10 years old: Blue Lake, Minaki, Kennedy Missile Crisis, Andy Warhol, UFO’s

With time the years seem to blur together in the past.  I don’t remember if I learned to ride a bicycle at 7 years old or 9 years old.  I know by 10 I was riding bicycle all summer.

I was cutting the lawns of neighbours for a dollar an hour by then too.  I had a manual push lawn mower. Dad said if I mowed our lawn I could use the mower to mow the neighbours lawns for a business.  I don’t remember getting an ‘allowance’.  When we ‘needed’ money for something out of the ordinary we’d ask. Mom would give us ‘candy’ money along with the money for the tickets when we walked up to Pembina and Point Road to go to the movies there on Saturday afternoon.  ]

Camping is what I remember doing a lot.  At first we had the brown canvas tent with the centre pole that slept two adults, 2 kids and the dog Sonny.  Next we had a blue six man tent. That gave us lots of room. The truly skookum tent mom loved was a 6 man tent with the mosquito netting extra room.  She had the Coleman gas cookstove on a little collapsible table in there.  There was a 4 man collapsible metal table and 2 camp stools for us kids and two camp chairs for the parents.  

I remember Blue Lake the best.  The setting was pristine.  We’d camp in the trees right by the lake where the boat launch was.  Mom would stay home in the tent reading in her chair inside the mosquito net.  My father, brother and I would go out fishing each day in the boat with a 5 hp Johnson motor.  I remember first going out fishing with my mom in the boat. She and I spent most of the time untangling knots.  I remember whining about that and Dad complaining about my whining. My brother would stoically sit through we squabbles. Mom would defend me as the ‘baby’ and eventually I’d cast the hook before it was time to go back in.   

Next I’m on the same lake in the same boat and Mom no longer comes with the ‘men’.  The ‘red devil’ lure was the best. I caught pike or jack fish while Dad and my brother seemed to always catch pickerel.  Sometimes we’d go ashore and explore. There was a great wooded path to another lake beyond a fall.  We couldn’t get the boat there but we’d walk up there and cast from the rocks. 

I can remember going back to Blue Lake for years, not consecutively but repeatedly. Dad had 2 weeks holidays in the summer and if we weren’t going on a road trip with camping and the occasional motel then we were camping.  Blue Lake was a favourite because of the pickerel.  You could look almost to the bottom of the lake.  

Kirk’s family would go to their cottage on Minaki Lake.  The Minaki Resort was a great old 30’s classic with stripped logs, a true work of wilderness beauty.  Part of the CNR CAnada resort system that included Banff Hotel and other famous luxury accommodations. Apparently in the 30’s Canada was a favourite place where the elite could take a wilderness train trip and see bears and moose.  Minaki was that sort of resort place.  

Jake MacDonald years later would write the quintessential book about the place, The Houseboat Chronicles, a genius of a read for anyone whose spent time in the Canadian north.  

I joined Kirk for a week or so once or twice at the cottage.  His mother was the best of cooks and she would make these fabulous meals in the kitchen that looked out on the lake. A loon would be landing always. Ducks taking off. Fish jumping.  An eagle overhead.  Mr. Laidlaw when he was there would run with his crutches and jump into the freezing cold water naked.  The boys, Kirk, Tom and I would cannon ball off the dock in the morning too. The family ritual. The beautiful older sisters would with the mother later swim.  If the girls were there bathing suits for the boys were necessary. Otherwise Kirk and I went naked.

We later belong  to the YMCA where all the boys swam naked. Skinny dipping wasn’t unusual.  My family, my mother being Baptist, didn’t do that sort of thing but it was fun at the Laidlaws.  Running naked down the dock full speed as a kid then launching oneself off into the cold water.  Now that’s the way to wake up.  

During the day Kirk and I would explore the back woods. I remember a morning spent making spears and then the rest of the morning trying to spear a grouse. The grouse is the dumbest bird alive but somehow we could not hit it despite it’s running and stopping a few times to let us each get a throw at it.

As boys we always had knives.  Little closing blade ‘jack knife’s that would in years to come grow to be the hand sized multi tool creations put out by the Swiss Army Knife company.  

We’d whittle and talk and hike.  We’d canoe a lot too. Just the two of us. 10 years old and maybe later again when we were 12.

I especially remember one shenanigans we got up to. Don’t know why this one sticks.  We decided we were so dark with the summer. We walked around shirtless, in sneakers and shorts,  and turned almost black with the summer sun. We picked berries which we mostly ate ourselves.  Delicious ontario blue berries.  Competing with the black bears we’d avoid.  If they were in a patch they got there first. We left them to their feeding.

The CNR Passenger train went by each day and we’d often see rows of cars with passengers looking out the window at us kids. We’d stand and wave.  We figured we were part of the ‘experience’ of the ‘north’ for these travellers. I don’t know who thought it up but when the train came next we were standing on a hill as it whipped by at 80 miles an hour. We had taken off our shorts and were standing waving, big smiles on our face.  They were taking pictures.

We figures we must have shown up on a Japanese tourist picture at least. We laughed so much thinking they’d think we were Indians (indigenous), because we looked so brown. We poked each other and giggled about them telling their folks overseas about seeing bears and native children.  We didn’t tell our parents. There was a lot Kirk and I didn’t tell our parents. We were often getting into situations that would have caused a parent nightmares.  At the time we were reading the Hardy Boys and that was us. Also Kipling was big and we’d imagine we were behind enemy lines sneaking up on turtles and gophers.  We laughed a lot.  

Later in the day we’d return.  

I liked to fish and took the boat out but Kirk got bored fishing. It was an issue. I really liked to fish so here he was with his friend visitting and I’d be up fishing and he’d want to go hiking. His mother actually told me they didn’t need any more fish. I loved fishing at Minaki and caught my first bass there.I couldn’t imagine Kirk not liking fishing. Instead he’d like to talk and walk so we did more of that.  Kirk was always the greatest guy to talk with.  

We’d share all manner of ideas about parents, school, God.  For as long as I can remember Kirk and I talked about God, how we came here, what we were.  We talked about what we were going to be when we grew up. I wanted to be a jet fight pilot then. I don’t remember what Kirk wanted. Wish I did. I’d love to be a fly on the wall and hear those conversations again. I have the flavour of them.  Philosophical ,theological,curious,and pure.  Untainted by so much that came later.

I loved the gas lamps at Kirk’s Minaki Cottage.  The lighting of these. His mother asking his father if it was time. The discussion of the lighting of the gas lamps.  The decision to light the lamps. The circles of yellow light that appeared in the dusk around the lights.

That was at the main cabin. We slep out in another cabin called the ‘boys’ cabin. I never even went in the ‘girls’ cabin. Totally taboo. Though not like the ‘boys’ cabin.  Everyone came and went there.  But at night the lamps would come on and there’d be a time for reading.  Listening to the night creatures. Winding down of the day.  Quiet time.

Then ‘remember to brush your teeth’ and ‘off to bed’.  We’d giggle in the cabin and fall asleep while the parents stayed up later sitting around the soft glow of the gas lights.

The moon and stars were something over the still blue lake.  An occasional cloud floating overhead.

In the summer too Kirk’s two older sisters would put on plays in the back yard of their house across the back lane from us in Winnipeg. They’d write them themselves and then they’d recruit us kids to be the actors and actresses. It was not uncommon for there to be 5 or more in the ‘cast’ and the plays would go on for hours in preparation.  It really was fun. As a kid coming up with things to do in the summer was a challenge as that is so hard to believe for an adult. But the older sisters and older brothers usually were doing ‘neat’ things and would include us.  More often than not a parent would tell them ‘watch your brother’ and we’d be included. With my brother Ron, it would be making and fixing things. Going to the store could be an event. I look at my dog when he follows me and think of myself following older children in much the same way.  Happy to be part of the pack, a part of an ‘adventure’.  

The biggest event of 1962 was Space. NASA was big in my home. I had NASA paraphernalia from somewhere.  I had a picture of Cape Canaveral too.  We all watched the rocket launches and the space men in their astronaut suits. Scott Carpenter orbited the earth in a space capsule, the first man in space. We’d paid attention to the monkeys. It was the “space race’.  I think the Russians put up a dog too.  The first man in space was the big thing. As a family we were all in front of the tv with mom making pop corn. Star Trek wouldn’t begin for another 4 years.

I remember one night when all the men gathered in the back lane on a summer night. A huge cigar shape had appeared in the sky. Saucer like lights were leaving and returning to it.  Ed, the pilot, my father, ex Air Force with the best 10 power binoculars, and Kirk’s dad the chemist and University alumni were there with others. Us kids were standing around knowing enough to be silent.

“It’s definitely a UFO.” Ed said.  He’d gone back to the house and phoned the Air Force that night, some number he knew. “They said it was a weather phenomena.”

“I’ve never seen a weather phenomena like that.” Said Dad.

“It’s got to be a UFO. They seem to be just stopping and starting with those little ship leaving and coming.”

‘That’s what I see, Gord.”

“Can’t see much more in the binoculars. The saucers seem to be spinning maybe but the cigar thing is just all a light.”

