uncomfortable and so insecure she needed to telephone friends back home every day. She did not want to go anywhere or see anything and insisted on staying in a hotel. A dinner that I arranged to introduce a girlfriend of the time deteriorated into a tension-filled standoff between the two women, which I could neither ease nor end. Mom could not operate out of her comfort zone, it seemed, and while I had suspicions about the extent of her drinking and worries about her emotional state, I chose to believe that she could pull herself together once home.
My father died later the same year. Our time together after Iâd moved in with Mom and Cliff could be measured in hours rather than months or years. Even before he died, then, my father was no more than a ghostly presence in my life, a character from an old home movie. I felt no deep sense of loss upon his passing, only regret at never finding the opportunity to untangle our family history. I did not have the courage to call Mom; no doubt she learned of his death from his sister, as I did. She never mentioned him or their marriage again.
My father died alone, just as he had lived in his final years. After a lifetime of heavy smoking and drinking, he was felled by a stroke and found slumped over a writing desk in a rented basement room. According to my aunt, in front of my father was a half-finished letter to me, though I never saw it. I was the sole beneficiary of his will, and it astonished me that he had actually had a lawyer draw up a proper document. There was money, quite a bit of it, left over from his bootlegging years. Although I never remember him saying so, he obviously loved me. That, at least, was no mystery.
During much of my Saskatchewan sojourn, I was a loner. I worked irregular hours and filled any leisure time with university classes and lessons in voice and drama. There was little opportunity for close relationships, a condition that suited the child within me, always warning against commitments that would slow me down. My usual pattern was to jump ship as soon as things got serious, leaving a string of women to wonder what had gone wrong.
But meeting them in the first place was not difficult for a bachelor in the broadcasting business, and in 1964 I met Linda, a winsome blonde whose supple figure rendered even the alter ego temporarily speechless. She exhibited a quiet character that only enhanced her appeal, and soon we were involved. A wedding date was set for August 1965, but the night before the nuptials I panicked. While the bride-to-be and her mother and sisters fussed over arrangements, I bolted from the house into the dark. The next day I fought the eight-year-old through the ceremony and the reception afterwards, attempting to drown out his protests that this was a huge mistake, that I was incapable of enduring the intimacy of marriage.
I took it as a good sign that Linda was one of the few women in my life that my mother truly liked. No matter how bad Momâs behaviour, Linda was non-judgmental and forgiving. She had to be when Mom failed to show for our wedding with no explanation. Still, we had her blessing from afar and that, I hoped, would be enough.
Shortly before my marriage and despite the debacle in Quebec City, the head of Outside Broadcasts in Toronto offered me a promotion to Winnipeg and another dramatic change in my working environment. The CBCâs home on Portage Avenue,where some five hundred employees served the corporationâs needs, rivalled the nearby Eatonâs store in size. For all that, this headquarters of the CBCâs operation in the Prairie provinces did not produce out of its numerous television studios a single national show on a regular schedule. But it did produce segments for shows originating in Toronto and lots of local programming, alongside a strong radio operation. I was lucky to be in the rare position of working for both services and, better still, I was expected to contribute to their
My father died later the same year. Our time together after Iâd moved in with Mom and Cliff could be measured in hours rather than months or years. Even before he died, then, my father was no more than a ghostly presence in my life, a character from an old home movie. I felt no deep sense of loss upon his passing, only regret at never finding the opportunity to untangle our family history. I did not have the courage to call Mom; no doubt she learned of his death from his sister, as I did. She never mentioned him or their marriage again.
My father died alone, just as he had lived in his final years. After a lifetime of heavy smoking and drinking, he was felled by a stroke and found slumped over a writing desk in a rented basement room. According to my aunt, in front of my father was a half-finished letter to me, though I never saw it. I was the sole beneficiary of his will, and it astonished me that he had actually had a lawyer draw up a proper document. There was money, quite a bit of it, left over from his bootlegging years. Although I never remember him saying so, he obviously loved me. That, at least, was no mystery.
During much of my Saskatchewan sojourn, I was a loner. I worked irregular hours and filled any leisure time with university classes and lessons in voice and drama. There was little opportunity for close relationships, a condition that suited the child within me, always warning against commitments that would slow me down. My usual pattern was to jump ship as soon as things got serious, leaving a string of women to wonder what had gone wrong.
But meeting them in the first place was not difficult for a bachelor in the broadcasting business, and in 1964 I met Linda, a winsome blonde whose supple figure rendered even the alter ego temporarily speechless. She exhibited a quiet character that only enhanced her appeal, and soon we were involved. A wedding date was set for August 1965, but the night before the nuptials I panicked. While the bride-to-be and her mother and sisters fussed over arrangements, I bolted from the house into the dark. The next day I fought the eight-year-old through the ceremony and the reception afterwards, attempting to drown out his protests that this was a huge mistake, that I was incapable of enduring the intimacy of marriage.
I took it as a good sign that Linda was one of the few women in my life that my mother truly liked. No matter how bad Momâs behaviour, Linda was non-judgmental and forgiving. She had to be when Mom failed to show for our wedding with no explanation. Still, we had her blessing from afar and that, I hoped, would be enough.
Shortly before my marriage and despite the debacle in Quebec City, the head of Outside Broadcasts in Toronto offered me a promotion to Winnipeg and another dramatic change in my working environment. The CBCâs home on Portage Avenue,where some five hundred employees served the corporationâs needs, rivalled the nearby Eatonâs store in size. For all that, this headquarters of the CBCâs operation in the Prairie provinces did not produce out of its numerous television studios a single national show on a regular schedule. But it did produce segments for shows originating in Toronto and lots of local programming, alongside a strong radio operation. I was lucky to be in the rare position of working for both services and, better still, I was expected to contribute to their
Similar Books
