Peace Camp and Temple House, Summer and Fall 1964

On arriving back in Toronto in July of 1964 I had a problem. Namely: no money, no job, and no place to live. I went to Stan’s place and used the phone to call my old friend Jack. When I explained my situation he told me that maybe John Lee could help. John was running a Peace Camp on behalf of the Student Christian Movement that summer. Jack gave me the number.

I told John’s widow, many years later, that one thing I could always count on was that whenever I asked John for help, he gave it immediately, unquestioningly. John told me where the camp was and invited me to come over; he could see what he could do.  The Student Christian Movement, in the 1960’s, was one of the most radical campus-based groups in the country. Every summer it organized “camps” across the nation where young people from university campuses would live together and focus on some aspect of social services. There were mental health camps where members worked in the field over the summer, or worker camps, where members worked in industry; casual study groups would help coordinate and integrate what they were learning in their fields. The Peace Camp that John was coordinating that summer was devoted to studying issues relating to world peace, with students working wherever they could find jobs. It was located in Trinity Square, a collection of older homes on a short street near the Toronto General Hospital, the street dominated by Holy Trinity Anglican Church—a large stone imitation gothic building. Eaton’s eventually took over the entire area, razing the homes to make way for a downtown shopping centre, isolating the church. At the time, Holy Trinity was virtually abandoned, but over the next several years it became a centre for the homeless and gay rights activism, led by the Reverend Don Heap, later a friend and a member of parliament.

I was invited to stay for dinner with the chatty, enthusiastic students from across Canada. They agreed to discuss my situation in a meeting after dinner. I took a walk through downtown Toronto while they decided. The new city hall was under construction and I admired the inward-curved towers embracing the central clam-shell council chambers. There was a catwalk between the towers near the top so construction workers would not have to descend then ascend if they need to move to the other tower. A few days later one of the camp members and I climbed the concrete staircase in one tower and crossed the catwalk to the other for the descent. I paused midway, realizing I was one of the few people who would ever see downtown Toronto from this vantage point.

In any case, the campers decided I could stay while they worked out a solution for me. Over the next few weeks I sat in on their discussions of the war in Vietnam (which, at that time, was largely being ignored by the press) and on nuclear disarmament. They were enthusiastic and optimistic that their efforts would have an effect on the world. One young man decided to go on a hunger strike to support world peace. An excited young reporter form the Toronto Star came to interview him; hunger strikes were something new and interesting. The students were planning on attending a demonstration at the American Bomarc missile base in La Macaza, Quebec and invited me to join them. A half-dozen of us crowded into John’s car for the drive to northern Quebec. We reached Ottawa in the dark and crossed the Ottawa River. Hull, then, was a collection of tiny houses interspersed with taverns and depanneurs. We drove along gravel roads through thick forest, finally deciding to stop for the night at a clearing beside the road. We rolled up in sleeping bags on the ground. In the morning we reached out destination, a large log cabin. There were perhaps 50 other people there and later that afternoon a shout went up, “The Heaps are here. The Heaps are here.” An old much-battered van pulled up, driven by a middle-aged man with a thick black beard, accompanied by his short heavy-set wife and six children, all blond, blue-eyes, self-possessed, and apparently old hands at this sort of thing. We trained in passive resistant techniques, taking on roles of brutal military police and polite, soft-spoken protesters. Schedules were drawn up. We were to picket the military base for two days before blockading it.

I was assigned to stand by the road leading into the base holding a sign. A picture of me appeared on the back cover of the Student Christian Movement national journal a few months later with the caption, “A Christian Takes a Stand.” As evening approached there were only four of us left. Townsfolk drove out to see these “peaceniks” come to visit their corner of the world and flashed thumbs up at us. After dinner a large group of us picked up sleeping bags and began a long hike to where we were to spend the night—another cabin a couple of miles away. Night fell as we marched. The only way I knew where to go was to keep the person in front of me in sight. The next day more local residents came out to stare at these strange peaceniks lining the road leading into the base. A few young men flirted with our female members in heavily-accented broken English.

Early next morning, in a heavy fog, the entire contingent marched to the base’s main gate where a row of military police waited. Our spokesperson approached the camp commander who was waiting and informed him politely that we wished to enter the camp to turn it into a school for native Canadians (which is what happened years later when the bases was finally abandoned.) The commander refused and was informed that, in that case, we intended to blockade the base for three days. At a signal we all sat down on the pavement. As the sun burned away the fog, what had been a cold August morning turned into a blisteringly hot day. Heavy sweaters came off. In the afternoon a group of French Canadians from a local nationalist group joined us, but kept off to themselves playing a game I had never seen before that involved tossing handfuls of soft-drink caps into the air and then counting the number of heads up and heads down.

