12 years old: Bumper shines, IquanaBoy Scouts, YMCA

It seems my life began to be busier with Gr. 6.  The sleepy quality of Gr. 5 with it’s routine and study begin to change as we boys become more rambunctious.  When I think of 12 years old I think of hoppies and soaping the school windows.

Hoppies or “bumper shines”were ‘hopping on the backs of cars’. This was pre Uber.  As kids in Fort Garry we’d duck walk in the snow ,low down so the driver couldn’t see us, to a car stopped for a stop sign or light then grab onto the fender.  Sometimes when we were really daring we grabbed onto the rear door handle as we were walking past the stopped car. The driver would accelerate and we’d have a free ride skiing on the soles of our snow boots behind the moving vehicle.  This was a primary winter activity from Gr 6 to Gr. 10.  Frankly I don’t know why I stopped it. It really was fun especially with friends cheering or hopping on beside you.

In the burbs the car speed would be 30 or 40 km but when we hopped on the backs of buses on Pembina the bus would go at 60 km / hour. That was a thrill. The down side was when our boots hit gravel or a stretch of  the road was salted to cut down on the ice.  At that point my feet would simply stop moving while I’d begin to be dragged on my belly.  A lot of knees of jeans were torn that way especially on Pembina Highway.  I lied to my mom and said I fell down the stairs.  Several times.

One time I caught on the back of an unmarked police car. The young policeman  jumped out. The chase ensued. Only this young policeman was fast.  I was going over a fence when his boot connected with my butt.  I flew and landed head down into a snow drift. My friends had to help pull me out because I was trapped like a cork in a bottle.  

Mr. Jerry Fischer was the Gr. 6 teacher. He was for many of us the ‘To Sir With Love’ teacher character. He was a character. I remember waking him one fall on the way into school one morning.  He slept in or was passed out in his English sports car parked in front of the school unshaved and shirt tails out.  He also had a babe of a girlfriend. It was the beginning of mini skirt era.  As boys we were just beginning to notice such things.  He certainly was Kirk and my hero.  He brought plants and cages of various animals and fish into the classrooms.  It soon looked more like a jungle.  He was so enthusiastic about teaching. We, as kids, just got caught up in his passion for science mostly.  Biology became fascinating.  

I took the iguana home. On weekends someone took the iquana home.  It was sunny I was letting the iquana out of the cage on the grass. I had little cut bits of apple I was feeding this miniature green monster. Iquana were vegetarian.  Suddenly it keeled over and died. I truly believed that I’d killed it by not chopping his food up small enough.  I was mortified.  Inconsolable. My parents actually were angry with Mr. Fischer for letting the kids take an exotic beast home where it could die and a kid would cry all night.  No one thought I killed the iquana.  Certainly Mr. Fischer didn’t think that when I brought the dead iquana back to class in a shoe box.  The other kids did but none of the adults.  Really, he just died.  Keeled over with a bit of apple in his mouth.  I didn’t try to revive him. I didn’t know CPR or mouth to mouth when I was 12. I was simply horrified. But a couple of my classmates who loved the iquana like I did thought I killed it.  I insisted I didn’t. I felt so sad. I killed the iquana.  Didn’t chop it’s dinner up fine enough.  Today I don’t even think a valsalva maneuver would have helped.  Fate.

His revolutionary teaching ideas resulted in him being interviewed for the Winnipeg Free Press.  A picture was taken of him and the aquariums, I can’t remember if the iquana or some other creatures were in them but there was Kirk and me in the picture.  My mom cut the little clipping out and kept it.  She sent it to me years later. I put  it in a frame and kept it on my desk.  Biology and Mr. Fischer.

Thanks to his inspiration I got my first tropical fish tank that year. Soon I was even breeding Siamese fighting fish.  

I believe it was Gr. 6 that I joined the YMCA.  Kirk and I joined along with a number of other boys. Keith and Colin were members of the gym club. I might have been in the YMCA swimming but it was when I was 12 the the YMCA gymnastics club began to play an important part in my life. It just seemed that I went from playing hockey as a kid outside to spending all my time at the YMCA.

We took the Pembina Bus downtown and loved the walk through the Hudson Bay basement to come out on the street by the Y.  In the winter in cold Winnipeg as kids we travelled through stores, then scooted out onto the street then entered the next store, that way getting warm between exposures to the 40 below wind chill.  The wind on Portage was famous. The wind chill at Portage and Main record making.

