Prohibition had been introduced into Ontario during the war and reigned until 1927. It did not reign supreme. âMedicinal alcohol,â which could be obtained with a doctorâs prescription, eased the thirst of many. Others drank the alcohol-based nostrums dispensed by doctors.
5 When George was puzzled as to what course to take, she would complain that she was in a terrible quarry, and when confused she would find herself all of a zither.
6 Geddes, the eldest, once stripped brother Jack to the buff, painted him all over with blue house paint, then shut him up in the back of a horse-drawn hearse which was parked in the street waiting to receive a neighbourâs corpse. Jack lost some skin and hair when the paint was removed with turpentine. He was probably lucky not to have died from lead poisoning.
Â
Â
5
Â
Â
IN MAY OF 1930 , A few days after my ninth birthday, Angus travelled to Windsor, Ontario, to be interviewed for the job of chief librarian. He made the journey with no great expectations. Canada was then reeling from the shock of the worst financial collapse in recorded history, which had shaken the industrialized world in the autumn of 1929. Following the Crash, the mood had become one of uncertainty, apprehension, and retrenchment. Those who had jobs thought themselves lucky and neither expected nor sought promotions. Angus expected the trip to Windsor to be a pointless if pleasant little jaunt for he didnât believe he had a chance.
Neither did my mother, until he called long distance (something rarely done in those days) to tell her he had been offered the job, and had accepted.
Although Belleville styled itself a city, it was no more than a county town. Windsor was something else. When Eardlie drove into its outskirts late in August 1930, I found myself entering a different and intimidating world.
Windsor called itself the Border City. Together with several satellite communities, it encrusted the eastern shore of the St. Clair River which marks the boundary between Canada and the United States. Just across the river lay the vast, smoky , sprawl of Detroit, Michigan, the Motor City, where nearly half the automobiles that were already dominating the lives of North Americans had been or were being built. A lot of Windsor men worked in the Detroit auto plants and chauvinists on the U. S. side of the river liked to refer to the two communities as the Twin Cities, implying (and even assuming) that Windsor was no more than a northern suburb of Detroit.
This is not the way we felt about it. Our industrialist overlords and traitorous political collaborators had not yet succeeded in subverting our conviction that Canada was a nation in its own right. As far as my family was concerned, Detroit and the whole of the United States of America were alien ground and, no matter what similarities its inhabitants might have to us, they were foreigners.
Even though I was only a child at the time, the experience of living on the borders of a foreign nation which so obviously believed in its Manifest Destiny as the eventual master of the continent helped instil in me the fervent nationalism I still proudly maintain.
Our new home was a ground-floor apartment in a brick four-plex on Victoria Avenue, only a fifteen-minute walk from downtown, and the public library where Angus now lorded it over a staff of six.
I was enrolled at Victoria School, which was three times the size of the one I had attended in Belleville. Because I was a new boy and âa little squirt,â I became an instant target for a number of boys bigger and tougher if not meaner than myself. This was something I had not previously experienced but, since I was fleet of foot, I wasnât often caught. Nevertheless the humiliation of being frequently on the run did not endear Victoria to me.
Nor was this the only humiliation I endured. One of my few surviving memories of the place concerns a Home and School entertainment devised
5 When George was puzzled as to what course to take, she would complain that she was in a terrible quarry, and when confused she would find herself all of a zither.
6 Geddes, the eldest, once stripped brother Jack to the buff, painted him all over with blue house paint, then shut him up in the back of a horse-drawn hearse which was parked in the street waiting to receive a neighbourâs corpse. Jack lost some skin and hair when the paint was removed with turpentine. He was probably lucky not to have died from lead poisoning.
Â
Â
5
Â
Â
IN MAY OF 1930 , A few days after my ninth birthday, Angus travelled to Windsor, Ontario, to be interviewed for the job of chief librarian. He made the journey with no great expectations. Canada was then reeling from the shock of the worst financial collapse in recorded history, which had shaken the industrialized world in the autumn of 1929. Following the Crash, the mood had become one of uncertainty, apprehension, and retrenchment. Those who had jobs thought themselves lucky and neither expected nor sought promotions. Angus expected the trip to Windsor to be a pointless if pleasant little jaunt for he didnât believe he had a chance.
Neither did my mother, until he called long distance (something rarely done in those days) to tell her he had been offered the job, and had accepted.
Although Belleville styled itself a city, it was no more than a county town. Windsor was something else. When Eardlie drove into its outskirts late in August 1930, I found myself entering a different and intimidating world.
Windsor called itself the Border City. Together with several satellite communities, it encrusted the eastern shore of the St. Clair River which marks the boundary between Canada and the United States. Just across the river lay the vast, smoky , sprawl of Detroit, Michigan, the Motor City, where nearly half the automobiles that were already dominating the lives of North Americans had been or were being built. A lot of Windsor men worked in the Detroit auto plants and chauvinists on the U. S. side of the river liked to refer to the two communities as the Twin Cities, implying (and even assuming) that Windsor was no more than a northern suburb of Detroit.
This is not the way we felt about it. Our industrialist overlords and traitorous political collaborators had not yet succeeded in subverting our conviction that Canada was a nation in its own right. As far as my family was concerned, Detroit and the whole of the United States of America were alien ground and, no matter what similarities its inhabitants might have to us, they were foreigners.
Even though I was only a child at the time, the experience of living on the borders of a foreign nation which so obviously believed in its Manifest Destiny as the eventual master of the continent helped instil in me the fervent nationalism I still proudly maintain.
Our new home was a ground-floor apartment in a brick four-plex on Victoria Avenue, only a fifteen-minute walk from downtown, and the public library where Angus now lorded it over a staff of six.
I was enrolled at Victoria School, which was three times the size of the one I had attended in Belleville. Because I was a new boy and âa little squirt,â I became an instant target for a number of boys bigger and tougher if not meaner than myself. This was something I had not previously experienced but, since I was fleet of foot, I wasnât often caught. Nevertheless the humiliation of being frequently on the run did not endear Victoria to me.
Nor was this the only humiliation I endured. One of my few surviving memories of the place concerns a Home and School entertainment devised
Similar Books
