A Georgetown Childhood Easter 1955-1964 My Georgetown Easter memories are succulent and sweet. On Easter morning, sausages and scrambled eggs, which my father called “rambled screggs,” were the order of the day. My sister and I were never hungry for this sort of sustenance, and my father’s scrambled eggs were always runny. We were itching..
The Georgetown International Bantam Hockey Tournament: the Highlight of Easter Season, 1960-1964 For more images, please click here: The Georgetown International Bantam Hockey Tournament: the Highlight of Easter Season, 1960-1964 – Robert McBryde And here: Bantam Tournament – THE GEORGETOWN VAULT In 1960, when I was eight years old, my Easter season was magically transformed,..
The Toronto Maple Leafs and Me: Childhood, Adolescence, and Old Age When my Slovak father-in-law reached his dotage – at about the age I am now – he took to repeating “V krátkom čase budem mŕtvy” (In a short time I be dead) and “Čoskoro ma k sebe zavolá pán Boh” (Soon Mr. God will..
Pussy Willows by Silver Creek in Spring, Georgetown, Ontario, 1955-1964: A Tanka Poem Across from my home, A vast abandoned field: Pussy willow bliss. Sensual buds stir the blood: The long winter over at last. Note: My childhood home on Elizabeth Street in Georgetown, Ontario, was located directly across from a scrubby abandoned field intersected..
How London Little Theatre Changed My Life: 1967-1969 In the fall of 1967, I found myself in a grade 11 class called “Enriched English,” a designation reminiscent of chemically-enhanced bread. The principal of Oakridge Secondary School in London, Ontario had shunted me into the course out of desperation mixed with pity: I had been so..
Elegy for a personal paradise lost: music in Georgetown, Ontario, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, with Mr. Ken Harrison “The past is a candle at great distance: too close to let you quit, too far to comfort you. It is strange how we hold on to the pieces of the past while we..
A tale of three cafeterias revisited: London, Ontario; Burnaby, British Columbia; Quebec City, 1965-2000 While reading Orwell’s seminal novel 1984 in university, I was struck by the grungy canteen scene, which prompted recollections of the cafeteria of my high school, Oakridge, in 1960s London, Ontario. George Orwell – 1984 – Part 1, Chapter 5 Now..
Cat mother with two newborn kittens: A Tanka poem That look on her face! Startled surprise…maternity Anthropomorphized? Offspring are forever nurtured; Motherhood is a life long trust. Tanka poetry Tanka poems follow a set of rules. They all have five lines and each line follows a pattern: the first line has five syllables, the second..
Spring 1969: Pierre Berton visits London, Ontario, and high school authorities go ballistic For Maria Van der Velden By 1969, even in conservative, homogenous London, Ontario, seismic changes were rumbling through the corridors of power. In those halcyon days, I attended Oakridge High School where the 1960s zeitgeist had begun infiltrating, albeit on little cat..
A hair-raising elegy: Growing up in Georgetown at Wright Smith’s Barbershop, 1960-1964, and beyond I don’t remember my first haircuts as a child growing up in small town Ontario. My memories of hair- raising adventures date back to about 1960, when I was around eight years old. A new barber arrived in town, Mr. Wright..