“They wouldn’t be landing with the ships coming and going.” Said another adult, I think the school teacher.

“They could be getting water.” I don’t know why someone thought about water but as earthlings we obviously prize our water so assumed others would too.  

“I think they’re just looking about. An exploration.” Said Gord. 

“I saw some mighty strange things flying and I don’t like that they won’t tell us what things are. That’s sure as hell not a weather phenomena.” Ed said. 

All the men agreed. But most had been in the military and knew the ways of the ‘higher ups’. 

That observations and several others were common that summer but that one was the most memorable.  I expect in retrospect the launching of a man in space attracted attention from elsewhere but as a kid we were just blown away by the idea of aliens visitting earth,  hoping they’d land and tell us stories of what it was like where they came from. Maybe we’d meet alien kids our own age.

The Kennedy’s were in the White House. Everyone agreed that Jackie Kennedy was the most beautiful First Lady.  We all loved President Kennedy. He was so young but he’d been wounded in the war. 

Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring came out that year in the New Yorker. I’d read it 10 years later and be all concerned and then 10 years later wonder why the fish hadn’t all died.  Acid rain was a scarey idea but no one melted like they did in the horror movies. I just kept fishing and remembering noticing that what had been said simply wasn’t true. I was studying science by the time I made that realization so had one less thing to worry about. As a kid I had a lot of worries. I’ve always tended to be a worrier. My aunt said worrying ran in her family. We were all kind of high strung. Dad was more down to earth. 

We really did worry the Russians were going to invade through the arctic or that we’d be hit by a nuclear bomb.  We knew as kids we were on the flight path of the Russian missiles. The news gave us hog prices and grain prices. We were on the prairies.  Trains and great graineries really mattered. The stockyards were important. Grandad had a ranch and conversations about agriculture were a matter of news and topics in the kitchen.  The radio was in the kitchen and that’s where we all heard CJOB.  “Beefs and bouquets” was the radio call in talk show my parents listened to in the morning.  

I first learned about Cuba then.  

It was the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis. That was the year everything changed.  That was the year I learned that I couldn’t trust adults. That was the year I saw all the adults were afraid.

Looking back in the Encyclopedia at that year I see the Navy Seals came into being. Adolf Eichman was hung.  There were plane crashes and train crashes. There were snow storms that got front page news because they happened out of season. Extreme weather events occurred but weather was weather. Engel vs Vitale cases against prayers in school were rulee prayers unconstitutional but in exchange male nudity was also ruled as not pornographic.  The first Walmart and first Kmart appeared. Andy Warhol premiered his Campbell’s Soup Cans exhibit.  The Rolling Stones made their debut in London.  Telstar relayed the first live television signal across the Atlantic. Marilyn Monroe died. Nelson Mandela was arrested. Typhoon Wanda struck Hong Kong. China and India conflict over borders lead to the Sino Indo War. Canadian Alouette 1 , the first spaceship built outside the US or Soviet Union was launched from California. Johnny Carson took over the Tonight Show. The Beatles “love love me do’ was released. Whose Afraid of Virginia Wolf appeared on Broadway. . Dr. No ,the first James Bond Film premiered.The Cuban Missile Crisis occurred. I said that already. It warrants repeating. Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life was published. The Vietnam War continued. Lawrence of Arabia, featuring Peter O’Toole, premiered

Jim Carey, Canadian actor and comedian and Eddie Izard, British actor and comedian  were  born. Mathew Broderick American actor was born.  Bon Jovi and Jan Arden, American and Canadian singers were born.  Tom Cruise and Wesley Snipes American actors were born.  Demi Moore and Jodi Foster, American Actresses, were born .

Writers, William Faulkner and Herman Hesse died. Marylyn Monroe died.  Neils Bohr Died. Eleanor Roosevelt died. 

The Nobel Prize for Medicine went to Watson and Crick

The Nobel Prize for Literature went to John Steinbeck.

  

The Cuban Missile Crisis occurred.  I said that. It changed my world. I knew a new kind of fear. The lonely kind.

7 years old: drunk judge and rock stars

It was 1959. It was a good year. I was living in Winnipeg, Fort Garry, on North Drive, a block from the Badminton Club and Golf Club.  The Red River ran along the end of our back lane.  We lived next to the Anglican Church Manse.

“Your father and the priest have been working on fixing his door for months,” Mom would say the year Dad and the priest would get together in his basement every weekend and spend hours ‘jawwing’.  Dad wasn’t a religious man.  He drove mom to the Baptist Church a half hour away in Fort Rouge every Sunday. Asked, he’d say, “I”m a member of the round church, the one where the devil can’t catch me in the corners.”  Another friend of his was a Catholic priest.  

Dad was a good man and a deep man.  He expressed his love with his hands. Mom was the church woman through and through.  Prudish by contemporary standards, judgemental for sure, highly moral, and a thoroughly good lady, but she did like her gossip.  She was Irish too and held onto resentments.  Red haired, she had a fiery temper.   

Years later, looking at the black and white photos of her and my father, before the children came, it’s so apparent the love and passion literally jump off the page.  My sister in law said, “Your mother loved her husband.”  Her sister said, “Jean and Johnny were the most in love couple we knew.”  They’d all been young at the end of the war.  Later, the love and friendship, youth and industry are so apparent with Dad and his cars and work and mom, her house and garden and babies.

Our other neighbour was out of work a lot of years.I think he’d managed a car dealership and had been laid off. He’d eventually get a government job. He read books and didn’t do much more. His wife was loved by all the children and could be seen always busy. The kids were our friends but out of sync by grades.  The daughter more my brother’s age. The son younger than me. We’d all play ball together though when the kids used the adjacent front lawns on North Drive for epic football games.  The dogs were always involved in those games.  Running to and fro to catch the ball meant dodging about masses of dog shit.  “Ahhhhh” would be a great cry with laughter following when someone slipped in the shit or ball landed in it.

The neighbour next over was a pilot. He’d been in the RCAF too. Dad and he had many a back lane conversation. He hunted ducks as did Dad. The mothers didn’t get along, friendly but nothing in common.  She was more a socialite and had two beautiful daughters she dolted on.  Mom had sons. When I was older but still not older enough to date I’d love to watch the neighbour  daughters all gussied up going on a their dates.  The neighbour’s daughters were hotties by today’s standard’s. The Guess Who would come by in a large white boat like convertible with lots of shouting and laughter.  The girls would out to jump in. Only a few years before these same three beauties had been slipping in dog shit with the rest of us.  

When years later the Monkeys came on television, a show about a band with guys mostly dancing and chasing girls, I’d grown up beside that scene vicariously living it with the neighbour girls who were the favourites of rock stars.  The Guess Who were just one of the bands that came by to pick up one of the three girls in the two houses next to us. Our immediate neighbour sexiest and the most fun with the two daughters of the pilot and his wife, more aloof sophisticated and stunning.  I watched them as a pre teen and dreamed.

The next house over was the judge. He was a drunk.  He and his wife didn’t have any children we knew of.  My greatest memory of him was his driving braille home Friday nights.  A weekly binger, most likely a black out. I remember more than one Saturday morning with a shouting match between him and someone’s whose car had been mauled by his passage. Dad and the other neighbours didn’t park on the front street on Fridays. The victims were mostly visitting th Badminton Club. 

“I never hit your car!” The red nosed judge would be shouting.

The other fellow would be saying,”It’s your car’s paint on my door.”  

“You’ll have to prove that in court,” the judge would say

Other’s knew better than to argue with the judge.  He had a fiery temper. His wife was a quiet mouse like creature who smiled weakly at us kids. Mom just said, “she has a hard life.”

The one time I remember my dad afraid was when I hit the baseball through the judges window. He took me over immediately after school,  

“Now apologize Billy,”

“I’m sorry sir for breaking the window.”

“Don’t worry Judge I’ll fix it myself and be sure it’s better than new. When could I do that for you?” My father grovelled.  I felt so bad I’d done this.  Dad took the window home and fixed it that night returning it later in the evening. 

The judge never gave me back my baseball.  He didn’t say anything but nodded.  

“That will be okay John.  Make sure your son learns his lesson.”

“Yes sir.”  He said as he dragged me home holding on to the sleeve of my shirt. I’d been spanked and then grounded for a week .

I think I got my first baseball glove when I was seven. I remember feeling and smelling the leather.  My brother already had his glove. We’d toss ball back and forth endlessly. Dad would join in weekends and holidays.  He was working installing Matthew Conveyor Systems in the city.  Blue prints would often be laid out on the kitchen table with Dad cursing the architects and engineers for sending parts that didnt fit or having to jury rig an extension around a wiring column which was conveniently left out of the blue print. As kids we did’t understand what he was saying but Mom would listen patiently and say, “you’re figure it out John, you always do.”  

Years later when I’d work for my Dad as a “millwright’s helper’ I’d hear all these greats stories about how smart my Dad was. He was in charge of hundreds of men on these large projects, always in coveralls, always hands on.  My brother was disappointed he never wore a suit at work. “He could have worn a suit and he should have, “ my brother maintained. Dad dint like suits except when he went out with Mom.“He always talks with pride about his boys,” we’d hear from others but he wasn’t one to praise us directly.  As a child,I just knew him as a man who came and went during the week, was really tired in the evening, often falling asleep after dinner and only able to play with us on the weekend.  On holidays camping and fishing he was the greatest father ever.  Adventures,  Stories.Laughter. 

