Columnists
I Will Remember
Remembrance Day was a great, big deal when I was a kid. Of course, I didn’t really understand what it was about or that my dad was a veteran. I saw the photographs of him in his uniform, but it never really occurred to me what Remembrance Day was for people like my dad or the actual origins of the Day. Most of my neighbourhood friends were children of veterans. We lived in a community in which most of the houses were built on land purchased by those veterans through the Veterans’ Land Act. And a lot of the homes in our community had the same look with similar floor plans. If I happened to be playing in Weezy’s yard and had to use the loo, it was always easy to find it in her house—they had the same floor plan as most of us. We lived in a brand new subdivision in the early ’50s. It was a subdivision built upon land that had been farmed for decades. Many of the backyards still had the remnants of “ancient” orchards and reminders, here and there, of outbuildings and foundations of barns long abandoned. What a neighbourhood we lived in.
Our childhood home was located next to a park. In the winter we pleasure-skated or played hockey. The park had two outdoor rinks, which were flooded and maintained by a man who lived on Main Street and who pastured his cow in our backyard—it was a symbiotic relationship between the cow and my Mom’s vegetable garden. In the summer we had the baseball diamond and the playground with swings, a hot-butt slide and monkey bars. As kids, we didn’t know much about the sacrifices made for all of this to happen. We were kids and maybe a bit self-centred. We enjoyed a great neighbourhood, great neighbours, a school within walking distance and a safe place to play. We didn’t know why the father of one of our friends only had one arm, or why one dad had an artificial leg and walked with a cane or why one granddad had very limited vision and scars on his face. We just didn’t know. We didn’t ask. We were never offered an explanation. Our parents protected us from the reality of the World Wars and the price those people paid. We just accepted it as the way it was. If I remember correctly, we had a neighbour who made his way through the weekends and weekday evenings with the help of a few beers or a bit of whisky. We could always count on him to show up at our fence or porch to chat with Dad. Bill and Dad would smoke a few cigarettes, sip a coffee or a drink a beer and just talk. When we asked, we were told Bill had a lot of things on his mind and we should always remember to be respectful and kind. We were, but we wondered. Our neighbour, probably saw a lot of horrible things during his time in the Army as a Canadian soldier at the front during World War II. He was a character but he wasn’t the only character. Every veteran in our neighbourhood saw a lot, heard a lot, dealt with a lot, lived with a lot. As it turned out, there happened to be a “character” living in every home in our neighbourhood.
When my siblings and I reminisce about our childhood in Strathburn Park, we talk about the bonfires, the skating, the hot chocolate and hot dogs on the twentyfourth, the neighbourhood hide ’n’ seek game, the lady who drove the dump truck because her hubby couldn’t, the Frankenstein bikes that someone’s dad put together from bits and pieces, the backyard chickens, the forts we built from appliance crates and with nails we straightened out on the basement floor, the snowballs thrown and the friendships made. Friendships tht, for many of us, continue to this day. My childhood wasn’t perfect, but it always makes me smile when I think about it. My childhood was brought about by those veterans and their spouses, who believed in what the future could be.
On November 11th, I will remember the good times we enjoyed all of these years later. I will remember the lifelong friendships. I will remember the childhood I had. I will remember those men and women and be grateful for their sacrifices.
Comments (0)