Being a Kid in the ‘50s

I saw my first movie, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, at the Runnymede Theatre, and went afterwards to Andersen’s Restaurant, on the north side of Bloor, just east of Runnymede, to buy french fries with vinegar.

Across the street, there was a sporting goods store that sold fishing equipment. I went there one day with a friend and shoplifted a small container of lead sinkers. No idea why I did that. I certainly had no need for them.

Summer fun

In the summer, the same friend and I would sit on a bench on the south side of Bloor across from the Runnymede Library and tabulate the cars that passed by: Dodge Custom Royals, Cadillacs, Plymouths, etc.

There was a parking lot behind us, beside Loblaws (now No Frills), that overlooked a ravine. We could see Lake Ontario, and in August we used to watch the Air Show from there. On the west corner of Glendonwynne, there was an Esso Station with an old Jeep on the roof.

My mom sent me to take swimming lessons in the summer at Western Tech.

I got my first two-wheeled bicycle for my fifth birthday, which I rode through High Park with my friend Richard in 1955 and 1956.

We would go to the CNE to watch track cycling races through the fence around the Grandstand. One day I rode along Bloor St. to visit my dad. By that time, he had found a job with Chartered Trust at the corner of Yonge St. and St. Clair Ave. When my mom locked my bike in the basement as punishment, I snuck out of the house and rode my friend’s old bike around the neighbourhood.

My mother

Mother frequently took us shopping in the Junction. We would go to Kresge’s, on the north side of Dundas, and to Taylor’s Jewellers, owned by the father of a kid in my sister’s class at Runnymede named Ken Taylor. We also went to Savage’s Shoe Store, on the north side of Dundas, where you could look at the bones in your feet through an X-ray machine.

One day when my mom left me in the car while she went to a store, I snuck out and bought a small, knobbly cigar from an Italian grocer shop on the same block as these other stores.

My father

My dad operated a market garden for a while from a vacant lot on the southwest corner of Annette St. and Baby Point Rd. (There’s an apartment building there now.) I used to go with him and play with a toy steam shovel that blew smoke out of its chimney when I stuffed it with paper and lit it on fire.

On Sundays, my dad drove my mother, my sister and me to Runnymede United Church, at Kennedy Ave. and Runnymede Rd. He’d drop us at the curb in front of the church and then drive away. My mom said he spent the morning at a steam bath downtown before returning to pick us up around noon. He had problems with his legs, and I suppose the steam bath helped.

Winter adventures

In the winter, my dad took me on Saturday mornings to the artificial ice rink in High Park to play shinny. I wore my Montreal Canadiens uniform that I’d received for Christmas. It included a pair of short pants with a pocket on the back where I stashed a nickel to pay for the streetcar ride home.

My dad once took me to a different rink, with natural ice, on the northwest corner of Runnymede and St. Clair Ave. I played that day for hours with exceptional skill, as I recall, against kids much older than me. When we got too cold to play, we went into a ramshackle wooden hut at the edge of the rink, where we warmed our hands over a wood stove.

Moving away

One afternoon in August, 1958, my mother moved with my sister and me to a house in Etobicoke near the Cloverdale Mall. She bought it with the assistance of John Menary, a real estate agent on Roncesvalles who often helped her.

I never saw my dad again. He drowned a year later in Lake Ontario, near the mouth of the Humber River.