After we departed the Empress of France, a ship liner in Montreal, Canada we lived in Montreal for three months. From there we moved to a small basement apartment in Port Credit, Ontario, right on Lake Ontario. In those days there were no driver’s tests, so Dad went to the drugstore to get his driver’s license! Life somehow just seemed a bit easier in those days.
We then moved to St. Catharines, to a tiny basement apartment while our first home was being built. We spent our vacations at Blue Bell Cottages in Wasaga Beach. These were simple cottages with few amenities, but having the whole family together, especially Dad, for a whole week, was a really special time. Somehow, we managed to entertain ourselves and have an amazing time without jet skis, floating party islands and wake boards on high powered boats.
A two-bedroom cottage rental was just $50 per week and gasoline was 45 cents a gallon. Canada had yet to convert to the metric system, so gas was sold in “gallons” rather than liters.
After 18 months we finally moved into our new home. It was custom built by some friends of my Dad’s. This photo shows us with a gang of friends in front of a Christmas tree. Compared to today’s perfectly pruned real trees, and LED-laden artificial trees, it has the look of a ‘Charlie Brown Christmas Tree’. But to 6-year-old me, it was a beautiful wondrous thing! And it was part of three-week celebration that was the lead up to Christmas, starting December 1. Eventually the Christmas frenzy began around American Thanksgiving, but now it’s not out of the ordinary to see Christmas decorations in stores even before Halloween. Somehow a compressed 3- or 4-week window to celebrate Christmas just made it more intense, and exciting. It was indeed hard to sleep as Christmas Eve approached.
Here Mom and Dad and my older sister Hazel stand near the kitchen. This was the time when appliances were starting to displace some of the effort required by housewives to maintain the house. As a young boy I have to admit, I cannot remember when we got a dishwasher. I do remember the endless hours my mother spent cooking meals and cleaning up after them. It is only later in life that you learn to truly appreciate the amazing sacrifice parents made for us to live such comfortable lives.
Since there is a photo of just the fireplace, I’m thinking this was probably a bit of luxury of for a home built post war-time in Canada. It was good to have a chimney, because it meant we had a way for Santa to get into the living room to deliver gifts.
Dad paid $2,000.00 for the new house and had a mortgage of 1% over 25 years. We had three bedrooms and one bathroom and a large wood burning fireplace. It also had a carport, the 1960s precursor to a garage. It kept some snow off your car and kept the car in the shade in the summer, but once the snow started blowing around, it didn’t have a lot of advantage over just parking in the driveway.
At this house we got our first dog, Rover. He was a wild one. Unfortunately, he ran away.
Being from England we were not used to snow. Boy, did we get snow. Six-foot-high snowbanks were not uncommon. It didn’t take long before I got quite used to this great feature of winter and loved playing in it.
The reverse side of Canada’s frigid winters was the heat waves in the summer. With no air conditioning we just toughed it out. As a youngster I don’t remember it slowing me down in my summer holiday pursuit of fun. I believe that during some of the hottest nights we migrated to the basement and camped out in sleeping bags. As a kid even avoiding brutal heat was an adventure!
My sister, Hazel, and I used to make many journeys to the Welland Canal to see the rapids in the river. We were close enough that we could hear the river at night. It was a most comforting sound. The Ontario Paper Mill was on the other side of the river.
We lived in St. Catharines for seven years. It was a great time growing up and meeting a lot of friends which we still stay in touch with, even today.
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