John had to be back at work the next day, so we left in the early evening directly from the protest site. He drove nearly all night to get back to Toronto by next morning. I heard later that the military police played loud rock ‘n roll records all night and shone bright lights on the sleeping protesters. Early next morning they went out among the groggy protesters and dragged or picked them up, bodily throwing them into the ditch alongside the road. The protesters picked themselves up and sat back down on the road. This went on for 20 or 30 minutes until the military police noticed someone taking pictures. They stopped their actions and resumed standing at ease across the entrance to the base. A picture of the encounter made it onto the cover of Maclean’s magazine under the caption, “Peace March Comes to Canada.” This was the pattern for three days until, at a signal, the protesters struggled to their feet, collected their belongings and left the base, exactly as they had said they were going to do all along.

John told me they had located something for me. A group of students were running a coop. The idea was that I could do some cooking and cleaning in exchange for meals. He had located a rooming house a short distance away where the rent was only $7.50 a week. He would pay the first few weeks until I found a source of income. In discussions with him I said I thought I could handle the rest of my highschool by correspondence course, so this looked like a plan. He gave me the address so I went to check it out. It was an older 3-story home on Huron Avenue. The only person home was ensconced behind a desk in a glassed in porch off the rear of the house on the second floor. He introduced himself as the “manager” of the coop, which turned out to be a non-existent position. At the time I believed him. He was merely renting a room for the summer while the students were away. That was his method of operating, as I slowly learned over the coming years. He was a hanger on at the edges of the University of Toronto and the artist community, sometimes manipulating and exploiting the innocent and naïve.

I moved into the room in the rooming house and began spending my days at Temple House, as the coop was called. As the regular members returned from their summer jobs, the “manager” moved out. I was told that the coop was named for William Temple (1881- 1944), Archbishop of Canterbury (1942-44). Archbishop William was a noted theologian who worked for the relief of the victims of the Nazis during the war. Several of the students who lived in the coop were studying social work at the University of Toronto, but not all were students. One worked at the CBC; another was a librarian who worked at the Toronto Library’s main branch. Two of them had just returned from spending the summer in Cuba, a working tour that had been arranged through the Student Christian Movement. The USA had recently embargoed Cuba and tensions ran high. Even many Canadians were suspicious of the Castro regime, parroting American anti-Communist propaganda lines. Most of Temple House’s residents were members of the Student Christian Movement, though, as I soon learned, the house was split between the members of the United Church of Canada and Anglicans. The Anglicans attended services at the local church, St. Thomas’s, a few blocks south of the coop. I joined them. As I had attended an Anglican Church for a few years between the ages of 8 and 10 I was comfortable with the service. A young assistant priest would accompany us back to the coop for Sunday lunch.

Temple House, Huron Avenue, Toronto.

Temple House tended to be something of a gathering centre for students living in the area. There seemed always to be a discussion group on-going in the living room. Alice Heap, national secretary of the Student Christian Movement was a frequent visitor and sometimes guests were invited to give a talk. I was particularly entranced by a talk by the dean of the Royal Conservatory of Music, Dr. Boyd Neel who told us that the best way to study music was to study medicine. (He, himself, was a surgeon with an illustrious career in music.) A few months later he, personally, gave me a tour of the Royal Conservatory while discussions about granting me a scholarship were on-going. Baird Knechtel, my old highschool music teacher, continued giving me violin lessons once a week at his home, took me to concerts at the U of T’s Hart House, and sent me to see an elderly German violin teacher and member of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra who gave me a book on bowing techniques. Mac Belt bought me lunch once a week at a restaurant near his office. I decided that the first course I would take by correspondence was grade 12 chemistry. A few lessons in I realized that I could not complete it. I was expected to conduct experiments requiring lab equipment and chemicals I simply did not have access to.

Lack of a source of income was a major problem for me. There was nothing I could do about paying the rent in the rooming house. I had noticed a small room in the basement of Temple House, so I asked for it and the coop members agreed I could live there. Though I knew nothing about cooking and preparing food, I was assigned the job of doing all the grocery shopping and preparing one meal a day. I ordered canned vegetables from a food wholesaler that I heated up on the stove, peeled and boiled potatoes and served some kind of meat—usually fried hotdogs. Eventually I was assigned a member to help me with the grocery shopping and the other students took turns preparing dinner. 

One of the students who had spent the summer in Cuba was taking a year off from her studies at the University of Manitoba. Faye and I began a relationship that continued to the present, though it was romantic for only the first four years or so. Those first few months I was jealous and possessive, uncertain of my standing with this woman five years my senior, very unclear on how to handle a sexual relationship, and virtually no knowledge or experience with intimate relationships. She was the first person in my life who I was close to and I was untrusting and suspicious. I was baffled, entranced, and leery. Once she thought she might have become pregnant, despite our care, and she and Alice Heap spent an afternoon in her room discussing various options which, at the time, were very few. Basically the choices were: have the child, find a back street butcher and possibly be maimed or die, or fly to Sweden, the only country in the world where abortions were medically and legally available. Fortunately, it turned out to be a false alarm.

