Mom loved the garden. It took up half the lot. Dad loved the red brick house. “Brick houses are solid. I don’t care what anyone says, they last.” Dad was always into durability. He was a serious shopper as they’d say today. He studied the foundation, electrical, roofing in a home and only later looked at the appearances. My parents would live in that house for nearly 50 years. I’d spend a dozen years of my developing life there before leaving home. My brother would spend more years. We’d gather as a family there for another 20 years or more. It was only a couple of years after my parents left the home that my mother died, the house and her garden being part of her soul. My father would live on a few years more. He would be disheartened when the new owner tore down his garage, a masterpiece of construction. He’d done so much work on the house but didn’t miss it as mom did.
Years later he’d help me buy my first house, the one I still miss, the one that was perfect in so many ways. It just lacked family.
Mom would say later, “I did’t like the neighborhood because there wasn’t a Baptist Church but your Dad and I agreed that it had a good school and nearby community club so was good for you kids.” The house was near the university and schools tend to be best near universities because so many of the parents in the community teach at the university. They don’t tolerate the low standards some communities are saddled with. As an adult I could look back and be thankful for the schools I attended and the classmates I knew. Even our Library was better than most.
Mom and Dad bought the house on North Drive with the three tall spruce trees at the front and the large yard in the back. Dad would eventually build a second garage to house his truck and car and the existing garage would house his motorboat. The loss of much of the backyard was a major family discussion but as kids we’d never used it much and Mom was always in her garden. When the cement floored garage was built it became a regular mechanics shop with Dad and Ron working every weekend on motors using me to fetch and hand tools. The language in the garage was always Colour full for a little boy than in the living room where Mom ruled.
The first kid I saw when we arrived as a family one day to take up residence was my friend to be, Kirk. He was a wiry character balancing on the top of his fence looking like a little ruler warrior. I was both scared of his martial presentation and intrigued. I’d later learn that his father had built up that corner for a slide so he wasn’t balancing but rather simply standing at the top. I can still see him and remember we smiled at each other. Then Dad was parking the Morris and we were all unpacking and moving into our new house..
My brother and I shared a room, each with a bed and each with a bureau and the closet we shared in the corner. The window that looked out on the front street was always special to me.
Mom loved the glass all round sun room at the front of the house. She had her sewing machine and type writer there, the flowers she tended through the winter, the Christmas Cactus which would always blossom. My grandmother when she lived her last years with us had her bed there and Mom nursed her till she died. She had severe arthritis and was gnarled. I can’t think of that word without thinking of my grandmother and her hands and joints. She had such a loving smile. I think I was her favorite though probably Ron was. I was the mischievous younger one and Ron was the good older boy. Mom loved spending time with her mother. They’d sit for hours in that sun room talking.
I loved that Dad had his locked hand made wood rifle cabinet with bottom ammunition drawer in the Sun Room.. His lever action 30:30, 22 long rife and 12 gauge shot gun stood there behind the locked glass door. I felt safer with the rifles there especially at the height of the Cold War. I’d have nightmares of Russian soldiers in white cammo coming across the snow covered front lawn, But in my dreams, they would be stopped by my father with his rifle, Ron with the shot gun and me protecting Mom with the 22 long rifle if they got in the house. I’d rehearse scenarios in my mind when I’d awake in my room and be the first to see the soldiers outside the window. Then I’d crawl to the cabinet, get the guns and ammo, and distribute them to my father and brother who’d win the day and save my mother.
Dad loved the green upholstered couch in the main living room. He’d lie there watching tv with us kids sitting on the floor often in front of the tv. As a family we’d always watch the NHL hockey games. Hockey Night in Canada was a big event Mom made pop corn. Mom made pop corn for every big event in the Hay Home.
There was a large glass mirror on the wall across from the couch. A picture of brilliant smiling Mom in white and dad in his RCAF uniform stood on the mantel. There was also a picture frame surrounded by two spitfire bullets that held it there. Dad had made this when he’d helped a pilot out of crashed fighter and had taken a couple of the shells as a souvenir of that time. Below the mantel we had an electric heater fireplace with the lighted logs. For years Dad and Mom and later Dad and Ron would discuss making a real wood burning fireplace there and adding a chimney. It never was done but the discussions went on and on.
Dad did build a white wood glass fronted cabinet for mom to put her mother’s china and such in. My brother Ron was always annoyed that he did such good work but had used only painted plywood rather than more expensive hard wood. My parents were frugal and functional. Baha before their time. Meanwhile when Dad would later build a boat in the backyard it was made of such heavy hard wood and sturdy construction we were all amazed that it floated. It was a beast to move. A neighbor joked when he tried to lift it that my father’s boat was better suited for the Navy than fishing.
In the Living Room Mom had a big stuffed comfortable armed upholstered chair that sat at the back with a hassock for her feet and a little table where she kept her crocheting and knitting projects.. “Idle hands are the devil’s playground,” she’d say. She was definitely the Martha in the Martha and Mary story of the Bible. Always busy except when she was talking to her mother, one of us kids or dad, or when she was talking on the phone.
The black wall phone was in the kitchen. Mom would stand or pull up a chair and have lengthy phone calls with women friends she knew about the community or from the church. I actually don’t remember Dad talking on the phone more than a few times and only to arrange meeting time. Neither Ron or I talked on the phone except to arrange times for getting together with friends or later when we had girlfriends. The public place of the phone didn’t encourage long phone calls but I remember that didn’t dissuade my brother when he fell in love with his future wife. I was definitely more clandestine in my dating by comparison and often for good reason back in those turbulent days. Early I had an attraction to girls my mother wouldn’t call ‘good girls’. Her idea of a good girl was a church going virgin. Not my idea in the later 60’s. My brother would bring his future fiancé over but my parents were more likely only to meet my ex wives shortly before the wedding. I didn’t bring girlfriends home.
