Okay, this isn’t really going to be about the entire land of my birth. That would actually be Canada! No, I’m just going to share a few memories of our apartment at 5998 Park Avenue where I was brought home from the hospital at one week of age, and lived until the age of four, when we moved further west.
childhood
Summer in the City – Six Decades Ago
Ah, the innocent ’50s!
Windows on the Past – a family on a Sunday outing
Many a Montreal family has virtually the same photo as this one – the same grouping (parents and child(ren), posing at the Lookout located at Mount Royal’s Chalet.
Windows on the Past – mother & daughter
Ah, my younger self… with my daughter Kathryn – back in the days of post-Woodstock Nixon’s U.S.A.; before personal computers, smart phones and big-box stores.
Stuck in Beginners B Forever!
I have such fond memories of the Hampton Street YMCA! Also known as the NDG Y, due to its location in the leafy Montreal borough of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, it was my second home during the summers when I was eight, nine and ten years old.
A Letter to Lily June on her First Birthday
Dear Lily June,
At the risk of appropriating your mother’s salutation for her own online letters to you, just let me say that I’m responding in a humble way to her request for letters – letters to be addressed to you, in honour of your upcoming first birthday.
How I miss the 5 and dime!
Woolworth’s! Kresge’s! Probably others, but lost in the mists of time… or maybe more accurately, in the memory maze of my brain.
From one… to hundreds
Here in Montreal, in 1952, we got all of one (1!) TV channel. If memory serves, it was channel 2 on the dial, and it was bilingual, English and French. (In those days there was more linguistic cooperation in this province!) The channel was run by the CBC: the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Shows were, of course, in black and white.
Oh, to be 4 again!
I find these photos so evocative. It’s not just that they were taken in the glorious fullness of summer, which seems eons away right now. It’s not just that each one includes an image of little me from 60-something years ago. No. It’s the innocence. It just wafts right off of the screen, don’t you find?
Play
Play. Girls’ play. What does that word even mean, to a kid of the 21st century? As a child of the ’50s, I can tell you what it doesn’t mean.
Crossed Eyes and Dotted Tees 