I spent a lot of time writing poetry, exploring my new-found path. Being surrounded by university students, I had access to their many books and recommendations. I read a lot that fall: “The ABC of Reading” by Ezra Pound, “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg, “The Stranger” by Albert Camus, “Being and Nothingness” by Jean-Paul Sartre, “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding, “Generation of Vipers” by Philip Wylie, everything by Leonard Cohen and Irving Layton I could get my hands on. I recall reading the entire text of “After the Fall” by Arthur Miller and read several of Shakespeare’s plays, including “King Lear.” One of the students gave me a Bible that I still have. I discovered Bob Dylan and listened to his early protest songs over and over. “Masters of War,” “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall,” “The Times They are a-Changing,” “Chimes of Freedom,” “and “Blowing in the Wind.” Faye sent me to meet a friend of hers from the University of Manitoba who was a poet and artist. Marvyne and I became friends (to this day), she acting as an adviser on my poetry efforts those first few years. In other words, I was a getting a 1960’s general arts education without attending a single class.

But, in late November, in a fit of adolescent anguish after a misunderstanding with Faye, I slashed my wrist with a razor blade. This time I was driven by ambulance to the real loony bin: 999 Queen Street West. It was decided to keep me under observation for a month. I was put in an open ward and, despite my request not to do so, they contacted my father. I woke from an afternoon nap to find him sitting by my bed. He was quiet and concerned. He spoke to an attendant about getting me a haircut. The next day the attendant led me through the back wards where the failed experiments were kept; people, whose brains had been invaded by ignorant surgeons, slashing and cutting randomly, sat staring into nothing, cigarettes held loosely burning their fingers. I got the haircut that had so concerned my father. Jean Lee was working as a social worker at the hospital at the time and I was free to drop in on her and chat. She gave me advice on how to handle my sexual relationship with Faye. She arranged for tutors to visit me to help with high school math and history. My father returned a few days later and sat uncomfortably when a group of girls from Temple House arrived, laughing and joking. They brought me a copy of Playboy and a copy of Dostoyevsky’s “The Idiot.” My father was clearly baffled by both gifts. In his world young women did not give young men copies of dirty magazines and why would someone write a book about an idiot? I next saw him again about 17 years later when I visited him with my wife and eldest son who was a few months old at the time.

When I was released it was decided that my presence in Temple House was too disruptive given the problems that my relationship with Faye were causing. I knew they were right. After Christmas, Mac Belt managed to get me a job with the Unemployment Insurance Commission. I found a room in a rooming house a few doors down the street from Temple House. This, my second foray into the business world was no more successful than my first. At the time, Unemployment Insurance was a relatively new government initiative and it was as grudgingly given as was welfare. Applicants had to line up to receive a card with their name and history on it, then take the card to the Employment Office, in the same building, where they would line up and get their card stamped to demonstrate that they had been to the employment bureau in search of work. They would then return to the UIC office, line up and hand their card to a clerk who would complete a form verifying that they were actively searching for employment, have them sign it, and then put the paper work into the system so that a cheque could be prepared and mailed to them. It was an absurd and wasteful system, governed by attitudes of condescension and paternalism. My job was simple: fetch and collect the cards for the clients. As I was staying up most of the night making out with Faye, writing poetry, or reading, I found it difficult to get up in time for work. About 10:00 am my landlady would barge into my room as I slept with a vacuum cleaner which she smashed into furniture making as much noise as she could. After a couple of weeks, Mac Belt called me one morning to let me know I had been fired.

Back to the drawing board.

I thought long and hard about my next step. I came up with an idea that served me well; one which included a lesson I applied again a few times during my lifetime and later tried to share with my sons. I could not get up in the morning, but I had no trouble staying up all night. Solution: find a night job. What sort of job is there where people work at night and sleep during the day? Night watchman. So, I looked up security companies in the telephone book and walked to the closest one: Barnes Security. I lied, said I was 21, and was hired and given a uniform. I did not want to stay in the rooming house, especially as I would now have to sleep all day when the owner was busy with her loud and disruptive housework. I spoke to Alice Heap, knowing that they sometimes gave rooms to young people in their home. She was reluctant, but I persisted. Finally she sighed and gave in. And so I went to live with one of the most radical socially-active families in the country. Don and Alice died a few years ago after a life-time of social activism, including, for Don, many years as a Toronto municipal councilor and a Member of Parliament for the New Democratic Party. When they had to leave their home they sold it, at their original cost, so it could be used as a centre for refugees.  Their children are still active in movements and groups committed to making the world a little bit better for everyone. Alice charged me $10 a week room and board and I was expected to share in household tasks, as were all the children. This was to be my home for the next several months. I had no idea at the time that I was only two years away from realizing my dream of entering university as a full-time student.

