an office on the main campus. She told me she was doing a study of the causes of juvenile delinquency and had a few questions for me.

After jotting down my background profile, she began by asking me when I first started to notice signs that I was delinquent. Was I deliberately acting in socially unacceptable ways, or was it something beyond my control? How often did I feel like striking out at society? Why, she wondered, did I think I had such a deep-seated desire to trash the norms of the civilized world about me? Did I secretly admire gangsters? Did I sympathize with the criminals in detective stories?

I was humiliated into virtual speechlessness and could only grunt non-committal answers. But when I returned to the Lees, I lashed out, vehemently and sarcastically repeating the questions, shouting them at John, demanding to know when he first noticed signs that he might be a delinquent and did he secretly admire gangsters. He telephoned the grad student conducting the study and told her I would not be returning for the follow-up session in a week’s time. She was upset, saying she needed the data to complete her study, but John was firm. He then suggested that I go to my room and calm down.

John and Jean were members of the New Democratic Party, whose provincial branch had been formed just a year previously. At their urging I attended a meeting of an NDP youth group and was selected to represent them at the upcoming convention. Jean was attending as a delegate, so we went to the convention together, sitting at a table littered with pamphlets and studies. I had no idea what any of the issues were and even less what the various speakers were talking about, but I rose to vote as Jean did trying to look like I knew what was going on. The youth group was expecting me to provide them with a report on the weekend’s activities, but I kept making excuses not to attend meetings. I had no idea what I could tell them.

Otherwise, life was starting to be good again. And then…

…the grade 11 classes took a train trip to Stratford for a performance of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.”   On the trip there an attractive young woman I didn’t recall seeing before in the seat before mine. She reached up to the overhead stowage compartment, arching her back so that her breasts jutting towards me. She saw me and blushed. When we left the train I asked friends what her name was and ran after her, asking for her phone number, which she gave to me, still blushing. I was besotted with this dark-haired young woman.

Meanwhile, the Lees were also supporting a troubled young woman who had just been released from a reformatory. Sarah visited them on weekends and one weekend she and Jack spent the night on the couch, she lying atop him. He told me later than they had “done nothing.” But the next weekend on a whim I asked her if she wanted to go to a movie and she agreed. We saw “Phantom of the Opera.” As a gentleman I accompanied her home, a trip involving several streetcar and bus changes. I walked her to her door and she suddenly turned and kissed me full on the mouth. I was stunned. No one had ever done that before. It was now so late that the streetcars had stopped running, so I phoned John from a telephone booth and he came to fetch me. It was after 2:00 am.

The next weekend I had my first date with the girl from the train. Her name was Letitia. She told me she hated the name and preferred to go by Lee, but I loved it, the way it rolled around in one’s mouth. We took the streetcar to a movie theatre and decided to walk home. I stopped at the Lee’s on the way back to her place, thinking it funny to introduce her as “Lee” to “Mr and Mrs Lee.” I babbled non-stop about my new-found passion for socialism and the New Democratic Party and when Letitia told me her grandmother was a member of the Conservative Party, my energy and passion-levels accelerated as I denounced conservatives. At her door, now emboldened by Sarah’s kiss the week before, I moved in and kissed Letitia hard, long, and passionately. Her arms snaked around my neck, pulling me closer. After what seemed like forever, she pulled away and dashed into the house.

She told me later that she thought I was a dreadful bore until I kissed her, but had fallen in love when I did.

At school a few days later she asked me to walk her home. She lived with her parents and grandmother but from after school until about 5:30 or 6:00 we had the house to ourselves. The first time I visited her, her girlfriend from next door was there. Letitia sat beside me on the couch, took my hand and draped it around her shoulder. Her girlfriend left the room for some reason and Letitia took the hand I had around her shoulder and placed it firmly on her breast. I could hardly believe what was going on and squeezed her breast, kneading it, until her girlfriend returned and I quickly withdrew. Her girlfriend left soon afterwards and we started necking in earnest, entwined full-length on the couch, kissing passionately while I explored her breasts. This became our daily after school routine. By the second day I had worked up the nerve to unclasp her bra and nuzzled and kissed her breasts until a few minutes before her parents were due home from work. I was enthralled, completely.

Her parents seemed to accept me and often invited me to stay for dinner. When I would call John he’d ask about my homework. I’d tell him I’d do it there. I’d glance at my books briefly, skim through any homework questions, then resume my necking sessions with Letitia on the cot in the dining room while her parents watched TV in the living room. Letitia had a male cousin, maybe five years older than me, who sometimes visited and would encourage us to get married, saying that one should either marry at 16 or at 60.

While I was wrapped up in passionate love for this girl, world events continued. President Kennedy and Chairman Khrushchev were engaged in a war of words over Russian missiles housed in Cuba. Khrushchev sent warships to accompany supply ships heading to Cuba; Kennedy sent warship to blockade the island. As tensions increased, the Toronto Board of Education decided to do its part by asking all it students to cower in school basements. I had access to a lot of information about nuclear war and concluded that where our school stood there would be nothing but a 200-foor deep crater if a smallish 5 megaton bomb detonated over downtown Toronto. The day of our civil defence exercise I wore my “Ban the Bomb” pin to school and took a number of pamphlets urging a little sanity regarding the insane situation of nuclear armament. Letitia was furious with me when we met just before class, tearing my button from my shirt and throwing it down the hall. When the announcement came that we were all to head to the school basement, I sat in my seat. The teacher smiled and left the room, never saying a word to me. Jack had also defied the order to slink away to the basement and was hauled into the principal’s office where he was threatened with suspension for his insubordination. Apparently the vice principal backed Jack to some extent and the threat was not carried out.

