by Phil Egan
(2015) January 1, 1960 fell on a Friday. I have no particular memory of the day.
What I do know is that I would have awakened that day with only one thing on my mind – football. I was 12 years old, and I loved every kind of football – high school, CFL, American football with the American and National Football Conferences (the Super Bowl was still three years away) and U.S. College Football. New Year’s Day meant college bowl games – there were four; the Rose, Cotton, Orange and Sugar Bowls.
My parents and my six brothers and sisters (three more were still to come) and I lived on Stuart Street in the South End, directly across the road from St. Joseph’s School and Church. We had moved there a couple of years earlier from 270 South Christina Street, just north of the corner of Christina and Devine. Across the road on Christina had been the sprawling Lawrence Lumber yard, but we had stood on our front porch one morning in the late 50s and watched it go up in angry orange-red flames.
I was hockey-mad too; a Montreal Canadiens fan in eternal opposition to my Maple Leaf-loving younger brothers. We played hockey in a home-made rink on Mitton Street in the backyard behind ours, and, occasionally, one of the priests from St. Joseph’s took me and my fellow altar boys to a real NHL game at Olympia in Detroit. Hockey, football and school – that was my life.
Summer 1960 was the end of my rather idyllic childhood, however. We moved to the big family house at 269 London Road that summer, just before I started high school and three months after the birth of my youngest sister, Frances (Number Eight). It was a notably historic home, one door west of Mitton Street on the south side of London Road. The property had belonged to Imperial Oil and housed one of their V.P.’s and his family- the Beynon’s – and the wooden five-bedroom, three -bathroom house was rumoured to be well over 100 years old. It appeared on several early city maps and surveys.
I had three paper routes. When I left the South End I gave up my route for the Windsor Star. A surprising number of people subscribed to the Star for home delivery in the late 50s. I continued to deliver the Sarnia Observer and the London Free Press. At the crack of early in the morning I would climb aboard my bike with the big balloon tires and big carrier and ride down to Neil Pole Pharmacy on the southwest corner of Wellington and Mitton. The “Freep” would have dropped off a stack of papers in the early hours. There were always a few extra papers, and sometimes you’d find coins sitting on top of your stack where someone had come along and taken one, leaving behind payment. I would sit on the steps of the pharmacy and fold the papers, then load them into a burlap bag and into my bike’s carrier, so that I could ride my route, hurling the papers one-by-one onto customers’ front porches.
I remember one summer day in 1960 noticing a front-page story about a man named John Kennedy who had just won the Democratic nomination for president in the U.S.
The Observer was an afternoon paper, so we had to ride down to the paper’s plant on Front Street and wait as the papers rolled off the press.
Parochial schools in those days received government funding only through Grade 10, so the Catholic High School was divided. St. Patricia’s was located on Bright Street and housed Grades 9 and 10 only. I had just turned 13 when I started classes at St. Patricia’s alongside Germaine Park. My teachers were Dutch Brothers (Brothers James, Anthony and Aloysius) and Sisters of St. Joseph, with the occasional lay teacher.
First Man in Space: Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, April 12, 1961
In April of 1961, the Soviet Union had shocked the world by putting the first man in space orbit. Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin circumnavigated Earth in Vostok I. There was huge interest in the space program, but it appeared that the Americans were badly behind. They brought televisions into our Grade 9 classroom when Alan Shepard, the first of the Mercury 7 astronauts made his 15-minute sub-orbital flight aboard Freedom 7, but it seemed anti-climactic after Gagarin’s accomplishment.
I had begun to develop a keen interest in politics. In 1960-61, the Canadian Labour Congress and the political left formed a new political party – the New Democratic Party, and elected as its head the long time CCF Premier of Saskatchewan. I remember going down to Sarnia Library, likely in 1961, and sitting with about 30 people to listen to a speech by NDP leader Tommy Douglas.
There were federal elections in ’62 and ’63 that elected Liberal minority governments under Lester B. Pearson, and I remember my Dad driving me down to the Guildwood Inn to shake hands with Pearson and the local Liberal candidate, Walter Foy. I can also remember a Progressive Conservative rally at Briarwood Arena on London Line. I sat near the front while my brother, Larry and Larry Evers held up Liberal banners at the back of the arena during John Diefenbaker’s speech. The Old Chieftain spotted them at the back of the crowd, stopped his speech and pointed to them as his jowls shook and he sputtered, “Isn’t that just like the Liberals; sending boys to do a man’s job!”