New Directions

In the spring of 1964 Prime Minister Pearson was campaigning for a unique Canadian flag to replace the Red Ensign that Canada had been using. At the same time, Stan’s plans for a printing company were starting to jell. He organized a company to print hundreds of copies of proposed flags, as well as some joke ones, and a team of seamstresses finished them off. They were a massive hit and Stan was beginning to make enough money to realize his dream. One afternoon he and I went to visit a carriage house he was thinking of renting to use for his printing business. Like all carriage houses, there was a double hinged door big enough to admit the carriages. The ground floor was barren, except for a horse stall in a back corner. The upper floor, that once housed the hay needed to feed the horses, was a massive open space with a single half door formerly used to hoist the hay bales as the only outside light source. He didn’t commit to it then, but it would soon become the home of “Coach House Press,” one of Canada’s most outstanding and frequent award-winning printers of books.  http://www.chbooks.com/about_us

The home of Coach House Press, Canada's most celebrated independent publishing house. Stan Bevington, its founder, was awarded the Order of Canada in 2009.

The owner of the house where Stan lived let me camp out after I left Hans’ and Maria’s. I slept on the floor of the unused dining room. I packed flags into boxes for shipping and listened as Stan and his friends discussed the publishing arm of Coach House Press, House of Anansi, named for an African spider goddess. I didn’t pay much attention as I was trying to put my plans into action. I had decided I was going to return to Kitchener, appeal to a school principal to admit me as a student and apply to the welfare department for support. I needed some cash. Stan gave me a bundle of ten flags that I could sell and I phoned one of the teachers that I knew at Riverdale. He agreed to lend me fifty dollars and invited me to visit his home to pick it up. He sat close to me on the couch, his hand always on my thigh as he asked me about my plans. When it got late he asked if I’d like to spend the night. My head was filled with my idea that I would board a bus for Kitchener in the morning, so I said no thanks. He hugged me. I saw him next a few years later when I visited Riverdale when I was a university student, hair down to my waist, the same length as my girlfriend’s. He died soon afterwards of a brain aneurysm. I don’t need to name him, as nothing happened that night when he gave me fifty dollars.

I walked from the bus station in Kitchener to the YMCA, only a few blocks away, where I paid to rent a room for four nights. It was a Monday afternoon and I figured that five days would be enough to accomplish what I set out to do. The next morning I took my breakfast at a lunch counter near the YMCA and the owner agreed to take my ten flags and sell them on a consignment basis. The flags I had were the most popular of the proposed designs: a red maple leaf on a white square in a blue field. They were designed to be slipped over car radio antennas.

My first order of business the next day was to visit one of the high schools. I put my case to the principal that I should be admitted to grade 13, as I figured that I could tough out one year of high school on welfare, but two years would have been too hard a grind unless I could manage to find part-time work to supplement my income. He turned me down, saying he’d be willing to accept me into grade 12, but that was all he could do. I said I’d think about it.

Wednesday morning when I returned to the lunch bar, the owner told me he had to return the flags. Many of his customers were so angry that they had threatened never to enter his establishment again if he did not get rid of the flags. He explained that he had no problem with the proposals, but he could not afford to upset his regular clientele. Kitchener, in the heart of the most conservative part of Ontario, was not an environment where one could freely discuss new ideas. I was going to get another lesson in that later that day.  About four years later when I returned to visit with my sister, my hair now shoulder-length after a year in university, as I waited for a municipal bus, cars of angry looking young men circled the block to get a better look as this hippy in their pristine city, some shouting insults at me. Fast forward a few years after that incident and those same angry young men had hair even longer than mine had been that day. I am sure that today the customers of that lunch counter would be equally angry if someone were to propose that we change the current flag of Canada back to what it had been prior to 1965.

However, on my way to the welfare office I stopped at a small confectionery and the owner agreed to take my flags on a consignment basis. Two days later she had sold all the flags and insisted that I take the entire proceeds, foregoing her agreed-upon share. She wanted me to get more flags for her. As I sat in the waiting area of the welfare office, I could clearly hear the woman in charge addressing a client, from what I could overhear a young woman whose husband had abandoned her, leaving her with two small children. Instead of assistance, the welfare official was bragging that Kitchener held the record in Ontario for the lowest welfare rate and she was not about to let a healthy and fit young woman spoil that record. “But I can’t feed my kids,” the woman pleaded. “Then get a job,” she was told. “But who will look after my kids?” “That’s not our problem,” she was told. Nothing would move this official, not even the mother’s tears. She left quickly, baby in arms, holding the hand of a two year old.

My turn.

The woman listened to my story and then told me that Kitchener held the record for the lowest welfare rate in Ontario and that no healthy young man was going to spoil that record. “But I can’t hold a full-time job and still go to school,” I argued. “Not our problem,” I was told. Then the woman softened and said, “Why don’t you go home? I know your father. He’s a good man.” When I got back to the YMCA that afternoon, the desk clerk gave me a ten dollar bill. “This is for you,” he said. I don’t know who it was from, but I was getting very low on cash and appreciated it.

