Newcomers to Weston in the 1950s

Ingrid Shouldice describes the subsidized housing on Langden Ave. in Mount Dennis, where her family lived when they first came to Toronto in the early 1950s. Her father, Alfred Bernhard, had come from a wealthy family in Austria and Slovenia, which had lost almost everything in two wars. He vowed to save every penny he could to improve his own family’s station in life. He was constantly working as civil engineer, he was constantly working, yet he still had time to craft furniture from orange crates. They rented out one of the bedrooms in their house. And Ingrid remembers not being allowed to spend five cents for a popsicle. The shadow of her parents’ war-time experiences hung over the family in other ways, too.

We thank Ingrid for sharing these and other memories with us.