This was when we came under the influence of Mr. Don McQuaig (sp).  The YMCA wasn’t just a gym. Young Men’s Christian Association.  I did all the levels of swimming there. In the summer I’d collected Red Cross swimming awards each year at the Fort Garry pool. So when I joined the Y I just repeated the tests and collected all my swimming awards there.  In free style swim we’d not wear clothing as boys but for the classes and tests we wore bathing suits.  There were codes of conduct and people trained there for the Olympics.

The YMCA Gymnastics Club was the thing.  We’d start with a mile run around the track that circled the gym just below the high ceiling.   After the run we’d do tumbling exercises and then take training in the different stations.  We had rings, low bar, vault, parallel bars, high bar. We learned all the somersaults and hand springs on the mats. On the wall there were pegs we’d try to develop our upper body strength with.  Pulling our bodies up and putting the pegs in the hole above. Colin Lount, Ron Brawn and Keith Carter walked the pegs up and down the board effortlessly. Meanwhile I was thankful if I could drag myself once to the top.

I’d left Boy Scouts because there was an older bully who picked on me. My 4 year older brother Ron stayed in Scouts.  He was the same age as the bully. The bully just smashed us younger kids with his fists.  

Dad had taken Kirk, Garth and I as kids and set up a rope ring in the basement. He bought us a couple of sets of boxing gloves. That was when we were 6 and bullies had bothered us in our first year of school. So there he was teaching us to box, us little uncoordinated kids, down in the basement with this rope around a part of the room and us learning to thrust and punch and dance with our feat. Little Rockie’s ahead of time. I don’t remember learning much boxing. Dad had boxed some in the Air Force. It didnt’ go on long but it stopped the bullying then.  When the older kids jumped us we punched back and that took the fun out of it for them.  

Most people don’t realize, especially girls, how often boys are bullied and how we learn to stand our ground and hit back.  I wrestled with this other kid in my class. Despite the silliness of girls we didn’t think it was bullying if kids were evenly matched. We knew about light weight and heavy weight. Girls didnt know anything and nobody fought with the girls because they were girls. Besides if a guy lost to a girl anytime he was a loser and if he beat a girl he was still a loser because he beat a girl. The girls had all the advantage in a fight. But we considered it bullying if two or more guys took on one guy or if an older bigger guy took on a little guy.  Older bigger gang guys were a problem. It was also bullying if the other guys came at you with weapons. So there I was in one of the best districts in the city and by Gr. 6 I’d been attacked three on one and 5 on one always by boys 2 or 3 years older.  Thanks to Dad my friends and I survived.  The main issue was the confidence.  If a kid showed weakness the bullies pounced. I avoided most fights by standing up to challenges and talking.  

Predators can’t afford to be hurt since they really don’t have a support network.  They’re looking for easy kills.  My dad taught me about wolves in the woods and people were the same. There’s really no ‘honor’ in war today because most soldiers only engage when they have a clear advantage. War is all about winning.  Weakness attracts war.  I still find it sad that so many people who know nothing and spent their lives protected or hiding still blab on about things they don't know anything about.

Gr. 6 Kirk found a Ju Jitsu book. That’s when our formal martial arts training began. We practiced on each other all one summer.  Tosses, throws, kicks.  Kirk was fascinated by the Eastern philosophy and we talked about that. At the YMCA there was an older fellow with a black belt and he coached us that fall and for years to come.. We took some wrestling there too. I was abysmal at wrestling. Flipped and pinned by the wrestling guys in seconds.  Lots of laughter at how easily I could be beaten by them on the mats by comparison to how it was next to impossible to get me off my feet. Billy Goat Gruff.

Billy Goat Gruff was the children’s name I got when I teased Liza Laidlaw, Kirk’s little sister. She was sharp as a whip. I called her Liza Lollypop and she came back with Billy Goat Gruff. The nick name stuck with little kids in the neighbourhood.  Liza now  a mother and maybe even a grandmother will always be Liza Lollypop.

My brother beat up the bully at the Boy Scouts . It was my first year as a scout. I ‘d graduated from cub scouts and had the big round hat I was so proud of when the bullying began. Ron told the guy to lay off. When he didn’t and Ron caught him boxing me outside the church he stepped in and punched the guy a half dozen fast ones putting that guy on his knees.   In those days of cowboy fighting there was none of the ‘curbing’ and head kicking that came later. Ron had won. The guy was supposed to have learned his lesson.  All should have been well. But he came after me again. Ron wasn’t there. I was beat up bad. He was a barefisted puncher and I took a lot of hits to the head, cut by his ring and just generally battered. My brother pounded him good in retaliation the next scout meeting. My brother was a quiet peaceful guy but a force to contend with when you were wrong and crossed him. But I’d just lost interest in Boy Scouts after that.  The bully left too after Ron was through with him but it had soured my scouting experience.  