Through that hot and muggy week, I visited the homes of friends from elementary school days. The stories were all the same: they’d be pleasant to me and their parents would advise me to go home, my father was a nice man, etc., etc. It was as if the entire city knew my father and what a good man he was. I could not answer any of them. I did not have a vocabulary able to express the sense of oppression I had in his presence. No one understood what I was about and I wasn’t even sure about that myself. Hot, sticky, muggy evenings, I sat in my room, looking out the window at a small park across the street. Nothing was working out the way I had hoped it would.  I could not explain to anyone what it was I wanted. I picked up a pen and started to write on a sheet of paper on the ledge of the window.

Simple words. Keep it simple. No explanations or expositions. Just words. “He big,” I wrote. “I small.” “He big/ I hurt.” “Small me.” And so it went, one page filled and became another. “Big hurt.”

I looked at the park across the street. “Park/ green/ so green/ cool/ dark.” Keep it simple. Just write what was there, nothing more. “Bright cars/ dark trees.”

The next day after I returned from my breakfast the desk clerk told me that he had a phone message for me. “Mr. Brown” and a phone number. Someone had told my father I was here. I felt panicky, afraid he was going to show up. I quickly packed, checked out, and walked quickly to the bus station, worried that his car was going to screech to a halt across my path. As the bus pulled away from the city I felt as though I had just escaped prison and was headed for the freedom and anonymity of the big city.

Over the next three years I called myself a poet. I filled books with neatly typed pages, numbering some 300 poems in all. I read regularly in coffee houses, like “The Bohemian Embassy,” where Margaret Atwood, Milton Acorn, and Gwendolyn MacEwen read their poetry between performances by Ian and Sylvia Tyson. Here’s a brief description of The Embassy: http://torontodreamsproject.blogspot.ca/2011/02/canadas-first-beatnik-happening.html. I read often at The Inn of the Unmuzzled Ox, a poor cousin of The Embassy, run by The Student Christian Movement, a Canada-wide campus organization where some of the most radical ideas in Canada, such as the early discussions of gay rights, were being discussed. The Inn is mentioned in an article here: http://www.scmcanada.org/files/Epistle-2009.pdf. One of my poems was published in an anthology of Canadian poetry edited by George Bowering, and a number were published at McGill University when I was a student there in 1974-75. Poetry became a vehicle through which I could say things I could never put into words before and it helped me articulate and define who I was becoming.

The Encroachment

(May 13, 1966)

the ambivalence of cold cheap stone

in amber lights

a room flashes on, one off

over hypnotic ritual of apartment buildings

can I say this pyramid

will not collapse on fulfilment

of its ten year lease

while this ancient home

can legate to its legacy?

and can I say this cold, this warm

this house, this home

this and all and no more?

and will I say this doomsday

book will outlive its inheritors

this scrap, the dust? I will be

free as birds which dart though the one hole

in the tangled interwoven twigs

be quick

before the foliage fills them in

Seen in Passing Eyes

(November 3, 1966)

The loneliness of people’s eyes

moves in a slow inner dance

like a buttocks bone grinding into a chair

it eats.

Like a young girl

tears streaming down her cheeks

writing on her window

for passing pedestrians the word

Happy.

the movement increases

till mind and body

are divorced in a frenzy

and ceases

in a cumulative

sleep.

Growing Alone

In September of 1963 I was seventeen years old and had been away from home for almost three years. I entered grade 12 at Riverdale alienated from my classmates. I had attempted suicide and spent eight months in a mental institute. I was friends with artists and writers and had spent the summer working in the garment industry. Nothing, as far as I could see, had changed for them. They still lived in comfortable homes with comfortable parents and had their lives planned out. Just two more years of high school and they’d be off to the University of Toronto, or Queens, or Western, settled into frat houses and on their way to careers in business. I didn’t know what I wanted, but it wasn’t that.

Though I remained friends with the men who lived in the house where I had rented a room for the summer, it was considered a good idea for me to move when Jack and I got drunk one night on Stan’s wine while he was out. Jack staggered about the room, flailing his arms, tearing down decorations that Stan had put up and falling onto Stan’s silkscreens. I was drunkenly angry, cursing the men who tried to calm me and throwing burning cigarettes at them. The reason I was angry is that I had met a young woman at a party who had come home with me. Though we never made out—I slept on the cot while she took my bed—she was the first woman I had seen completely nude. The first morning we awoke and each got up, wrapped in a blanket. She let hers drop as we stood facing each other and said, “I think people should be comfortable with the human body, don’t you?” Of course I agreed, trying not to stare. She hugged me and then quickly dressed. Whatever dreams I might have had of an affair with Doris vanished as she spent her evenings off visiting friends, then coming back to my room to sleep. One night I gathered up her clothing that had been scattered about my room and threw everything down the stairs to send a message to her when she returned that night. So, Jack and I got drunk and I was asked to leave.