I think we got Sonny that year. He was a liver coloured Springer Spaniel who loved my dad 100% and hung out with me because I was part of the pack. We were best of friends.  He comforted me a lot. Always keen to go on a walk or explore new places. A constant companion when Dad wasn’t around. I’d feed him and forget so Mom mostly cared for him. He loved Mom too.  He loved us all and was one of the family.  There were so many funny stories he was apart of over the years. Dad would later repeat these tales and we’d all laugh before he got half way started.  Stealing the drunken hunters game bag and bringing us a half dozen ducks. Diving in to catch the fish before we could get it into the boat.  Stealing mom’s home made apple pie.  He was a character, his own personality. When  I cried he sat close beside me.  Whenever I was jumping up and down he was jumping up and down with me.  A great hunting dog. A great family dog.  We all cried when he died so many years later.  We loved when Dad brought him home.

The Carters lived across the street.  Keith would become a friend in the YMCA going on to be an Olympic star. He competed in gymnastics as a Canadian champion and later on the Olympic team. His sisters were beautiful and one was a friend of my brother’s.  Keith figured in a lot of tales later but I didn’t really know him till I joined the YMCA.  Though he lived a few doors down and we went to the same school, it was only in the gym we all became friends.  

Kirk lived in the house across the back lane.  I think their street was Somerset.  Lyons street headed up the road running parallel to the river. Bill Giles, son of the famous and hilarious cartoonist lived up the street, his daughter a friend of my brother’s. Bill and I would become friends years later in Vancouver.  Garth whose father was a commercial pilot lived across Lyon street one over from Kirk.

Kirk’s immediate neighbours were the ‘maiden aunts’.  We’d later learn they were probably Lesbian.  The women’s voices usuaully became a whisper when they spoke of the two who kept much to themselves.  Further along Kirk’s street was the veterinarian. I can’t be sure about this. They had Siamese cats which were so exotic and their son became a doctor ahead of me. A studious quiet boy who’d later be a dissapointment when he left clinical medicine and the university to become a bureaucrat.  I’d always thought he’d be a scientist as he’d pass our house loaded down with books, always reading and talking about science. 

The Red River was there.  It began behind the badminton courts. Our lane ended there and the trail that ran through the woods along the river began.  As boys Kirk and Garth and I roamed up and down that trail.  We’d find golf balls from the golf course. We’d throw rocks in the river. We’d watch ducks and geese go by. We’d make spears and throw those. We’d walk all the way over to Wildwood where the Private Boys School was. It was a hike for us little tykes and of course our parents didn’t know we would go that far away. We weren’t supposed to play by the river.  

Once I looked up and a bob cat was in the tree overhanging the river trail. I stared at him eye to eye. He was  not more than three feet above my face before backing away. Dad had taught us young never to turn our back on wild animals.  He hissed. I backed away.  When I got home I told my parents about the bobcat as a curiosity. Mom phoned the police. There was a search but he wasn’t found. They did find the tracks so no one thought I made up the story. Mostly in those days adults thought all stories us kids told that were unusual were probably made up.  Obviously some were. Kids have a great fantasy life. I’d see the bobcat a couple of times after that but never so close.

Alaska joined the US that year. Fidel Castro and Che Quevara entered Havana Cuba.  The Soviets recognized Cuba.  De Gaulle was inaugurated president of French Fifth Republic. Musicians Buddy Holly,  Ritchie Valens and Gyles Perry died in a plane crash, ‘the day the music died.”.

 The Canadian government cancelled the Avro Interceptor jet contract.  Miles Davis recorded Kind of Blues. The Marx Brothers appeared on television. Martel put out its first Barbie doll. The Dalia Lama escaped to India from Tibet where the barbaric Chinese Imperialists were continuing to enslave,rape and murder.  Queen Elizabeth II and President Eisenhower opened the St. Lawrence Seaway.Two monkeys were launched into space from Cape Canaveral and recovered on return.  Lewis and Mary  Leakey found the first skull of Austhrolipicus in the Oldavai Gorge of Tanzania. Explorer 6 sent the first picture of earth from space. Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone premiered on TV.  In New York the Guggenheim Museum designed by Frank Lloyd Wright opened. Luna 2 crashedon the moon. Rwanda “winds of destruction” begins. Martial law was declared in Laos.  MGM released Ben Hur with Carleton Heston. The Daytona International Speedway was completed.  Erving Goffman, sociologist, published the ‘The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life.”  Panty hose, or sheer tights were first sold.  Steven Harper, later Canadian Prime Minister was born. Sheena Easton Scottish singer wasborn.  Hugh Laurie, British Actor and Kevin Spacey American Actor were born. Bryan Adams, Canadian rock star was born  Cecile de Mille,American Film Director died. Raymond Chandler, novelist, died. Ethel Barrymore, actress and Errol Flynn, Australian actor died.  Billie Halliday, American singer, died. 

Age 6 and Viscount Alexander School, Fort Garry

I attended Viscount Alexander School, Fort Garry from Gr 1 to Gr. 9.  It’s funny looking back now but I had to be accompanied that first day of school by my brother. I was afraid and yet excited to be going to school. It was only a block and a half away but as a little 6 years old kid that was miles.  Our world in those days revolved around an area a few blocks from my home. Outside of that vaguely defined perimeter ‘that be dragons!’.

I remember the Gr. 1 teacher being very pretty and kind. At one point she leaned over my little desk and to this day I remember her perfect freckled breasts.  I was entranced and called  her ‘Mommy” to the delight of all the other kids.  

Children ‘shamed’ each other with laughter and teasing into more ‘adult’ behaviour.  The whole politically correct, use a wrecking ball instead of fingers when ever possible, movement truly misses the point.  It’s emphasis on anti bullying, and the fallacy of the ‘ends against the middle, results in  protecting children from needed social education.   Most respond as I did to a ‘nudge’.  I never called another teacher ‘mommy’, that’s for sure. Now I’m sad as I don’t remember my Gr. 1 teacher’s name and she truly was a delight. All I wanted to do was please her because she was so sweet.  All us children loved her. Was she Mrs. Murray?

We all had ‘home rooms’.  There were several Gr 1 classrooms with kids having their own home rooms.  It was a big enough school, maybe capable of having 300 students. I know the later high school, Vincent Massey, had a thousand students.  I expect there was this many students because Vincent Massey was funnelled students from three or four other elementary and junior high schools.  

I liked to read. See Dick Run books were great then.  I loved learning the alphabet and writing letters.  I liked art and crafts. I liked recess best. We played “Red Rover Red Rover I call Billy over” . The student called would run to the other line breaking free of his own.  We played lots of tag and proto soccer. Proto soccer is kicking a ball around without rules or any other aspect of the game. In summer however we’d always have a baseball game going.  Baseball was big in Fort Gary in the late 50’s.  There was also lots of playing outside and milling about. Recess was a lot of milling about. The girls milled about most where as us guys ran around screaming like banshees a lot. In winter at recess if it wasn’t too cold that we had to stay inside we’d all mostly walk about and mill about looking at our our hot breath forming clouds in the cold air.

Kirk was my constant companion but there were lots of us kids who formed alliances for a year or two then drifted a part. Playing on sports teams would define a lot of our friendship patterns.  There was a lot of sports at Viscount Alexander but lots of other clubs as well. The science club guys made friendships like I did later with the kids who were on the Volleyball Team.

There was intramural indoor sports where we played one class against another class in the gym, usually at noon hour. Then there were school teams that played against other schools in the city championships and going onto provincial and national championship.

Murder Ball was my favourite game in the gym. It was the most fun with brawls and lots of shoving and running for the boys. It’s since been outlawed in  school. 

Volleyball became really important in Junior High , grade 7 to 9, for us. Kirk really liked volleyball and would drag me out to play with him in the back lane. Then we’d “try out’ for the team and we got accepted .That began years of volleyball competitions.

Wesley and I got on the Student Council so were involved in student politics and petitioning the ‘administration’ for changes.  But that was all later.

Gr. 1 to Gr 5 was pretty routine. I remember getting the strap from the  gr 2 and grade 3 teachers . Not just once but more than once. Because they were primitive  sadistic barbarians didn’t stop me liking them a lot. Most of the adults were primitive sadistic barbarians when I was growing up so as kids we just tried to stay out of their reach.  Mostly I figured too that I deserved what punishment I got because mostly I wasn’t paying attention because something else was more interesting..  

I remember the day the classroom strap was removed with great relief. The  ‘strap’ had hung on the wall like a cat o nine tails.  I was ceremonially  removed by the principal to the chagrin of the teachers.   Then only the school principal could give the strap.  It was a good day for me.  I’d then get the strap from the principal. This meant leaving the classroom and walking down the hall to his office.   He hit a whole lot harder but now it was less frequent. It was in his office behind closed doors. Discrete. Not a public spectacle.  Before it had been standing at the front of the class holding back tears as the teacher’s strap stung my palm.  I only remember once getting the strap from the principal, maybe twice.  I got it from the teachers three or four times. 