The most guests that were ever there when my grandfather and three of his father’s brothers came to town. They didn’t bring their wives. A few times my father and mother would have another couple over for dinner. The most I remember eating at the table were 8. There wasn’t a dining room so the round oak table with two Centre extension boards would be set up in the living room and taken down after dinner. My parents didn’t drink so that whole alcohol related socializing I’d come to know later in life wasn’t apart of my childhood. If there was a group affair it occurred at the church in the church basement, at the Game and Fish Club or in the Community Club. Home was for family and a few intimate friends.
It was a small house. My parents bedroom was across the hall from the rather large bathroom. We bathed growing up. Dad put the shower in after Ron and I were teens. Their own room had a king sized bed with walnut head board. Mom had this matching mirrored bureau she loved. They had a great wooden chest at the foot of the bed where mom kept her linen and grand dad’s great Orangeman sash he’d worn in the annual Toronto parades. They had another big drawered bureau where my aunt would help me hide when we were really small and I fit in the bottom drawer. No one found me but I had to wait till my aunt came and got me out. There was also a walk in size closet where I remember Dad kept his suits and mom her ‘better occasion’ dresses. When I was older and we played hide and seek in the house I hid in the back of this closet comfortable behind all my dad’s and mom’s clothing enjoying the familiar smell of them. Ron always found me there while the visiting kids didn’t. I’d have to grow older to know my brother ‘remembered’ my ‘hiding spots’ . I always thought he was so smart and such a great sleuth.
We lived in the kitchen. Refrigerator, stove , sink with the window above the sink. The bird feeder hung on the elm tree outside the big window. Mom enjoyed watching the birds as she did the dishes or cooked. The square radio sat on the shelf always tuned to CJOB. “Beefs and Bouguet’s” was always playing when we ate our porridge in the morning. An aluminum green surfaced kitchen table set with 4 chairs sat against one wall. We ate all our meals there. Dad often read the paper there. Ron and I would do homework there sometimes as often we’d do that type of work at the table in the sun room.
I remember dad taking apart alternators at that table, mom sewing or chopping onions. I remember the two of them butchering a quarter cow or a half a pig. Later the dog would love to lie under that table with Dad slipping him treats at meals and mom telling dad off while she slipped the dog treats but we kids got in trouble if we didb. Not real trouble. It was always a source of laughter. A family game. One the dog approved of. We had a rule that we didn’t feed the dog at meals and we all did. The dog certainly wasn’t going to squeal on anyone.
Downstairs there was a great furnace, Dad’s work room with big saw and wall of hung tools and an ever changing array of electric tools that came and went from his work to his home depending on what project he was doing. There was the full sized freezer full of wild game or stocked with meat Dad had bought from a farmer. Mom’s preserves filled the walls. Later Dad would build the cold room that would hold all the preserves and serve as cold storage and also as the bomb shelter the year of the Kennedy Missile Crisis.
Mom’s ringer washer would go downstairs eventually when they got it and mom’s laundry day went from a day to a half overnight. Years later Dad would build me a room down there when my brother and my arguments became physical in teen years. He’d also take his ice fishing hut and convert it into a dark room for my photography needs. Dad loved making movies and encouraged me in photography. Later my brother would get international awards for his wildlife photography while his son’s movies would compete in festivals.
I smile remembering all the movies dad made and the cutting and splicing machine then the family sitting in the living room watching Dad’s movies of us all while Mom made the popcorn. Perhaps another reason I didn’t bring girlfriends home was that Dad would show them pictures of me skating using the stick more as a crutch and I’d tried to convince them I was a real hockey player. There still remains a major gap between the way I remember myself playing hockey as a child and teen and the actual physical evidence of the slower speed and much more awkward movement.
It was a good house. Dad and Mom did well. They maintained it well with constant maintenance and repairs they did themselves until we were old enough to join the work force. I remember painting and shingling and doing all sorts of things about the house with my family. I learned so much in that home that stood me in good stead for years to come. Apartment dwelling was never the same. I admit that when I had a town house I liked that someone else took care of all the maintenance but then I didnt’ care for it either. It was disposable and exchangeable. There’s a difference between a house and a home. I’ve always loved my home on North Drive and known it as such, the love in our family extended to the physical world around us. It was such a warm home. I pretty much took it for granted until later years when I knew how cold a house could get on a hot sunny day. I now appreciate too how much work my parents did to love and how committed they were to family and my brother and I. When I think of home I think of that red brick home with the huge garden and three spruce trees, my parents, my brother and the dog. After we left home one of the spruce trees had to be cut down.
The garages and the garden and the cement patio all had their stories in years to come.
Kirk and I would become best friends. Garth and Kirk were best friends and I was included in their gang. Then we’d do that early group thing of twos and threes and ones. We were our own Hardy Boys. If Rudyard Kipling and Mark Twain were alive we’d have been characters in their tales. Our adventurers were even bigger and better than our hockey skills in those years. All the best adventures of childhood usually involved these guys. Every day we’d walk to school together, later play sports, join teams and eventually chase girls. Garth and Kirk were mainstays of my Viscount Alexander Elementary School years. It was only with high school and college we drifted apart. Garth so tragically dying young before he could play and beat Tiger Woods. He loved golf and wanted to be a golf pro.
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