I found a room in a house a few blocks away. The home was owned by a young couple with two young girls. The wife, Maria, was from Italy, and the husband, Hans, from Poland. They occupied the first floor and rented the second floor to another young couple. The third floor had two rooms; I took one, the other was empty when I moved in. The room had a single bed, dresser, a table and chair, and a hotplate. My rent was $10 a week. My welfare cheques had started arriving when I began school. They were for $54 a month, meaning I had between $4 and $14 a month, depending on how many weeks there were in a month, for food and everything else. I was a heavy smoker, so there was even less money remaining for food. I had no idea how to budget or how to prepare simple meals. I had enough saved from my summer job to pay for text books and basic supplies. There was a fish and chip shop a short distance away and, when I had enough money, I’d take home a meal wrapped in newspaper. There was also a lunch counter where I’d order coffee and chat with the owner. He occasionally gave me small jobs to do, like cleaning the gutters, and he’d sometimes give me a free cup of coffee. I couldn’t afford the club sandwiches he sold. I used my hotplate to heat water for instant coffee that I learned to drink black, as I had no way to keep milk.

I starting seeing Mr Belt again once a week, as he kept office hours one evening a week to accommodate those going to school or working. He invited me to his home for dinner a few times. And my music teacher, Baird Knecktel, invited me for Sunday dinner fairly regularly. Generally I could count on one good meal a week. Sometimes Jack would drop by and he’d buy me tea and a Danish pastry at a lunch counter.

Hans, who owned the house where I rented, told me the story of how the Germans had come to his village and, because he had four brothers, all fit and healthy, the family was offered a larger home. All the boys were expected to—and did—join the German army. However, he was wounded and captured while battling the British in France and was evacuated to England where, after he recovered, he joined the British army and was sent to fight in Italy where he met his future wife.  He was the first person I had met who had fought for the Germans during the war. Growing up I was used to seeing thin older men with blue numbers tattooed on their forearms. They were from Latvia, Poland, Lithuania, Estonia. They were all quiet and grim, raising their families with a sad distance. Like my insight a year before when I realized that most Russians had to be simple hard-working folks just like the rest of us, here was a representative of the most hated regime in history and he was a quiet, hard-working man with a young family. He was a fan of the Irish Sweepstakes and tried to explain to me how it worked, but I just didn’t get it. When I’d return from trips to the University of Toronto’s music library with pages of scores of Schoenberg and Stravinsky that I had copied out, he translate the German and Russian for me.

I was now convinced that I was destined to become a composer of music. I stayed up late at night furiously scribbling notes on the staff paper that Stan had printed for me. I’d copy out all the orchestra parts and take the clutches of barely legible pages to Mr Knecktel hoping he’d have the orchestra class play them. He never did, though he did start giving me private violin lessons at his home.

Sometime during my stay at Hans’ and Maria’s I was drawn to a paper-back book in the coffee shop rack. It had a dark blue jacket, a picture of a woman in a swirling dress seemingly floating in an ill-defined chaos—like the paintings I had produced when at the Toronto Psychiatric Hospital. The cover was dominated by an iron-like letter “V.” Thomas Pynchon was the author. I bought and read that book, unable to put it down, absolutely enthralled. It described a world I, at the point, was barely aware of existing. It is a sprawling story embracing many characters in scattered parts of the world. It described parties that went on for days, and hunting for alligators in New York’s sewers. The characters were hip, alienated, wildly creative, and sometimes weird. It was so far from the neat orderly world I had grown up in, it was as if I was reading about creatures from another planet. Even the hipsters I knew, like Kig, Cog, Stan, and Denis, were narrowly straight-laced compared the Pynchon’s characters. For the rest of my life I skirted around the edges of Pynchon’s world, never a part of it, but never quite apart from it either. I still have that same paperback, though I have not yet re-read it, on my bedside table, more than 50 years later. A few years ago I started to read “Gravity’s Rainbow” and found it absolutely unreadable. I tried three times and never got more than about 50 pages into it before I gave it up as a lost cause.

Meanwhile, Stan gave me a jacket he no longer wanted, as the jacket I had used since leaving home was now far too small for me. However, my shoes were worn and holes developed in the soles. My socks soon were worn through where the holes were and my feet became blistered from the constant contact with pavement. I learned to cut layers of newspaper to line my shoes and felt an enormous sense of relief and comfort for the few moments before the paper shredded and wore through. Rainy days were the worse, as my feet would be wet and as fall advanced towards winter, it seemed as if I was always cold—especially my feet. I was also experiencing a deep sense of exhaustion and was finding it increasingly difficult to get up on time to attend school. Often I would sleep until two or three o’clock in the afternoon, then rush off to school in time for orchestra rehearsal.