I also remember that several of the women would  gather and consult each other on new  ‘punishments’ for Billy.  I once stood outside the classroom with books on my head and holding books up with my hands and they’d pile more and more on watching me. The women teachers stood around together marvelling at my stubbornness and ability to take it.  They were less angry than curious and cat like torturing a mouse.  Eventually lunch hour saved me I’d lasted 30 minutes sweating and shaking.  

Most of my trouble was fighting another guy.  He and I just seemed to get at it whenever we played games.  Others goaded us. He was taller and tougher but I was Wiley and more sophisticated in my fighting. We wrestled with little hitting back in that Grade 1 to grade 5 time. Always at recess.  I remember in the snow rolling and flipping and being flipped half the length of the field with all the school out watching us day after day.  The male teachers would be running along shouting at us but not willing to get in the middle of us.   We were equally matched. Neither of us ever ‘won’ but we’d both get the strap from the teacher and later the principal for fighting.

I’d later learn that he was the youngest like me but whereas I had one 4 year older brother I tossled with he had something like a dozen.  They lived on the ‘other side of the tracks’. He and I became friends enough later that he showed me his house.  It was smaller than our own but with 12 children rather than 2 under the roof. I couldn’t imagine how that may people lived in that little space. .  He said he was always fighting with his older brothers.  I felt so badly because when he came to school at recess, instead of getting a break, he ended up fighting with me and getting the strap.  I’d never thought of him as a kid with a story. He was just another combatant .  I was going to win or survive or take you out with me..  I always liked and admired him too.  I don’t know what happened to him but I always thought he was a good guy.

I was just explaining to a woman friend that guys roughhouse and fight and then often become lifelong friends. With girls she explained that wasn’t normal but rather that they held resentments and got back at the other years later.  As guys we fight and rarely in my experience did we hold onto long resentments.  We didn’t like guys who did ‘dirty’ things but if it was a ‘fair’ fight, if any fight is fair, we accepted the outcome.  We also fought with our best friends. Kirk and I roughhoused as did our brothers and us.  We knew too when to call ‘uncle’ to finish the fight. It was years later when we were older that the damaged swarmed and then put the boots to the guy down, curbed or knifed or shot him.

We weren’t like that. All through childhood it was like a bunch of cowboys and we fought honourably.   I remember that about Viscount Alexander those first few years.  Elementary School.  Junior high was a whole different world.  Gr. 6 was the turning point too.  We were children and as children it was a pretty good time.

Except the Kennedy Missile Crisis.  I remember us being taught to get down on our knees inside beside the walls of the schools and literally kiss our ass good bye when the alarms sounded.  Winnipeg was in the flight path to the major American missile silos across the border.  The whole city had sirens and drills.  I remember this most because when this lady teacher told us to do this I asked ‘but what about radiation”.  This caused her to spin around with her face in her hands and run out of the room on her high heels. The big double breasted suited principal came back holding her by the shoulder beside him as she continued to weep.  In front of the class, he said , “Billy, stop upsetting the teacher. Just do as you’re told.”  It wasn’t like the first time I’d heard that.

Kirk and I had discussed radiation at length. His father was a chemist and mine an engineer and our neighbour had been a fighter pilot. As kids we listened in on their conversations outside in the back lane.  We looked things up at the library too. We sure upset a whole lot of folk asking them about radiation. It was like it was beyond their comprehension yet they’d known gas in the war and that was as close as they could get to considering it.  It turned out that our parents talked to the school then and Kirk and I had special dispensation to run home if the alarm went off rather than kissing our ass good bye beside a school wall. We lived only a block away.  

That was a really big event in my elementary school year.

The only other event of note was when Rusty someone’s big dog humped one of the girls and came on her.  She squealed and we all backed away seeing the gooey white substance on her pretty blue dress.  We collectively went  ‘ooooooo’.  Of course the girl cried because of the wet spill on her pretty dress and a teacher took her home.  Rusty was banished from the school yard. Naturally we blamed the girl and missed Rusty who everyone knew tried to hump everything and you just had to push him away before he got too excited.    

Age 6 and North Drive

The house was in Fort Garry. She had two adorable British Bulldogs.  I remember this little old lady dressed in a blue wool suit talking with mom and dad while I was most interested in these pair of dogs. I was down on my knees at their level letting them lick my face.  My brother Ron was standing back observing, waiting.

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. 

Jim Donahue, folk singer and friend

Jim Donahue died recently. I remember first hearing him play guitar, a Gandalf like character, with the good magic of Tolkien. It was the deep muffled strum that caught my attention, so powerful and regular that it sounded like eternity’s  freight train . He played a few chords with that magnificent strum and may as well have had a symphony to accompany his deep melodious voice.
Then one night I heard him play a classical guitar piece, one of the classics,   it might have been Handel. It was so  amazing to hear that wondrously intricate heavenly sound watching adept fingers span the whole neck of the guitar. This was years before the ‘unplugged’ era.  It was the time of electric rock and roll ‘lead’ guitar rifts, the most famous being Jimmy Hendrix’s. Yet every once in a while Jim would break off from his  set of Dylan, Guthrie, Seeger type songs and throw in a ‘lead’ that would have pleased the Edge.
He was so inspired.  Mystical and spiritual.  A modern day Hurdy Gurdy man.  He was also a guildsman musician, an old master of his craft, his instrument and voice.  He was a true artist who’d be at home with the Travelling Wilburys, Yehudi Menuhin and Ravi Shankar. There was a humility about him too. And wisdom. He’d tell stories between songs, Zen, Socratic, Apostolic.
I had helped organize the YWCA “Wise Eye Coffeehouse” at the time.  The going rate for a  singer was $10 a set and the best like Jim , the real draw for a night, might get as much as a $100.  I doubt Neil Young who was playing the same circuit at that time got more.  The coffee houses didn’t serve booze.   Booze was where the owners made their money to pay the talent better. I MC’d the coffeehouse and hired the sets mixing and matching entertainment. Like the night Downchild Blues and Jim played together and the building rocked.
Around the same time I was on Vincent Massey’s High School Student Council with Wes Hazlitt. Carey Asselstine and I were in charge of publicity and entertainment.   We hired the Guess Who that year for our high school dance for $500, a tad before Burton Cummings and Randy Bachman made their millions.
Jim had been in Toronto in the late 60’s. His name was on coffeehouse billboards, in varying orders with Joni Mitchell and Gordon Lightfoot.  I asked him once why he’d not made the big record deal contracts.  I knew he’d had the offers.  “The record companies are just business.” He told me.  “It’s all about the money. They didn’t want the musician as much as they wanted his soul. ”  
Jim was a free spirit.  Creative and unfettered. He really would rather be poor as he often was than be contained in some gilded cage or limosine. Not that he wasn’t occasionally caught like the elusive butterfly he was. More than once a truly lovely young lady captured his heart and brought him in from the wild, befriending and mothering him till the inevitable day he left to follow his muse.    He spoke so gently of his mother and his loving creative sister was his very good friend.
I laughed later when his brilliant younger musician brother, Dan Donahue, after making his own perfect record ‘Long Distance Runner” stopped selling his soul to the company store. Instead he began to produce with a sense of what Abbey Road Studio and George Martin did for the Beatles. I loved his contribution to the incredible Bruce Coburn. The Donahues celebrated originality rather than the ‘as like’ factory approach that Joni Mitchell called ‘stoking the fan making machinery behind the popular song.’
Music in that day was about ‘raising consciousness’ ,”finding meaning”, ‘knowing”. The Vietnam War was threatening to become WWIII.  There was an intensity in art.  Visual art had dominated the world in an earlier age with Picasso, Dali and Munch  but this was the era of music with Jim Donahue a regular monk of the day.  So often he’d close a set with the Quaker song, “May the Long Time Sunshine Always Surround you and the Pure Light within you guide your way home.”
We didn’t have contemporary sheet music in the early days and songs were passed along word of mouth or someone would listen to the radio and try to write out the lyrics each time a song was played. Without Jim Donahue I expect it would have been years before Winnipeggers heard the likes of Leonard Cohen’s Bird on a Wire  or Dylan’s “All Along the Watch Tower’.  The kids call it ‘playing covers’ today. But Jim was a wandering minstrel of the day literally introducing us to songs and musicians and ideas that simply weren’t mainstream.  He was so much ahead of his times.
He stayed with me for months one year. It was a particularly tough time in his life and mine.  He’d put aside alcohol after a betrayal and  binge. He was smoking marijuana instead. I’d been injured in a major accident and separated. Late into the night we’d talk philosophy, politics and theology with our visiting genius Jewish friend. I had an East Indian Harmonium.  There was a blizzard raging outside in the Winnipeg winter while Jim like George Harrison filled the space with chants from every tradition.
It was years later we’d meet up again in Vancouver. We’d go for lunch and talk about the ‘times’ mostly.  I loved to hear his tales, He really was a Seanchai, that traditional Gaelic storyteller/historian whose insights are so deeply intuitive.
I will miss him as so many tens of thousands will.  Before Facebook and Instagram and social media he was the “unplugged”  man who had a million hits.