For pocket money I worked nights and weekends with my brother Larry as a busboy at the Drawbridge Inn, working banquets. For fun, we played hockey at the Children’s Arena. It was located just south of
Children’s Arena from Front Street. Photo courtesy of John Rochon
London Road between Christina and Front Streets. Roller skating to music was very popular. People went either to Funland, an outdoor rink on Michigan Avenue in Point Edward, or to Rose Gardens, then situated on the current site of Sandy Lane Apartments. There were high school dances on Friday nights; Saturday night dances were at the Y on Mitton Street, and everybody went. Pizza was new, and popular at The Continental (now Harry’s) or at Cosmo’s, then located just north of the Continental and across the street, on the southeast corner of Mitton at Davis. We went to Tab’s for Canada Burgers, the greatest hamburger ever created.
We had three elderly great-aunts and a great-uncle living on Maxwell Street, and one of our chores was to cut their grass in summer and keep their walk shovelled in winter. My uncle George LaForge was a direct descendant of Joseph LaForge, one of the first three settler families in The Rapids, as Sarnia was then known, likely in the 1830s. Joseph LaForge had an orchard on the current site of the Federal Building and Library.
In 1962 I started Grade 11 classes at St. Patrick’s Private High School on Essex Street with about 230 other students for Grades 11 to 13. Over the next three years, I would study subjects that included English Grammar, English Literature, French Grammar, French Literature, Latin, History, Geography, Algebra, Music, Physics, Chemistry, Trigonometry, Biology and Religion. I had a fantastic English teacher named Natalie Stellmacher. She was an inspiration, and I remember her chiding me with, “You should be writing.” When I finished it in 2014, I dedicated my first novel to her.
I was a Sea Cadet, in deference to my father, who had been on the North Atlantic escorts in a Canadian warship during World War II. I learned to sail, piloted a minesweeper up the St. Clair River to Lake Erie, and spent six weeks sailing whalers one summer in North Sydney on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia.
Fridays in the Fall meant high school football at Norm Perry Park. We would crowd the big
Norm Perry grandstand photo courtesy of the John Rochon collection
grandstand, now long gone, and cheer on St. Pat’s and the Fighting Irish against SCITS, Northern, Central or St. Clair. There were often house parties on Friday nights following games, and, once a year, Red Feather Night (a United Way fundraiser) with a double-header under the lights. I have no recollection of drinking at the games or the parties afterwards, although there may have been a few beers; certainly nothing to excess.
Shortly after starting at St. Pat’s, I also ran into my first blatant show of bigotry. Just north of Essex Street on Russell, a half block from St. Pat’s, was a tiny little lunch counter called the Lilac Lunch. As I recall, it had a counter with three stools, sold French fries, chips, sandwiches, and pop. Behind the counter was a matronly-looking woman in her late 50s or early 60s.
Nobody had warned me about her, so one day, I went in. Setting my books on the counter, I ordered a plate of French fries.
“Just getting out of school, are you?” she asked sweetly. “Yes, ma’am,” I replied. “Where do you go to school?” “Just up the road, at St. Pat’s.” I smiled at her.
With that, she swept her arm across the counter and sent my books sprawling and onto the floor. “Get out of here right now, you filthy Doagan!” she growled, her face now a mask of pure hatred.
St. Patrick’s had opened in 1930, so unless the Lilac Lunch had been there for over 30 some odd years, it seems strange that such a blatant bigot would open a little shop a mere 50 paces from people she hated. Strange.
I had already decided on a career as a lawyer and courtroom litigator (it never happened) so I was very involved in public speaking contests. I won quite a few, including some judged by a lady named Pauline McGibbon of the Royal Canadian Legion. Of course, this famous Sarnian went on to become Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario in 1974.
The nuns used to enter me in public speaking contests, then forgot sometimes to tell me. One of those lapses in 1963 led to one of the greatest adventures of my young life. A few days before the event, the
The 1964 World’s Fair in New York City . I was 17, travelling for two weeks with 33 other teenagers
nuns finally remembered that I didn’t know about the contest, telling me it was two days away. I hurriedly worked up a speech (the assigned topic was the United Nations). There were nine of us competing in Sombra. I won that night, but was disappointed that there was no trophy. The organizers took my contact information and told me they’d be in touch.