Stan had moved to the basement of the house he shared and built a bunk and work tables. Every Saturday evening artists and writers would gather at his place to talk about the arts. I joined them. Stan was planning to start a printing business and conversations often revolved around that. At a given point during the evening people would pile on top of each other on cushions in a corner of the room, groaning loudly and moaning. I didn’t really understand what was going on, but wanted to join in. I’d lean on top of the pile stiffly, uncertain. One night Doris, who was below me, suddenly kissed me passionately during such a group huddle.

One of the girls treated me kindly and invited me to her home for dinner and so she could lend me some books that she thought I might find enlightening. As we stood in her porch, I holding the bundle of books, she suddenly threw her arms about my neck and hugged me tightly. I didn’t understand what was going on, so I kissed her neck and she immediately drew away. The next Saturday I was waiting for her at Stan’s when she arrived and fell into an animated conversation with another young man. I waited, growing angry and impatient. When she finally ended her conversation and turned to me, the smile faded from her face when she saw the look on mine. She drew back as I lashed out at her, angry that she had talked with someone else before acknowledging me. It was as if I had split into two people. One of me was angry and hurt; the other wondering what was going on and why was I acting this way. I finally caught up with myself and stumbled, mumbling an apology, but I knew that I could never undo whatever harm I had just created.

I raced home in agony and threw myself on the stairs leading up to my room. When the owners returned home from visiting relatives they found me there, asking what was wrong. I couldn’t answer them. I had no idea how to explain. Soon Mac Belt was there and he led me to his car and drove me to St Michael’s hospital. I didn’t want to talk to anyone and stared through a frosted window at the raining distorted world of the emergency parking lot. Mr Belt called my name several times, but I didn’t respond to him. Finally he left. Meanwhile, I was admitted to St Michael’s suffering from malnutrition and anxiety. They kept me there for two weeks. That’s where I passed my eighteenth birthday. Jack visited me, giving me a book as a birthday present.

On my release from hospital I figured I deserved to take the time remaining before Christmas off. I looked after Hans and Maria’s children until he arrived home from work. I’d then sit in the kitchen chatting with him while he prepared dinner. It seemed it was always the same: potatoes and vegetables in a beef stew. He’d invite me to eat with them, so, as Christmas approached I was getting at least one good meal a day. I’d usually retire to my room for the evening, writing music, then creep downstairs to watch the late night movie after Hans and Maria had gone to bed. They rented the front room on the third floor to an older man who I avoided. He drank a great deal and I’d hear him muttering to himself as I lay in bed. He frightened me.

Hans and Maria invited me to spend Christmas day with them. I had received my January welfare cheque early and bought the two girls simple toys. Maria was angry with me for having spent what little money I had on them. They then took me with them when they visited Maria’s family for the Christmas meal. What a feast. They started with spaghetti and I filled my plate, not realizing that this was the appetizer course and there was a lot more to come. They served eels and various Italian dishes that I was unfamiliar with. All throughout they steadily drank hard distilled liquor and my glass was always kept full. I was drunk and satiated when we returned home. I lay in bed listening to the old man mutter about how nobody gave him any respect and how angry he was at being excluded from the Christmas festivities. He kept saying he was going to stick a screw-driver in my stomach to make me pay. There was a small hook and eye latch on my door and I hoped it was strong enough to keep him out of my room. I told Hans about the old man’s threats and they asked him to leave their house immediately.

After the Christmas break I made a valiant effort at returning to school and catching up, but I had missed a month of classes before the break. Also, it was a rare day I woke up early enough to make it to school on time. A crisis came when the chemistry teacher returned the test we had recently taken. I had failed miserably. What angered me was the test was based on one’s ability to remember the characteristics of the elements, like their valencies. I understood all the concepts but couldn’t remember the damned little numbers that crowded the boxes on the periodic table. I walked quickly from the class and headed for the principal’s office where I complained loudly that the teacher was prejudiced against intelligence, focusing on idiotic rote memory work instead of intellectual comprehension. The principal suggested I go home for a few days. When I returned to his office a few days later I told him that I had decided to drop out. I was literally starving to death on the pittance the welfare department provided. He then told me he had petitioned the school board and they had agreed to give me twenty dollars a month for living expenses. It was too late. I had made up my mind.

I read the Toronto Star every day. In those days the classified want ad section was 20 or 30 pages long, about a quarter to half filled with job vacancies. I phoned a life insurance company looking for a mail clerk and was interviewed the next day. I was hired and began work immediately.

The company was on Yonge Street at King, the heart of Toronto’s high finance district. It was in an 18-story stone building, long since torn down and replaced with about 60 stories of steel and glass. The company occupied three floors near the top. The middle floor was where the agents occupied private offices around the periphery and the typists and clerks occupied the open space in the centre. The mail room as also on that floor. On the floor below was the supply room and purchasing department. The floor above was for the company president and owner. My job was to sort the mail when it arrived twice daily, open the envelopes and sort the contents for various recipients. I would then push a small cart around the floor dropping the mail into appropriate in-baskets. I also had to operate a mailing machine. The unsealed envelopes, already addressed by the typists, were fed through the machine that printed a stamp and dampened and sealed the envelope. One of my life-long afflictions is the inability to make machines fulfil their intended purpose. Invariably, envelopes would jam and be torn by the machine, or fail to receive a stamp print, or be stamped on the wrong side or upsidedown.