The Canucks beat the Predators and Hockey Night in Canada

The Canucks were awesome.  A little slow in the first period.  Like boxers dancing about each other rather than actually playing hockey.  The game picked up  in the second period, better plays and more aggressive action but still more a dance than real hockey.   The third period  was worth the wait. That's when the game exploded.
The Predators were by no means slouches. All kinds of good hockey.  Great stick play.  So good, sticks were periodically bursting.   Amazing goal tending by Lack.  Lots of dropped pucks by both teams. The first two periods Canucks seemed to be just shooting in the direction of the goal while the Predators were actually getting more real shots on goal.  Lack took one bullet right in the middle of his chest.
I’d got two tickets for the game at the Simon Frazer Robbie Burns Dinner, a fund raiser for the incredible Simon Frazer Pipe Band. It was terrific that the Canucks donated the tickets to that worthy event. I was glad to support Simon Frazer in the Silent Auction while winning a couple of hockey tickets to the greatest hockey team in the world.
Who to bring along?  My Aim Simpeng, the gorgeous Thai PHD political genius had just married Marc Beaudry, the French Canadian businessmen extraordinaire.  Aim must surely be hockey deficient whereas what French Canadian doesn’t love hockey? So I got another ticket and we made it a night.
Marc had indeed played goalie since three and only hung up his skates last year.  Thailand meanwhile is not known for their hockey league.  I told Aim that if the Jamaicans could have a bobsled team there was a possibility Thailand could sport a hockey team.  Being Buddhist wasn't sure it would catch on like soccer has.  Both Marc and I almost shouted her down when she said she wouldn’t want her children playing hockey because it’s so dangerous.  Aim, we're in Canada. Really!
Jim Byrnes was truly amazing. He has the most magnificent voice. Hearing him sing blues and rock I never fully appreciated it until tonight.  Hearing him sing the American Anthem and O Canada sent shivers up my spine.
The opening of this hockey game tonight was more like a rock concert than the old Don Cherry event we grew up on.
When the game began I was instantly nostalgically transported to the Laidlaws backyard in Fort Garry Manitoba. Each winter, Mr. Laidlaw ran water from the garden hose into the boarded areas where he raised his summer corn.   Then all winter Kirk and I , starting age 5 years old  when we became friend, along with all the other kids of our little neighbourhood would skate on that home made back yard rink.
When the his sisters and their girlfriends were skating we could only skate too. Girls didn't play hockey back then. They twirled a lot and stuff but they didn't play hockey.   When the girls weren't around the sticks and pucks came out.  We all had skates.   Sticks for kids in early days were kind of crutches we could scuff at the puck with at risk of falling. We were pretty low to the ground already with our feet splayed out and knees almost on the rink.
 We all loved NHL Hockey Night in Canada. First we  listened to it on the radio then when we got tbs we all sat around as families watching it.  So even if we didn't really look like much on the ice and fell a lot in our minds eyes as kids we were Rocket Richards.  There was even a Bill Hay on the Chicago Blackhawks so I must skate like him since we shared our name.  We had a lot of imagination as kids.  By the time I gave up hockey as a teen,   I could skate backwards and shoot the puck at the net but still  couldn’t stop too good going forward or backwards.
The games when I was 10 to 12 were the best of all. We’d graduated to the community club league and I think I had shin pads and a cup and gloves.  I explained to Aim that hockey gear was something that you collected over a lifetime back then.  My dad never tired of telling my brother and he how they'd rolled up newspapers for knee pads when they were playing hockey as kids north of Swan River. Every Christmas was special because we might get a coveted piece of sports gear along with the perennial pyjamas and socks.
My brother had a Montreal Canadian sweater and I had a Toronto Maple Leafs sweater but because the gear was mostly second hand, the socks I got were blackhawks which was okay because of Bill Hay.  All the kids has a pot pourri of teams. I don't remember anyone having a complete outfit from one hockey team. I didn’t even play hockey long enough to get shoulder pads or shorts.  As a kid I played in jeans and a parka with that Maple Leaf Sweater over it.  The hockey sweaters socks and everything were always bought so we'd grow into sometime when we were adults.
There was no indoor rink either.
Mom would walk my brother and I through the deep snow drifts and dark of night to the Fort Garry Community Club Rink.  She’d pack Wagon Wheels for the trip home. Even now I tear to think of her love and those Wagon Wheels.  In the club house there’d be a wood stove.  We’d put on our skate there in the deathly cold. All us kids got frost bite some time too.  I remember mom warming my toes by the fire one really bad winter when the game was finally called because too many of us kids were crying with a skates off trying to get our feet warm around that wood stove.
Some dad volunteered as a coach for each team of little boys.  Boris Tyzek’s Dad and my Mom were often the only parents out on the coldest nights. Dad was often away working.  Boris went onto a Rhodes Scholar and outstanding Lawyer whereas I, against all odds, became a physician.  I think his dad and my mom cheering for us kids on those  40 below zero nights, at their kids hockey games  made all the difference.
Then too my older brother, Ron, was always there.  He was a real athlete. He could skate circles around us kids and actually stop without falling down first. The stars in those Winnipeg skies were never brighter walking home through those great snow drifts eating those wagon wheels mom brought.
Hockey was everything back then.  The last I played hockey was an Oldtimers Country League a quarter century ago. I was a country doctor by then.  I’ve skated since but haven’t had a stick in my hand that I can remember since.  I don't know where the time went. If you asked us kids back then we'd have told you we'd never give up playing hockey. It was everything a Canadian boy lived for.
When we were kids,  the Red River froze some years.  Then we played hockey for miles on that river skating like the wind and passing the puck back and forth forever.  I think of that year when I hear Vancouver's Sarah MacLaughlan singing so beautifully the Saskatchewan Joni Mitchell prairie Canada song, "I wish I had a river I could skate away on."
Somethings are truly Canadian.
The Samborni Machines cleaned  the ice tonight. I love Samborni machines.   The pretty cheerleader girls and handsome boys carrying shovels rather than batons between periods added to the whole experience.  Given the cold when I was growing up outdoor hockey never had cheer leaders. As kids we sometimes cleared 4 feet of snow off the ice at the rink just to play hockey.
The Canucks are everything now. They’ve got the best of gear. Their sticks aren’t wood taped with electric tape but some sort of composite.  Their skates are some sort of Startrek greased lightening.  Humans couldn't skate that fast without some kind of extraterrestrial or supernatural help. They wear helmets and face guards, things which only the goalie wore when we were kids. Not all goalies.  Only the sissies.
The Canucks goalie Lack is from Sweden.  I like all the northerners on the Canucks team. I never forget that the greatest hockey game I saw was the Canadian Canadian Russian all star series.  After that ironically, the best hockey has been the Canadian women versus Americans.  Well, maybe not, there's nothing like a game with Goretsky on the ice. I've been blessed to see that and I thought his playing was near divine. The Canucks have come close too.  They will again.  Our old standby Luongo is gone but Lack was magnificent tonight.  Gilbert, my cockapoo, still wore his Canucks jersey even if he couldn't attend the game.
When Jensen scored the first goal, that was it. A groundswell of applause. Everyone standing and shouting. I’m hoarse. Really hoarse. The stadium roared. But it got even louder when Edler scored the second in a power play. .  How it could have got any louder than when Jensen scored is beyond me, but it did.   All of us Canucks fans were clapping our hands and stamping our feet.
I’m sure the ghosts of my mom and Boris dad were there too. There sure were a lot of kids with their parents tonight.    I liked that.  Hockey is such a special sport.  It's all about family and Canada and growing up in ice and snow.  I liked that Aim, from Thailand, liked it.
"I used to love watching Marc play goalie,"
It was a grand night.  Thank you Canucks.  Thank you Jensen. Thank you Edler.