God I was proud of my brother and thought he was the greatest guy in the world to protect me. He did it a few times in our lives.  Whatever faults a kid can find with an older brother they all go when he’s getting his ass whuppped, things aren’t looking really good , and his brother steps in to the rescue.  That was my brother Ron, a guy to be counted on. Everyone did. They always could.

I just complained that all the teachers who had had him before me would say what a great student my brother was and why couldn’t I apply myself. My report cards always read that Bill would do better if he applied myself.

I’d get A’s and B’s but this one semester I’d applied myself and got all A’s but one. My mother had said, in typical Mom  fashion, not how well I had done, but ‘why did you get that B?” So the next semester I really applied my self.  I got all B’s .  It really is hard to get all B’s. Like target practice shooting bull’s eyes’ ,a person can get lucky ,but the success is in the tightening of the spread. I worked at getting B’s for a year or two after that and then lapsed into my old pattern of mostly A’s and occasional B’s , getting straight B’s was harder than straight A’s.  That was the way my mind worked as a kid. I played weird games, only I knew the rules to.

The YMCA Leaders Corp picked up where the Boy Scouts left off. The men were trying to teach us kids values and standards and down right manly behaviour.  Looking back , it was all ethics.  Young Men’s Christian Association was about applied Christian values. William James. Pragmatism. No one talked about Jesus. We were just expected to live and behave like Christians.  

The fights continued in the locker room.  I was kicked naked by an older boy in the groin and lay in a fetal position for an eternity.  The kid was a teen ager and picked on us kids slapping us with wet towels, punching us and kicking us little guys. He was a little twisted too.  But myself and three friends ‘paid him back’. We had become good with wet towels and we all slapped him silly with wets one day in the shower. He’d bullied all of us but after that it stopped. We also came together as a group. He was one of the swimmers and we were the Gym Club. 

The higher ups would hear and put a stop to these things quick unless we’d settle it ourselves if we could. No one wanted to be a rat or a squealer. They were the lowest. Presumably someone talked to the kid too and no one wanted to be expelled from the Y.  Getting expelled from school meant no homework but we all loved the Y.  No fun in getting expelled from gym.

Keith Carter was amazing. He was great at everything.  His summersaults in the air were simply unbelievable.  Colin Lount had an injury as a kid, some polio or something like that, making his one leg marginally less functional. Without that he would have been perfect. He was so graceful. On the rings he’d lift himself up then stretch out into a perfect hand stand. Kirk had grace too. Each of us had a niche.  Ron Brawn our new friend had muscle and was amazing on the high bar.  Me, well I was the vaulter. I could run and vault where others wavered.  It took a lot of faith to launch ones self head first, fly through the air, and hope to catch the end of the long box before shooting your knees and feet through your arms to come out standing.  I was crazy.  

I also liked the parallel bars until the other competitor before the annual competition pulled my arm off the bar, when I was in a handstand,trying to make it look like an accident. He really was  hoping to injure me before the competition.  I fell and twisted coming down hard.  I had to go home. I’d injured my back that day. Till this day I still remember him slyly grinning. Then in the competition next day he was smugly confidantly looking over at me with that superior look psychopaths have.  I competed beat him despite  the pain.  He threatened me after. But I’d won that competition.  I’ve had recurrent back pain in the same spot under duress. It’s probably psychosomatic. Something to do with having your own team mate betray you just to win a competition. A regular Judas.  I didn’t understand this and didn’t have that quality. It’s actually rare. Sociopaths only a per cent or two of society and psychopaths an even much smaller fracture.  That competition was years later wasn’t when I was 12 but years later.

At age 12 the YMCA gym and swimming club was a favourite place. We’d go after school a couple of times a week and then spend most of Saturday’s there. Our mom’s would give us money for the bus and a little more.  We loved the thick chocolate smoothies that they had in the basement of the Bay going home on SaturdayS. That was the stop after we’d showered and swum and dressed . I was on the way to the Pembina bus stop.  There were usually 3 to 5 of us coming and goin to the Y.