Actually, I was the junior mail clerk. I shared the mail room with the senior clerk. As far as I could see his duties were to read the newspaper in the morning and kibitz with other staff members the rest of the day. He also ran the office hockey pool. The director of personal had me in her office a few times for pep talks. She didn’t think I was putting enough energy into the job. Though starting time was 9:00 am, and I usually arrived at about five minutes to the hour, she suggested I should arrive 15 minutes early and start the coffee machine. I also should show more initiative on the job, and, to that end was asked to run errands for the company president. I was to check outside his office each morning and take the pair of shoes I found there to a shop down the street to be polished and to pick up a red carnation for his desk. I also was to check his closet to see if there were shirts that needed dry-cleaning. Whatever I was asked to do, I did, but it did not appear to be enough. I was sent to the Toronto Stock Exchange, a few blocks away on Bay Street, so I could “learn” something. I had no idea what I was expected to do once there and stood bewildered, watching as meaningless letters and numbers scrolled by on the strip display over the trading floor. Finally, after a couple of weeks I was let go, the reason given was that I did not show enough initiative and interest in the job. And, so it was back to having next to nothing. At least I had been able to buy a new pair of shoes with my first pay cheque.

Hans rented the other room on my floor to a young man who decided that we should join forces and merge our rooms together. He moved his single bed into my room and moved my table into his so that we now had a sitting room-kitchen and a separate bedroom. I was not happy, being used to being alone, but I didn’t know how to say no. He had a small portable record player and played early Beatle pieces over and over, gushing enthusiastically over each piece. I was thoroughly immersed in 20ieth century classical music at that point, thinking that Prokoviev, Stravinski, and Shostakovitch were the only music worth listening to, but the Beatles tunes were catchy and a step up from the mindless pop music that I was completely disinterested in. One night I arrived home to find him in his bed with another young man. I was repelled and took my blanket downstairs to sleep on the couch in Hans’ and Maria’s living room. The next day, Hans, on hearing why I had slept on his couch, ordered the young man to put the rooms back the way they had been originally.  In a week or so my once roommate moved out and I never saw him again.

Mr. Belt, meanwhile, was working hard to get me established at something. He sent me to visit a potential “big brother,” but the interview consisted of the intense man staring into my eyes, his hand on my thigh, telling that he hoped we would become very close as we got to know each other. Mr. Belt told me of an elderly couple who had a book-binding business looking for a young person to train to take over their shop once they retired. I could not picture myself doing this for the rest of my life. And then he lucked into an opportunity for me to start on the ground floor of a new business just opening. The owner was looking for a right-hand man to get his ice cream shop up and running, eventually becoming his manager. I went to the interview in the sawdust coated restaurant and was hired after receiving a lecture from Mr. Hopgood about how the ice cream business was all about making people happy. He gave me some pamphlets on how to store and retail ice cream to take home and study.

Over the next few days I worked at preping the restaurant, particularly at cleaning up and repairing the broken plaster walls of the washrooms. I had no idea how to mix and apply plaster. I just kept layering it on, hoping some would stick. He eventually hired someone who knew what he was doing to complete the job. I learned how to operate the grill and the formulas for making ice cream sundaes and he hired a young woman to take orders and run the cash register. Hopgood’s Old Fashioned Ice Cream Parlour and Sandwich Bar opened, the small restaurant crowded with the owner’s family and friends wishing him well.

Other staff were hired—young people from a local high school. Though I was supposed to be training to be the manager, I was treated like the other employees and resented it. I felt humiliated when told to distribute flyers throughout the local neighbourhood. I retreated to working the grill, though I had no idea how to make the fried eggs sandwiches and other simple items on the menu. Mr. Hopgood himself seemed unclear on how to run a restaurant in that part of Toronto. Initially he charged ten cents for a cup of coffee and faced a near riot as customers refused to pay such an exorbitant price. I had to scratch out the ten cent prices on the menus and replace them with the standard five cents. There was a movie theatre across the street from the restaurant, but he never seemed able to coordinate our closing time with the time the movies let out, so that often he would have me reopen when he saw the crowd leaving the theatre, after all the closing activities were done, the grill scrubbed and cooling off, chairs on tables off the freshly mopped floor, cash register balanced, and all dishes washed and put away. I was angry and miserable a lot of the time. Mr. Hopgood tried giving me pep talks, telling me repeatedly that if I smiled everything would go so much better.

Finally, one night, when working alone with a young woman who was ordering me about as if I was a junior apprentice, I had enough and left by the rear door. A new plan for my future was forming. I gave Hans and Maria my notice and moved on. It was July of 1964.