A Hotline To Treatment: Getting Through and Feeling Blue In the summer of 1964, when I was 12 years old, our family move to London, Ontario, coinciding in my case with the sudden onslaught of puberty, a ferocious hormonal maelstrom that transformed me into an obsessive pop music listener. My favourite DJ in those days..
The Public Speaking Blues: Childhood and Adolescence in a Performance Anxiety Funk When I was attending Chapel Street elementary school in Georgetown, Ontario, back in the 1960s, public speaking was an integral part of the curriculum in the senior grades. And terror was the order of the day. My public speaking anguish typically..
My mom, door-to-door salespeople, and the clarinet: tooting in the 1950s and 1960s My 1950s and 1960s Georgetown childhood was characterized by cacophony, including rumpus and din on our little subdivision street where a knife sharpener man would ring his bell; where the breadman would dart from home to home distributing succulent baked goods with..
First job and first paycheque: Kmart next to McDonald’s, London Ontario, Spring 1969 In April 1969, the brand-new McDonald’s on Oxford Street, in my hometown of London, Ontario, went on a hiring spree. This august establishment, a source of civic pride for many Londoners since it was the first of its kind in the entire..
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..
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..
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..
Them’s the breaks: Industrial arts and gym classes, London, Ontario 1964-1969 My father treated life as a series of random, unfortunate accidents. “Them’s the breaks,” he invariably intoned whenever some catastrophe would befall our little family. “That’s the way the cookie crumbles.” One’s body is a graveyard for memories, a repository of good breaks, bad..
Being Steve McQueen For most of high school life in London, Ontario, I wanted to look and behave like Steve McQueen… But I thoroughly resembled Piggy from Lord of the Flies. I was basically a Clark Kent without a phone booth. Back in the 1950s and 60s, my hometown of Georgetown did not have a..
A story from my book titled My Time with You Has Been Short but Very Funny /Le temps passé avec vous fut bref mais tordant Part One: Bully for you, Georgetown Ontario, 1959-1964 When I was about seven years old and attending Chapel Street Public School in Georgetown, Ontario, I routinely began to throw my..