Dad - 2

Mom had the most beautiful auburn hair that cascaded to her shoulders.  She is standing beside dad in the photo taken on their wedding day.  It's a black and white picture with the Dad and his best man in their air force blues, and Mom and her bridesmaid in suits. I'm sure there's a picture somewhere of her in a wedding dress but it's that one of the young women and young men smiling in black and white that comes to mind..  The blue of Dad's uniform and the red of Mom's hair is  not captured in the black and white picture that despite that was so colourful with promise of future.
Mom and Dad met at a serviceman's dance in Toronto.  Mom was Baptist, with two sisters, Sarah and Hannah.  She was closest to Sarah aka  Sally. Aunt Sally would be very much an integral part of our family's life as the years rolled on.  Sarah was working as the executive assistant to the Canadian Ambassador in Washington DC while Mom was a secretary in Toronto.
There's a joke that goes, "Why don't Baptists make love standing up?  Because they're afraid it might lead to dancing."  Despite or because of the taboo,  Mom and Dad fell in love on the dance floor and never stopped dancing or going to church.  Even in their 80's they would cut a fine figure on the dance floor, waltzing and fox trotting to the big band and country music of their era.
My Aunt Sally told me later that Dad and Mom were head over heals in love from the moment they met.  Dad was a fine country gentleman and Mom,  a true city lady.  When they married, they moved in with Mom's parents, to save money for a house.
Years later Dad would tell me, "Those were tough times, son.  All the men were mustering out of the forces and there just weren't enough jobs.  The men who hadn't gone into the service had the plum jobs and those of us who came out after the war had to take whatever we could find. Alot of good men were out of work and not too happy with the government either."
Dad did whatever he could for work until he got his position with Morris Crane Company. Somewhere along the line he'd got his  millwright papers,  along with some other 'tickets', always studying, and always excelling.   He'd complete his Engineering Diploma he'd started in the Air Force at night school in the early fifties.   My brother Ron, 4 years older than me came along not that long after the marriage.  I believe he was born when they were still living with mom's folks.  By the time they had me they had their own house,  though they kept a boarder upstairs to help pay for it.  Hannah married a dentist and had my cousin Ruth Anne.   Aunt Sally married a painter but never had children. The painter turned out to be a drunk and Aunt Sally separating to the horror of the church and community.  With the church and their friends, the girls had, their parents and the children, Dad had steady work  and fishing buddieshe liked.  Those early years were golden years to them both.
Dad spoke with pride of his work with the big cranes in those years.  Once when we were at Niagara Falls when he was in his 70's he'd tell me, "Morris Crane was hired to put a structure up over the falls one year.  I was asked if it could be done. I said it could even though I didn't know how at the time. That was quite a job, working over those falls with the big crane."   That's how we'd learn of things he'd done.  A nugget of his life would just drop like that when he was older.
When Mom died  and Dad was in his late 80's he shared with my brother and I that he'd been hang gliding with his cousin a few years before.  "Why didn't you ever tell us," we asked.  "I was afraid you tell your mother," he said and went on to tell about his motorcycle adventures in his late 70's and early 80's with the same cousin. Both the wives had thought the men were just getting together for coffee.
Mom and Dad were mostly modest people. They didn't think that anything they were doing was important or out of the ordinary. Big things were being done all over the country but the men who'd served for many years in the war were all just glad to be working together building a future.  Dad never saw his part as anything special.  Soon Mom would give up work and look after her babies.  That was all she'd wanted to do in those early years.  Canada was a country then where family really was important. Dad was proud when he said, "I made sure your mother didn't have to work unless she wanted to."  Mom never worked full time again but in later years worked part time as a journalist, glad she didn't have to leave her home to do her work.
As long back as I can remember Dad loved to fish.  In Ontario my earliest memories are Dad teaching me to catch sun fish off the dock.  The first dog  I remember was Sunny, an English Springer who'd be at Dad's side for all of my childhood.
I always thought my brother was my father's favourite because he was first and he was more useful. He was  able to keep up with Dad better and do things better. I remember clinging more to my Mom's skirts in those earliest years.  But then the memories shift to Mom staying in the house, tent or trailer and my brother, me and the dog ranging after dad on adventures and expeditions.  Fishing wasn't just casting a line off a shore. It was boats and motors and even with them it might involve further hikes and expeditions to higher more secluded lakes after motoring up rivers or crossing lakes.  In those summer fishing and hiking days with his sons,  Dad would have shorts and a white under shirt.  Maybe because of my height or the fact that it's no longer the fashion, I remember he wore garters that held up his socks.  When we got back home to Mom he'd always have something, a fish or two, wild berries, bull rushes or something. As kids we'd have our pocketsful of shells and shiny pebbles to show her too.  Sometimes we all brought flowers.  Mom and Dad would  hug and kiss.  Always Mom would l say something about 'as long as the boys are safe." Which made all the bear stories of those camping years even more poignant considering Dad's promises that everything would be okay. Then some big black bear with cubs would wander by and Dad would try as much to save face as to protect his family.
The family album shows pictures of a really happy family then. It's all I remember too. Those camping summers were the best starting as early as I can remember and going all the way into the early teen years.
When we were still in Toronto Dad moved from Morris Crane to Mathew Conveyor Company.  He said later it was because there was more room for advancement, higher pay, more opportunity.
Mathew Conveyors gave Dad work out west.  Winnipeg.  Dad had come from Manitoba and now when I was 5 years old we'd be moving back there as a family.  For Mom, being an  Eastern Canadian big city girl of Toronto, the news of going to hick town Winnipeg, leaving her mother and sisters, would be the same as being posted to the moon.  It would take her years to adapt to the change.  To here she'd left civilization.  In those days, Toronto was called, Toronto the good and Winnipeg, a western fronteir town was anything but good.  The fact remains that Winnipeg was and is the centre of Canada, a hub for communication and transportation, no longer just for the prairie "breadbasket of the world" but increasingly a cosmopolitan world of it's own.
We moved to Fort Rouge.  Mom joined Trinity Baptist Church like this was a life ring thrown to her by God.  Trinity Baptist Church for years to come would protect her from heathens, Indians,  westerners, Anglicans and Catholics. To my family Jews were fine, blacks were fine,  it was the papists who were most suspect.  I'm glad to say it didn't take many years before Mom's views mellowed with age. In their middle years Mom and Dad had friends of every walk of life, a judge for a friend and a collection of Asians whose food they both grew to love.  
In Fort Rouge, we had the whole second floor of a great old house which Mom hardly left those first months except to go to church down the street. Ron and I were enrolled in school on Osborne street, The school is no longer there but Osborne Village has become the funky centre of the city.  I remember school well because there was a huge shute we'd practice sliding down for fire drills. All us kids thought that was so cool we hoped for a fire just to be able to take that huge slide for real.
Mathew Conveyor Company had the contract for putting in all the conveyor belts that would move the mail about Winnipeg's new post office. I guess the job lasted a couple of years at least.  Later Dad would install the conveyor system for the new International Airport as well, Mathew Conveyors moving all the luggage to and from the jets.  I learned Dad was in charge of 150 men at a time in those days.  At home we'd hear how stupid the designers and architects were back east.  Dad was forever spreading out blue prints and cursing because machines were too big for the spaces alotted for them despite what the blue prints said.  He'd have to knock out walls or get new steel parts manufacturered locally to make up for the smozzle of the fanciful plans.  When he'd curse,  Mom would alwyas say, "Not in front of the kids."  This was when 'Darn' was the worst curse I heard Dad saying.  Ron and I were always hanging around Dad when ever we could, pretty much like a couple of puppies, getting in the way, or just watching in awe.  Dad was where the action was and we were always hoping to join in. As kids we really did appreciate what a great father we had, other kids not having Dad's that took them camping, fishing, or having homes where their parents were really there for them.
Years later as a teen ager, I'd get my millwright helpers papers so I could work one summer with Dad.  I'd work then with some of the men who'd worked on different projects with him over the previous decade.  It was something special for me, a teen ager, who was having his own troubles with his strict air force father, to learn, "Your Dad's the best man I've ever worked for."  "No boss like your Dad, kid".  "Alot of other guys in his position wear a suit and don't get their hands dirty but whenever there's something difficult needing being done, your Dad's right there first in his coveralls."  "Just don't swear around your old man. He doesn't go for that. Your Dad's a genius with machines.'
I was a thoroughly self centred little know-it- all teen ager so it was something else to work along side my father with dozens of men who looked up to and admired him.  I remember my brother telling me years later.  "The only time I remember Dad in suits was with mom at church.   I found out later that all the men with his seniority never wore coveralls whereas Dad pretty well lived in them."
One summer when he was doing a job in Saskatoon and I was 12, Mom sent me out to join him for a week or two.  That's when I saw a whole other side of him. The men he worked with would go riding after work so Dad took me along. Here he was with a bunch of cowboys and even some cowgirls all in their western element. We'd gallop all over that summer racing each other on horses. It's hard to imagine how I didn't know this but Dad could be a real wild cowboy with the best of them.  Here I was watching Bonanza and reading novels about cowboys and somehow I'd forgotten that here was Dad raised on horses and thoroughly at home in the saddle, all of us together forming a regular possee as we rode across the Saskatchewan farmlands.
We were only a couple of years in Winnipeg before it became pretty clear we were going to stay. Mathew's had put Dad in charge of their Western installations so over the next years he'd be doing major construction projects in Winnipeg, all over Manitoba, Saskatchewan and then as far west as Calgary.  Mom didn't like that he'd be away for weeks at a time then but when we moved to Fort Garry she settled into finally being a transplanted Eastern girl living in the wild west.  She loved her home and garden there with all her community club and school friends.  Reporting for the Fort Garry Lance newspaper she was into every aspect of the community, always up on anything that was happening till she was thoroughly and irrevocably immersed in Fort Garry affairs.  Once we were in school there I don't think she thought twice about Toronto. The first year or two there'd been doubt and indecision for her but then Winnipeg became her home. Dad loved his work and home there too.