A month or so later, I was stunned to learn that I had won a two-week trip to the United Nations. It turned out to be much more than that.
A bus arrived one summer day with 28 other 17-year-olds from Ohio; 14 guys and 14 girls. We headed east, picking up another couple in Hamilton and two more in Toronto. We travelled to Montreal, explored the city, then drove south through New Hampshire, Vermont, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. We toured the battlefield at Gettysburg, spent a night at the Peace Light Inn on the battlefield, and held surreptitious parties in a clearing in the woods where bullets had once flown. In Boston we visited Faneuil Hall and the Old North Church, Boston Common and Harvard. All along the way, we were fed, watered and housed by the Oddfellows and Rebekahs, a service lodge that sponsored the “U.N. Pilgrimage.”
We went to the U.N., ate in the Delegates’ Dining Lounge, and toured the U.N. We stayed downtown in a big hotel, with all the boys on the ninth floor and all the girls on the twenty-seventh. The busboys and housekeeping staff made a little extra money by smuggling the girls down past the chaperoned in laundry bins on wheels.
In Washington we toured the White House and various foreign embassies. I went to the Iranian Embassy, and remember seeing the Shah’s photo on the wall. I fired a machine gun at FBI Headquarters, visited Ford’s Theatre and the Lincoln Memorial.
Ford’s Theatre brought back memories of John Kennedy’s assassination only eight months earlier. We had watched our black-and-white televisions non-stop for three days, saw Jackie Kennedy’s arrival Friday night in Washington in her blood-spattered dress, saw the flag-draped casket lying in the Capitol Rotunda, watched Lee Harvey Oswald murdered on TV by Jack Ruby, and saw the funeral. The sound of the muffled drum cadence that day I can still clearly remember, 52 years later.
We had been supposed to meet President Kennedy the summer of 1964 as part of the U.N. Pilgrimage. Instead, we visited his grave at Arlington Cemetery in Virginia.
For me, the U.N. Pilgrimage was a great education as well as a practically non-stop party. We learned a lot, but had a lot of fun as well with our new American friends. Later that summer, I visited one of them while sailing into Ashtabula, Ohio aboard HMCS Scatari, getting 48-hour shore leave. A travelling exhibit of John Kennedy’s artifacts had people lined up for five blocks in Cleveland, but my buddy’s father got me in ahead of the line by telling the people in charge that “this Canadian sailor wants to see the exhibit before his ship sails.”
Later that summer I got a permanent part-time job at Taylor’s Mens Wear on Christina Street, working for Maury Goldberg and Sid Aronovich, and got my first taste of a sales education. “Get the pants on them” was Maury’s secret to selling a suit, and God help you if you let a suit buyer walk out without also selling him a shirt, tie, socks and underwear.
I dated girls from St. Pat’s and St. Clair, but mostly from Northern. We spent summers on the beach at Canatara or at Grand Bend or the Pinery, where my brothers, friends and I spent weeks at a time, staying in my Dad’s big GM coach bus that had been converted to an RV, and chasing girls. In winter I supplemented my income by running massive Stanley Cup lotteries; in summer, I apprenticed as an electrician, working in the plants and refineries of the Chemical Valley.
At the start of every school year, we trudged down to Manley’s on Lochiel to buy our school books. We went to movies at the Capitol, Park and Odeon Theatres, ate 15 cent greasy hamburgers at the Hambone on Christina Street, sometimes at two or three in the morning, and watched high school basketball. I spent one summer searching titles for Justin Mallon, a local lawyer, for $25 a week (and some free practical legal training). His office was on the third floor of the Royal Bank Building at Christina and George (the top two floors are now gone).
When I graduated from St. Pat’s, I worked with the electricians for a year, then enrolled in Political Science and History at the University of Windsor. My goal of a legal career would take a serious and permanent detour three years later when I hooked up with a cute blonde flight attendant on a flight to Sea Island, Georgia.
I started the 60s as a child. By the time they ended, I had completed my education and was one year away from my first serious job. One year after that, I would be married and on my wat to Toronto and the G.T.A.
Sarnia was a perfect city and place in which to grow up. I made great friends, many of whom I still have, 50 years later. Growing up with nine brothers and sisters taught us to look out for each other, and our Irish culture taught us loyalty and ingrained a giving spirit, for which I am grateful. I grew up within sight of the blue St. Clair River, and it will forever be a part of me.