Otherwise, I spent every waking moment with Letitia, other than going to school and sleeping at the Lee’s. John was getting concerned and started to insist that I be home for dinner school nights to ensure that I spent time on my homework. But my desire to be with her overrode everything else in my mind and I stayed at their place for dinner, despite John’s directions. John could not leave such a direct challenge with no response and told me that I was not allowed to leave the house the next weekend. But, Letitia and I had a date. Her parents and grandmother were taking us to a reception and she had been looking forward to going with me for weeks. I told John I’d stay in the rest of the weekend, but I was going to the reception. He said no. He and Jean were going to be away that weekend, but he was going to phone Saturday evening. If I didn’t come to the phone, I’d have to move out.

There was no question in my mind that I was going on the planned date with Letitia and her parents. I told them about John’s ultimatum and they told me I could spend Saturday night, after the date, at their home and that they would arrange something for me. The hall where I went with Letitia, her parents, and grandmother was directly across the street from an old stone building signed, “The Toronto Psychiatric Hospital.” I had no inkling, of course, that that would be my home in a few weeks. We had dinner, there was music and dancing, and Letitia’s grandmother kept sniffing my glasses of soft drink to ensure there was no alcohol in them. The next day, Letitia’s mother drove me to the Lee’s and waited in her car while I packed boxes of my belongings under John’s watchful eye. I don’t think we exchanged a word. She then drove me to a rooming house where she said she had paid the first two week’s room and board, but after that it would be up to me to raise the $18.50 a week.

My school work was all but forgotten. I was obsessed with Letitia and now dependant on her. After school we’d walk to movie theatres hoping I could get a job as an usher, but no one was hiring. I didn’t know what else I could do at 16. Our love-making intensified, as my hand started creeping up her inner thigh. Above the top of her nylons on her bare flesh, less than an inch from that magic centre I was so afraid of yet drawn to, was heavenly. I started to tell classmates that I was getting married. And my hand edged ever closer, brushing the edge of her girdle. One afternoon, sweater and bra pushed up around her neck and her skirt riding high she whispered, “Go ahead, do what you want to do.” I stopped, not knowing what she could possibly mean. After all, girls were not really interested in sex; they had to be cajoled, bribed with gifts, and overwhelmed before they would submit; and, even at that, nice girls simply didn’t. At least, that’s what I had been taught.  A few days later she was planning to spend the night at her girlfriend’s. As I walked with her, she carrying an overnight case, she said, “Why don’t we go to a hotel?” I laughed, thinking she couldn’t be serious, and said, “They’d throw me in jail.”

The next night she called me at the boarding house and said it was over.

I couldn’t believe what she was saying. After all, we were in love. She wanted to spend more time with her girlfriends, she said. Okay, so we compromise and see each other less often I countered. Besides, she continued, I was a pervert who was probably queer. “What?” Whatever I said didn’t matter because I was a liar. Then she laughed and said, “So what are you going to do?”  And, just as casually, I said, “I guess I’ll have to kill myself.” “Don’t make a mess,” she said and hung up.

I did not know what to do. There was no way I could come up with $18.50 a week to pay my landlady and the initial two weeks that Letitia’s mom had paid for was nearly up. My one lifeline, Letitia and her parents, had just been yanked away. Looking back from a perspective of more than 50 years I realize I had a number of options, but I could not see them at the time. I was surrounded by people: Roy Strickland, John Lee, Mac Belt, my teacher Baird Knectle, Denis Bolton, the teacher I knew through the Boys’ Home who would all be willing to step in and help me out, and they all did so at various times in the future, but that moment, that night, in my room, isolated and bewildered, my ex-girlfriend’s last words ringing in my ears, I took the blade out of my safety razor and held it in my right hand poised over my left wrist. After a few moments I realized that if I was going to do it, then just do it and get it over with. I slashed, dropped the blade and clutched my injured wrist. After a few moments I went to the bathroom and wrapt my wrist in a towel, but the blood quickly soaked through it. I stood in the hallway called my landlady’s name. She screamed when she came out of her room in her nightgown and raced to the phone to call the police. I sat slumped in the hallway, blood seeping through the towel until a policeman arrived. When he asked what had happened, I said I had cut myself while shaving. He drove me to the emergency room of a local hospital where they stitched the wound closed and wrapt my wrist in a thick bandage. I was taken back to the Pape Avenue police station and put back in a cell. In the morning I was loaded into a paddy wagon with the drunks and petty criminals they had picked up during the night and taken to court in the old city hall where the magistrate released me into the custody of the Toronto Psychiatric Hospital for a 60 day evaluation period. The next time I saw Letitia she said, “I didn’t think you’d really do it.” And after she left the hospital ward I cried like a baby whose heart had been broken while a nurse held me telling me that everything would be alright.

Forty-five years later I was visiting the now-retired Professor John Lee and he asked me why I had left his home so long ago. “You threw me out,” I said simply. There was a pause and then he said, “I sincerely and fully apologize for that.” I shrugged and said, “We were both young and stubborn.” We hugged a long time when I was leaving and it was the last time I saw him. Somehow, after that apology, something had been completed.

John's autobiography: http://johnalanlee.ca

A video made by John shortly before he died:

http://www.ronaldjbrown.com/images/john_alan_lee.mp4