Back on the coast...

I've been in Toronto visiting my daughter for a week and a half.

This is the view from her and Robert's 23rd floor...

A bit of a change from ours in the country!

As expected, I took MANY photos.

It will take a few posts to cover it all....

A good time was had by all.

Old memories came flooding back...

New ones were created.

One thing that was on the top of my list was a trip to my dad's childhood neighborhood. 

I've been there a few times, but not for many years and it seems like the older we get, the more important our history becomes....

Toronto is known as 'The city of neighborhoods' and this is my dad's old haunt...

It was once a rough and tumble place full of new immigrants, many of them from Ireland.

The streets were full of kids on bikes, not many cars, and mothers out on the stoop.

Blue collar. Hard working. Hard living.

This is the house where he grew up.

Probably the smallest house in the neighborhood.

The feel of the streets have changed .

It looks much different today than when he was a kid.

Although the bones of the beautiful old houses remains.

The area has become a desirable place to live and a few years ago this house sold for...

$568,000....Yup you heard me right!

My dad's mum was offered the right to buy it when their rent was $35 a month for $5,000 but of course, they couldn't afford it.

She raised 5 kids there and battled poverty for most of their childhood.

Anyway it's a gorgeous, treelined street now, close to parks and downtown.

Around the corner is the Necropolis Cemetary.

It's one of the oldest in the city.

My dad has so many great stories about this place back in the day.

Stealing flowers...seeing ghosts...being chased by the police...

Imagine growing up around the corner from the graveyard! 

With the rampant imagination of childhood flowing through your head...

And nothing but time!

This place is a Gothic masterpiece and dates from the early 1800's.

Some headstones are elaborate....

Some very plain...

...and some disappearing back into the earth.

Across the street is the old Riverdale Zoo which is now called Riverdale Farm...

This rock wall is all that remains of what I remember...it was the way down to the monkey house.

It was an 'old school' zoo with big black barred cages with dirty polar bears and sad lions...

I'm glad to see a new generation of animals here..

It was grand to wander around, recognising street names and recalling all of those tales my dad has told and I've retold to the next generations...

Of more innocent times....

 

I have just recently finished reading this book, written by an old childhood friend of my dad's. They all grew up in the same neighbourhood in Toronto during the '30's and '40s...The end of the Great Depression and the start of the Second World War. The area was home to many immigrants from Ireland, Italy, Scotland and other parts of the world, many of them low income such as the Kearney's and my dads family.

In the beginning of Joe's book, he talks about  Cabbagetown and how despite people not having much, there was a certain magic there.  It could have been the place, or the time or both, which gave it that feel.  It was a time when the world was different. Children ran about the neighbourhood unsupervised, parents didn't fear for their children's safety and life was a bit less complicated than it is today. Joe talks about spending hours, days and months outside the local market in hopes of making a few cents carting groceries home for old ladies in order to buy his mom a christmas present. Joe's dad had gone off to war and money was scarce for such luxuries. I can't even imagine my 11 year old nephew attempting this, let alone being allowed to do such a thing  in this day and age!

Although I know the area and have been there many times as a kid, I never knew it like those who grew up there during those troubled times. But Joe's writing takes you there with its sights and smells and scenes of life in a real neighbourhood. My favorite story is one of Joe and his 'gang' of 9 or 10 year olds skinny-dipping in the Don River, listening for the local train going by and then lining up near the tracks to hang a moon at the conductor! I can just see all those skinny little white bums lined up for all to see...the conductor blowing his horn for them!  It seems that these places  don't really exist anymore. Kids go to schools outside of their neighbourhoods, often by schoolbus or a parents car. Small markets, butchers, bakeries and theatres have given way to Costco, Tesco, Superstores and Walmarts. We don't dare let our kids out of our sight for fear of the worst. 

Cabbagetown was a jumble of gangs of kids, bikes, dogs and mom's on the stoop. Now, the streets are lined with BMW's, Lexus' and all the old brownstones have hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of renovations put into them.

Joe also has some stories of my first father whom I lost when I was only 3. These stories have given me some insight into a life I never knew.

So thanks to you Joe for bringing these memories to life.

For anyone who wishes to escape to another time and place of innocence, or those who wish to revisit Cabbagetown,  I recommend this wonderful book.

 

John and Andy O'Gorman 1945