A Kid's World

His mother, Yvonne, first lived in the apartment with her sister and worked at an Inglis factory, producing guns for the Canadian and British governments for the Second World War. Then Yvonne married David Armstrong, who moved in and his mother’s sister moved out. The family lived there until Bill was 10, the year his sister was born, and they moved to suburban Jane St. and Wilson Ave.

He says the neighbourhood was a “wonderful” place for a kid. The block surrounding his home was a complete ecosystem, with everything anyone needed within walking distance. There was the movie theatre — The Revue — which is still running, and a furniture store next to it. Mac’s barber shop was in the first-floor storefront of his building. Through the open door of a butcher shop named Tubb’s he could see the natural maple floors covered with sawdust.

The ragman came around with his wagon filled with used household items for sale. The man delivering ice for iceboxes always pretended to be upset when children ran up to the truck and grabbed the biggest chunk of ice they could hold.

And it was an event when the coal truck arrived. It had a long conveyor belt that extended into the window wells and a chute that went into basements. Coal delivery was loud, with the sounds of the truck, the clattering of the coal, and the dumping into the basement.

When his Uncle Henry visited, he’d give Bill $2. Bill would immediately run down the front stairs and across Roncesvalles — defying his parents’ orders — where he would buy a British toy soldier from a big display cabinet.

But when he was 8 years old, Bill was entrusted with the important task of buying fish and chips for the family on Fridays. The fish and chips place was just north of Howard Park Ave., and he had to cross the road to reach it. Every Friday, he followed his parents’ careful instructions to cross the street only on the green light, and he would return safely with the fish and chips in a box wrapped the traditional way, in newspaper.

There were no parks or playgrounds close to home. Bill’s playground was the alleyway behind his apartment; from his perspective it seemed to go all the way down to the lake. In actuality, the alleyway ran south from behind the Revue cinema to just short of High Park Blvd.

As soon as Bill could climb down the stairs by himself, he was playing in that alleyway. To Bill and his friends, that alleyway was their own “private street.” He and his friends played baseball pitch and hit, catch football and wall tennis. Everyone played marbles, kept in blue Crown whiskey cloth bags; older kids would try to steal the marbles of the younger children. The kids also played ball hockey in the Howard Park school yard, which was covered in concrete and cinder, with not a blade of grass in sight.

High Park was a 30-minute walk, but once Bill had a bike, it took him about eight minutes. Kids would hang out around the zoo, race soap box racers down the park’s hills, and watch remote-controlled boats on a little pond. To keep him away from Grenadier Pond, his mother told him it was bottomless!

The Revue Cinema was only a few doors north of Bill’s apartment. Bill regularly went to the Saturday matinees along with all the other kids. Admission was a dime, and most parents gave their children another two nickels for snacks.

Bill watched movies featuring Ma and Pa Kettle and the Lone Ranger, and serials featuring superheroes like Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. The serials always ended with a cliffhanger to ensure that the viewers returned the following week for the next instalment.

When he was about nine, one of his cousins, who was 10 years older, decided that it was high time for Bill to see his first evening movie. She thought he would enjoy the science fiction film playing at The Revue. Bill is still haunted by that film The Incredible Shrinking Man, the story of a man who slowly shrinks in size.

When he is the size of a small doll, the family cat attacks him. He survives, only to become as small as an insect and is nearly killed by a spider. At the end of the movie, the man, still shrinking, escapes from the house through a window screen to face the dangers of the world outside.

Bill and his cousin left the movie terrified, and they made sure Bill’s parents never found out what they had seen.