I remember the day Dad bought 793 North Drive, Fort Garry. It was a red brick bungalo which had been owned by an elderly women with a couple of little British bulldogs.    It was a city block from Viscount Alexander Elementary and Junior High School, and maybe 4 blocks from Vincent Massey High school.  There was a community centre with outdoor hockey rink between us and the high school and the Red River, golf course and badminton club a block in the other direction.  A couple of blocks away was Pembina Highway, the main artery of the south side of the Winnipeg then, leading right out to the University where my brother would get his undergraduate degree. Dad was really proud of Ron getting that University Degree but he was happiest of all when Dad's son Graeme got his Engineering Degree decades later.
It was because the schools were the best closest to the university that Dad and Mom picked Fort Gary.   Dad put alot of emphasis on education.  My brother and I would end up doing a whole lot of university so I'd tell people I was a slow learning and had to have a whole lot of remedial education at University. Still, all I can remember Dad and Mom expecting of us was that we'd finish high school.  "I moved here so you boys would have the opportunity to go to good schools and I expect you to complete high school if you don't do anything else." Report cards and passing grades were really important in our family.  Ron usually got A's so he was a hard act to follow.  I don't know if my brother who was always the better student remember that message as strongly as I do but it was one of those things that probably helped me alot to get high school behind me despite being expelled and having to make up a course before I could go onto college. .
The big garden the house had was all for Mom.  Dad and Mom talked alot about growing things and us kids were incorporated into her plans each year for different crops but the garden was Mom's. There were three great spruce trees and a big back yard that Dad would build a massive two car garage on. He'd have a place for his truck and car.  As long as I could remember we always had an old pickup and a new car.  The car was mostly for taking Mom to church while the truck was for everything else.
The only thing the neighbourhood didn't have was a 'good' church .  Until I finished high school, Dad would drive Mom to the Trinity Baptist Church in Fort Rouge because Mom was Baptist No other Christian denomination would do. There was an Anglican, Catholic and Fort Garry United Church all a block from our house but Mom wouldn't have anything to do with them.    When as a young adult I returned to church at Fort Garry United where I taught Sunday School, Mom finally figured the United Church might have something if it could have influence on her heathen son.  Both Dad and Mom became members of Fort Garry United Church after that and for years enjoyed membership in that congregation.
Dad always went to church with Mom when we were young. The minister at Trinity Baptist was the haranguing sort, running on all about hell and damnation.  More often than not Dad would be nodding off. I remember squirming alot as a little boy. The best memories were when Aunt Sally joined us and the two sisters would  literally sing their lungs out.  Spring hats and gloves were a thing back then . But Sunday School was better as a kid..  Trinity Baptist had big suppers in the basement and fun picnics. Dad was really fond of the suppers and a whole lot of fun at a picnic.  He'd always participate and Mom who was shy could often been seen being tugged along by him to join in some game the minister and his wife proposed for the adults and children to play.  Murray Wade became Dad's good friend there.  Murray took  on the job of being in charge of the cubs and  boy scouts 'only if John's going to be there to help me with the outdoor stuff". Everyone knew Dad, with his northern origins, hunting and fishing, and time in the service was the 'outdoors man', who could be trusted.  So I've got memories of Boy Scout Snow Train and Boy Scout Camp with my Dad and Murray Wade, my brother and a whole lot of other boys whose fathers were mostly not involved as much in their lives as a few of the fathers, including Dad, were involved in ours.
Dad wasn't that much for sport except hockey.  He used to mock us kids for needing pads declaring "all we had when I was growing up was rolled up newspaper to protect our knees and shins." The best skating was the winter the Red River froze and we all skated forever. When I heard Sarah McLaughlin singing, Joni Mitchell's song, I wish I had a river, so I could skate away" I figured she must have been on the Red River when it froze solid and the wind blew the snow away for miles.  Dad took us toboganning on the banks of the river and even made me a wood bobsled that almost got my brother and I killed it went so fast.
Hockey Night in Canada on TV was as important to our house as anything I can remember.  We'd dress up in our hockey sweaters and the whole family would cheer for our respective teams. Mom would make pop corn. I remember Ed Sullivan too, as a favourite show of Dad's.
Dad  always watched the news on tv.  He  read the Winnipeg Free Press religiously, while Mom and Dad listened to CJOB every morning. They especially enjoyed "Beefs and Bouguets' when people would phone in and share what they liked or didn't like about Winnipeg  that day.
I remember Dad saying that "church people are good people but alot of them don't know how to do anything.  I had to fix the roof at Trinity Baptist and alot of the time they're good for a lot of talk but not for much else." In later years when I joined the Anglican church Mom and Dad did too simply because a local priest took an interest in them as old people, coming around to where they were staying and saving them the effort of getting out.
Church was important to Mom when we were young but became more important to Dad when he got older.  Gord Laidlaw and he would wax poetic in the back lane about all things philosophical and religious. The Anglican church manse was the house next door and Dad befriended the minister though Mom being "staunch" Baptist then shied from too close contact with his wife.
When we were older Dad told me he'd made friends with a catholic priest in the country too and they had lots of conversations together. Those were the years when Dad and I began duck hunting together. Lots of time driving around together in the truck with me a young man asking my father about all things.  Given how estranged we'd been when I was a teen ager I'd never have believed those fall conversations could have occurred. As many a young man has said, "My father grew up a whole lot when I got into my twenties.
When Dad was younger and anyone asked him about church or religion, he 'd always say, "I belong to the round church. That's so the devil can't catch me in the corners."
When we were young Dad joined the Fort Garry Game and Fish Association. That's where my brother and I got our first marksmanship awards with 22 long rifles. We also ate a whole lot of wild game there. Dad was also fond of the Fowl suppers the communities around Winnipeg would put on to celebrate harvest season in the falls. We'd climb in the car on a Saturday evening end up in some community hall or church out of town where there'd be wall to wall food prepared by the farmer's wives from their own farms. As boys we'd eat turkey and pumpkin pie till we could hardly walk while Mom and Dad enjoyed talking with all the folk about matters of farming and industry.
Hunting trips were Dad were a fine time for us boys and later I'd share more times hunting with Dad when I took up hunting again as a young man. I remember my friend Kirk sharing with friends years later how he'd go over to our house and a deer would be hanging from the rafters in the basement.  The year Dad shot a moose I remember eating so much moose meat I was trying to trade it for a peanut butter sandwich one lunch hour at school, something I'd never do today.  Dad shot that moose in winter, quartered it in the freezing cold and hauled it out for miles on a toboggan.  That and many hunting stories were told around our home.  Ron eventually went big game hunting with Dad but Mom only let me join my father and brother for the prairie chicken and duck hunting because she was fearful about her little boy getting shot during deer hunting season.  
Mom had her garden where she grew vegetables and gladiolas that won awards in the local horticultural show.  Ron really picked up her green thumb. I eventually got into raises cactus with some success. Dad built his garage and most of my childhood I remember handing sprockets and wrenches to my brother who either used them or handed them on to Dad who would be lying on his back  either under the truck or under the car.  It was never any surprise to me that when I finally got into Surgery all the surgeons sought me as an assistant. I'd been so well trained by my other brother and father from the age of 5 to 10 that I was a natch as a surgical assistant.
Dad fixed everything. If he couldn't fix a thing he'd build himself a new one. Where I'd in later years would read novels Dad's book shelves were full of 'how to" books.   And  long as I can remember every man in our neighbourhood all along the back lanes where the men congregated would come round to ask Dad for advice on their various home work projects. Our throw away generation hadn't come into being as yet.  Everyone was still making do and most spring, summer and fall weekends most of  the men would be working on their houses or or building something in their yards.  Dad put a space heater in the garage so he could work in there when it was downright cold. This was Winnipeg where a space heater didn't do much for getting rid of the chill but that didn't stop Dad from fixing changing the oil in his truck in the middle of winter if he had a mind to do that.
One summer he'd make a 16 foot boat from plywood and hard wood.  It sure was a sturdy thing.  "I didn't know it would be so heavy," he said when it was finished and my brother and I were helping him get it on a trailer for the first time.  When Dad made something it wad indestructible.  "Made to last" was a favourite saying in those days. Cementing the deck, the stairs and walk ways was another of Dad's bigger projects.
There were always projects going on around the house. He built an extra room in the front basement.  That was a heck of a big job especially trying to get around all the regulations that were coming in to employ people who couldn't do anything themselves but criticize other people's endeavours.  Dad couldn't put a door on the room he built or they'd raise his taxes so there was this room that passed as a 'bomb shelter' , served more for storage of mom's preserves than anything else, but had a curtain on because a door would have increased the tax. He couldn't put a window in it either or that would have affected some other regulation.  When such issues came up it was usually associated with my mom saying something like "Don't curse around your children".  Cursing for Dad was always something tame like "Dogoneit, Jean or 'heck' but that was always enough to bring on my mother's approbation.