The YMCA Leader’s Club was special. We had to show merit and pass and be interviewed with Don.  Kirk became his favourite. Don McQuaig was also one of those revolutionary leaders. A devoutly Christian man who went on to be the secretary of the World YMCA’s in Switzerland.  He really did encourage ethics and morality. he’d have these incredible discussions about life with us boys. We’d meet as a group, about 6 of us in his office and discuss life, the gym, leadership and teaching.   We’d get this pure unadulterated wisdom back.  An amazing influence. He was all about excellence.

8 years old and a childhood hockey star

8 years old. I was in Gr. 3 at Viscount Alexander School a city block from home.  The Fort Garry Community Club was another couple of blocks further than that. Maybe four blocks from our home. You can’t imagine how far that is when it’s freezing cold and you only 8 years old and are walking through chest high snow drifts, the adults step over hardly noticing.  You are bundled like the Michelin man in parkas and long underwear, snow pants and carry a hockey stick and really heavy skates.

Mom enrolled my brother and I in the Fort Garry Hockey League at a young age.  We all loved hockey.  I’d play in the leagues from age 7 to 12  before I moved on to other organized sports. We’d continue to play hockey in pick up games till late teens. Then again I’d play “old timer leagues” in my thirties. I think Canada and Hockey are like butter and bread.  The last time I was on skates was a decade ago for an LGBT Recovery  fund raiser event.  My friend Brian, the forester convinced me to come out.  Not surprisingly one of the gay fellows was a magnificent skater who had performed in the Ice Capades.  A lesbian girl was also semi pro.  The two of them stole the show.  Brian and I by comparison, now in our 50’s made tottering rounds of the rink proud that we’d not fallen over. I even skated backwards all the while these two young wonders were twirling and leaping like they were ballet dancers.  I never skated like that.

As a kid I needed my hockey stick as a crutch tripod to maintain my upright balance.  I was 16 when I was telling a girlfriend about my great hockey playing years.

“I”ve got movies,” my Dad surprised us.  He must have overhead us in the living room then was all a bustle to put up his screen and bring out the projector.  He loved an opportunity to show off the home movies. The girl was delighted.  I would soon be mortified.  

In my memory I’m Billy Hay of the Chicago Black Hawks. I’m Rocket Richard. I’m in the NHL. I’d played on the big rinks.  In my mind’s eye I was a star.  Our hockey games especially with the feats of Boris Tyzek, our local star, should have been on national tv.

Now my father provided ‘fact’.  I can understand why the postmodernist irrational emotional generation of today doesn’t subscribe to fact. I definitely preferred my memory and the story I had been telling to the visual evidence provided by father. There on the screen was me with at least one or two yards distance between his skates holding desperately to the hockey stick while slowly, ever so slowly, weaving backwards before the onslaught of a very slow moving Boris Tyzek, the terror of the Fort Garry rinks of the day.  Boris is bearing down on me while I’m eying him. A couple of slow moving dwarfs bundled to the max in oversized parkas, togues, scarves and mittens. You wouldn’t know it was Boris if you hadn’t been me and seen the steely terrifying eyes as he bore down on me preparing at any moment to deak about me and score on the goalie behind me.  There is the move. He goes one way. I go the other. Definitely a ‘ice snake’ grabbed my skate that day.   I fall over like a sated bunny.  Boris skated around me. He shoots! He scores.! It helped that the goalie was out of his net getting gum from another kid in the stands.  My girlfriend couldn’t help giggling. 

The film has raced on through several years of family events. Dad, being Scottish, cheap,  and not quite grasping the concept of moving pictures, having just switched from photography, used the movie camera like a prolonged snap shot. One film lasted a year and everyone’s birthday, vacations and the antics of the dog.  The clip of midget me on the ice falling over was probably one of his longest shots.

Most of our games occurred weeknights.  The play offs occurred on Saturday which was why dad was able to be there.

“Why can’t Dad come to our hockey games,” I’d whine to our mother. We’d go out, Mom, Ron and I leaving Dad and the dog at home.  “He works all day so we can have a house and you can have skates and play hockey. Don’t you ever criticize your father. He loves you very much. He just can’t be at home all the time because he’s working very hard to make money to pay for all the things you kids just take for granted.”

There was never a time when I was growing up that each of my parents didn’t defend and promote the other. They were an unassailable wall that stood against the kids.  Even as a teen when I was trying to stay out later by asking one then the other what time I had to be home, they’d ask ‘what did your mother, or what did your father say’ then agree.  I tried.  God knows I tried but I could never get a wedge between them so I could be in charge and dominate the parents.  They were indomitable.

