1958 was an interesting year because we moved to Canada. Milwaukee Electric Tools had decided to expand into Canada and my father was going to take over that operation. The first thing I knew I was filling out forms to become a “Landed Immigrant” in Canada. It seemed to me to be just another one of the many moves I had made, but it turned out somewhat better.
We arrived in Toronto during the summer and that fall I was enrolled in York Mills Collegiate Institute. You can visit their website at http://schoolweb.tdsb.on.ca/yorkmillsci/ I was a little more than unhappy when I found out I had two more years of high school because they had Grade 13! I’m not sure if that’s still the same today. Anyway as with every new school, the classes were set up differently and taught differently. They had a language requirement and the only language I had taken was Latin and that was only for only one school year. I needed four years to graduate. They assigned me a tutor. I felt sorry for Mr. Kenyon. I needed to make up three more years of Latin, but the good news was I would have two years to do it in! On the other hand, I found myself retaking courses like chemistry and math that I had already taken other places, so as to stress or workload, it was not bad.
Toronto was the most livable city I had ever seen. There were many places to see and many things to do. Crime was low. I remember exploring parts of the city without any worry. I stumbled into an area where prostitution was common one day. It was obviously an area that today would be called a “high crime area,” but there was no danger there unlike in other areas of other cities I would see later in life where prostitution and crime such as robbery were commonly found together. I’m sure things have changed over the years, but if you ever get a chance to visit Toronto, do go.
We moved into an expanding suburb, so all homes were new and there was even a new shopping center being built only a few blocks away. The street we lived on had only one family native to Canada. Canada was then and still is now a country of immigrants. I guess I fit right in since I was an immigrant too. We had families from Hungry, the Netherlands, Scotland, England, Poland and so on. I remember on some nights we would gather in the street to chat, to look up at the stars, and enjoy each other’s company. There was a real sense of community, and I think it came from the fact that we were all new to the country. I dated one of our neighbors. Her family was from Scotland. I had a very difficult time understanding anything her father said because of his strong brogue. There were times I would’ve sworn he wasn’t speaking English – grin. I could understand her mother without any trouble. My girlfriend and I were very much victims of our “raging hormones,” so we had no trouble understanding each other.
For many reasons and not all of them reasonable as I look back, I did not want to finish high school in Canada. My parents agreed that I could return to the States and live with my grandparents to finish my last year of high school if I could contribute to my upkeep there. I went to work. First, I worked as a clerk in a grocery store stocking shelves and carrying out groceries for customers. The next job I got and held until I left the country was as a clerk in a camera store. The camera store was owned by a commercial photographer. Charlie was a great boss and the camera store included a studio he used for some of his commercial work and he also did portraits for people. He was from Great Britain and during World War II had worked in photo interpretation. It seemed he was responsible for developing the films that were brought back and editing out the “useless ones.” One of the things I did before I left Canada was to register for the draft. I went down to the US Embassy or it might’ve been a consulate in Toronto. I remember my draft card with said that my draft board number was 100 and behind it in parentheses was the word foreign. I left Canada in time for the 1960 1961 school year. I regularly returned to visit my parents until they retired in the middle 70s and moved to Florida.