Grandmother came to live with us in her old age. She had a bed in the sun room of the house. It was called the 'sun room' because there were windows all around the front and the sun shone in brightest there especially in winter months.  That's where Mom always had her typewriter and  Christmas cactus too.  When I got fish tanks for my siamese fighting fish thats' where they went too.     But first grand ma lived and died there, Dad taking care of her after her husband died in Toronto. She came out to live out her last years gnarled with arthritis cared for by Mom and Dad with her grandson's around to fetch things.  She died in the sun room passingly peacefully with her family around.  I was more curious than anything else with the old people. Mom's mom and Dad's dad were the oldest people I knew when we were little.
Dad's dad would come down most years late fall after the summer's ranch and farm harvest was done.  I remember he always drove one of those huge boats of a car which old men favoured. Alot of steel and guaranteed to survive any crash though the same couldn't be said for anything he would hit.  Usually one or two of Dad's brothers would come along with grandad and the whole lot would be put up in the house.  Sometimes cousins came as well.  These were serious family events with lots of food and adults talking and kids hanging back listening.  Grand dad would be there to see Dad.  He was glad to see his grandsons but mostly he wanted to talk to Dad.  They'd talk about cattle,  lumber prices and that sort of thing. Prime Minister John Diefenbaker figured into a lot of the conversations the men would have back then.  Diefenbacker being a western man, there was hope on the prairies that politically the country might get beyond Montreal and Toronto where all the money and politics in Canada seemed to get caught. Not much love for Quebec out west though Dad loved to join in the winter festivities of St. Boniface.
When my dad's favourite uncle arrived and played guitar singing like Johnny Cash those were good times too.   When Aunt Sally came it was mostly to see us boys and those were fun times indeed.  We didn't have family around in the city but several times a year someone would be visitting and staying over , the couch in the living room a roll away that converted to a bed.  After Grandma died her bed in the sun room would be another place for more to stay. And sometimes there would be sleeping bags on the floor. All the space of the house would be used up for sleeping room. Then card tables and folding chairs would be brought out to make up extra tables for meals.
Dad had made Mom a glass faced cabinet painted white that ran either side of the mantel piece over the electric fire place in the living room.  Mom had her fine china in that and maybe 2 or three times a year it would come out. Mostly when Aunt Sally or someone else in the family visitted.  On the mantel piece there was the wooden chiming clock which might get round up when guests came over.  A picture of Mom and dad when they were married, Dad in uniform, mom with that great head of hair and serenely happy face The  frame was one that dad had made. It was a little house shaped frame that hung between two 50 caliber shells he'd taken from a Spitfire that had crashed.
The heavy walnut gun cabinet that stood in the sun room was another cabinet Dad had built himself, with slots for several rifles to stand, a  glass door  and a drawer at the bottom to hold ammunition.  When the Kennedy Missile Crisis was on and we all figured the Russians were going to invade I'd have nightmares of soldiers on the lawn. That gun case comforted  me then because I always figured Dad with his 30 30 lever action and my older brother Ron with the bolt action 22 would be able to protect our home, my mom, the dog and me from the Russians if they ever invaded.
Those years of nuclear threat and fire drills in the schools with all us kids on our hands and knees ready to 'kiss our asses' good bye were terrible years.  But they were years of UFO's too. I remember a night all the men were on the back lane with binoculars looking at this cigar shaped light in the air that gave off spinning flying saucers that came down in the atmosphere and then returned to the mother ship all in the space of an hour.  Gord Laidlaw, Kirk's father, the University Alumni Chemist was there, with my Dad and Ed Yuzak, both Air Force, and then us kids. They were all convinced it was aliens because no one had seen anything like that.  "The Military doesn't have anything that moves like that." Ed said.  The saucers kind of flitted and when they rejoined the cigar shaped light that thing disappeared in a streak. "Nothing we know can go that fast." said Gord.
The next day similiar sightings had been made all over Winnipeg but the government was saying it was a freak weather phenomena. Being in the Air Force Dad took a keen interest in NASA. We all watched when there were rocket launches. No one was happy that the Russians had got into space first but we were sure glad when the US caught up.
When I was still a boy and Ron was not yet a teen Dad took Aunt Sally Mom and the two of us driving across the country.  He'd get two weeks vacation and it wasn't anything for him to drive to Vancouver or Toronto. We had a Morris Mini in the early years and later he'd have the American Motors Cars. He stayed with them because he had the tools for fixing them. He cursed when my brother brought home a European car to get help fixing it because it needed its own set of  metric tools.
It was Rambler with the fold down seat  that became a bed, that I remember most, followed by the Ambassador he was proudest of.  After he had the Ambassador car he bought Mom a mink coat and the two of them would drive about in that car like they'd finally arrived.  Ron and I were on our way out of the home by then, the child rearing part of Dad's life coming to a close. Not that it ever really ended  I certainly never stopped coming back and badgering the two of them for more parenting asking all manner of questions and getting my full share of answers to a host of adult questions.
Ron and Dad would do a lot over the years together just like Ron would do with his sons when they grew up.  I'd not say we were 'pals' when we were older but Dad and I certainly became friends.  He was of an era when men didn't open up much. So I think Mom was the only one who really got to know him really well.  She and his Canadian Veteran friends were the ones he was closest to. As we matured he began to realize with quite a struggle that we had become men and a whole new relationship developed among us.  For me it was with hunting and fishing, boating and travelling whereas with Ron it was around his family and houses.
When we were young Dad took us fishing and camping and that what we did as a family most every weekend. There was the centre poled pointy topped four man brown canvas tent when we were small. Two adults, 2 kids and a dog fit in that. Then there was the blue rectangular tent we grew into followed by the real cadillac of tents that mom liked, one with a mosquito net front room where she could put her folding picnic table. I remember her happy as a clam in that tent reading magazines in a folding camp chair safe from the mosquitoes while Dad and us boys took off in the motor boat to catch pickeral and pike or just explore the environs of Blue Lake or one of the other great outdoor spots of Manitoba.
When we asked Dad about having a cottage he'd say, "why have a cottage, you have a house, with a tent you can go anywhere."  And we did.
There was a short time that they had a tent trailer but then when we moved out of the house  they graduated into their first RV. Mom was really in heaven then and Dad could go anywhere. They joined Good Sam Club.  The RV was a Queen and they began touring all overCanada and  the northern and southern states spending summers travelling from campground to campground. In the winter every couple of years Dad would take mom on a cruise somewhere around the world.
"Your mother would love her cruises," he'd tell us in later years. "I'd just say, Jean, don't you think it's time for another cruise and she'd have all the brochures and atlases out and be planning weeks and months in advance."
Mom and Dad were never 'rich' and we always lived 'frugal'.  I had my brother's hand me down clothes and we lived by the sayings 'waste not want not' and 'save the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves."  But they invested shrewdly and Dad bought an Apartment Building he did all the maintenance on. After he retired from Mathew Conveyors he continued to work with his own building supply company that allowed him to travel to small towns all over Manitoba enjoying the socializing with country folk as much as anything else, working right up to his eighties when he wasn't off galavanting with mom or fishing from the canoe he got in later years with a 2 hp motor.
When I once as a teen ager, not my better years in retrospect, I compared our old Rambler with a neighbours flash new car, he said, "Bill, everything we have I own. Most of the neighbours here don't own anything. The bank owns it. I don't believe in buying things on credit unless I have to. So we're not going to get a new car just because you want one that's flashy."
There in lay a lot of the difference between my parents and me as a teen ager.  Mom would say,"We don't have to keep up with the Jones"  We never knew any Jones but as a teen ager I was mostly concerned with my image.  I got a job at a restaurant starting work as a bus boy at the Pancake House mostly so I could get the latest fashion in clothes. I got a portable phonograph too.  Dad liked to play country music. With my own phonograph I could play the Beatles and that 'goddawful Bob Dylan' I liked as a kid.  Dad thought Gordon Lightfoot was pretty good music but couldn't stand the rest of the 'junk' I listened too.  Fortunately for me my brother's taste in music, Elvis Presley, wasn't much better to my Dad's ears.  He liked Gene Autry and Johnnie Cash and my mom liked Gospel.  I regret today that my Dad after long days of work would come home to hear my music playing loudly and the fights of the teen years would be on.
When we were growing up the boys all had short hair and a trip to the barber was a regular bonding event that carried on till the Beattles and long hair came along.  Being a military man Dad never did get over my 'girlish' hair or all the girls I went out with.  Mom was equally dismayed by my penchant for girlfriends but as long as I kept up my grades they put up with me. My Aunt Sally was more more direct. She just said to my face one year. "You used to be such a nice boy and now you're impossible ".  I'd left the church where as my brother stayed.  Dad didn't know what to make of me.
To his credit Dad was there when I came home, welcoming me back after the months I'd been away, having 'moved out' in one of our fights. Home again 'as long as I acknolwedged it was his house and his rules."  That last year I lived at home after high school when I got my first regular job, I was home before midnight and there was no loud music to bother anyone else in the house after 12 pm.  For a year I'd thought my dad so unreasonable but when it came to being hungry and not having a place to stay I found his rules more than reasonable.
A few years later I'd begin to be his friend again.  Teen years can be a trial.  I'm ashamed to think of myself smoking in my dad's house with a whiskey drink from my pocket flask, one elbow on his mantel telling mom and dad about life like only the way a pretentious kid can.  My father deserves a medal in retrospect for not killing me then and there.  Mom and Dad didn't smoke and didn't drink and I didn't know everything there was about life when I was 18 years old either. I just thought I did.
Dad's 94 now and if you asked him, he'd probably say he's still learning. He was always that kind of man. Humble. Wise and Good to the core.  What his cowboy friends would call a 'straight shooter'.  He sure did love my Mom , his family, and his work.