In the dark of the Winnipeg winter nights with snow falling and wind chill making the temperatures 20 degrees below zero we’d trudge to the Fort Gary Community Club. If it was 40 below the game would be called off.   Then the rink was outdoors but there was a shack with a wood stove. It was hot in that shack. We’d put on our skates there. I’d need mom’s help.  We’d play and then my brother’s team would play or vice versa.  There may have been two rinks too.  I remember watching my brother play hockey and thinking he was the greatest because he really could skate and stick handle. At 8 these were still developing skills for me.  Staying upright on skates and walking to the rink, then stepping over the wood edge onto the rink, that was an accomplishment. Not alone many a kid at my age including myself wiped out as we passed through the gate onto the rink.  Ice snakes waited to trip you up there.

The coach, who usually did double time as the referee,  would then gather the 12 of us kids together and disperse us around the rink in approximately the right places before he’d drop the puck and blow the whistle. This was the cue for several us us, usually myself included, falling down.  Getting up again in skates and wrapped in parkas was a challenge that might take long enough for the 3 or 4 upright kids to skate around a bit and score.  Then we’d line up again in our designated spaces. I was right defence.  I got that place because I was one of the only kids who could skate backwards. My brother taught me and I thought that was so cool. 

In addition to the games we’d go to the rink on the weekends and have free skating and pick up games. The girls were dancing about the rink then. They always could skate better than we could doing those twirls and not falling over.  We just prided ourselves as guys thinking they probably couldn’t handle the stick or deal with the speed and danger of the puck.  They sure could skate though.

Some years when the winds blew the snow away we’d skate for.miles on the Red River. That was the best, skating forever on a Saturday morning. 

At the weekday evening games there was almost always just the two coaches twelve kids and Boris Tyzek father and my mother.  Rarely another parent would stay. Mostly they’d drop their kids off from their cars and pick them up later.  Boris’s father was Ukrainian with a thick accent scream, “Go Boris. Go.” My mother Irish was screaming across the rink from him . “Go Billy Go.”  Years later I’d look back and know why Boris became the Rhodes Scholar and one of the most impressive men our my generation.  Boris went onto greatness and I stayed out of jail thanks to our parents being at those hockey games.

I don’t think the coaches and parents kept official times. Maybe for my brothers game when it occurred before ours. But not for us. We were on the rink and off the rink in 15 minute stretches. It was just too cold and we were all thoroughly exhausted from falling down and standing up in no time at all. The rink itself was an infinite expanse of ice and I was glad I was defence because I almost never had to skate more than half of it. The centres who were the best players skated the most and the goalie got cold quickest standing around. The kids whose parents bought him the most defensive gear got to be goalie by default. I loved when I got knee pads. My father used to brag , “In my day we just rolled up newspaper and wrapped it around our legs.”  I had a blue Toronto Maple Leaf Sweater I pulled on over my parka. My brother had a  red Montreal Canadians sweater. 

We would have quick intermission and I think our game must have only last three quarter of an hour to an hour. We were never gone from the house more than a couple of hours. I remember my feet always being so cold and crying at times when my mother helped me get my skates off by the fire.  Mom was helping other kids get their skates off and I wasn’t the only kid crying. Parents would arrive and pick up the kids while Mom and I and Ron would walk home through the snow drifts  down the back lane and across the expanse of the Viscount Alexander playground.

I was so tired slogging behind these two tall people, my perfect super man brother in the lead breaking trail. Mom would pull out a chocolate Wagon Wheel then.  I’d walk along in the dark trudging through the snow nibbling on that Chocolate Wagon Wheel held in my mittened fingers  following my mother and brother’s trail my stick in my other hand and my skates over my shoulder. Sometimes Mom would carry my skates for me.   I still cry remembering those nights knowing my mother was the greatest mother in the world and wondering why the other kids parents didn’t come to their sons hockey games like Boris’s dad and my mom did, night after night throughout the cold winters.

Often the sky was clear and Ron would point up at the Northern Lights or call out that there was a shooting star. I’d look up then from putting one foot after another in the trail and see there was more to the night than that ever so long and cold tired  trail home. . When we got home Mom would undress me and I’d go straight to bed.  I was never more tired as a kid.  The great Arctic expeditions to the Community Club, the powerful masterful unforgettable hockey games and the walk home nibbling on a Chocolate Wagon Wheel treat, sustained me for decades.  I cry now remembering my mother’s love. 

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.