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I was born in 1939 on Huron Street, below College, near my mother’s family home on Willcocks Avenue, now part of the U of T. When I was small we moved to Clinton Street, north of College, where I grew up and went to Clinton Street Public School. To my Grade Six teacher there, Mr. Lorrie, I owe my love of history. By the time I was 13 or 14 my younger brother Paul and I used to take our bikes down to the old Maple Leaf Stadium, where we sold soft drinks. We’d stop at Fort York along the way. Climbing on and over the ramparts, we had something of a free run of the place. I remember it as being in some disrepair and rather foreboding, but that might have had to do with the exposed timber walls of the blockhouses which had weathered to a dark brown-black. Not until ten or fifteen years ago were these timbers covered in white clapboards to protect them as they were in the 19th century. South of the fort I remember trucking companies, rather than railways, having their yards. Across the way and then going strong was Loblaws’ grocery warehouse, where my dad worked as a signpainter. After public and high school, I enrolled at the old Lakeshore Teachers College, from which I graduated in 1960. My first school was Franklin Horner elementary school on Horner Avenue in Etobicoke, where I taught grades seven and eight. Sharing with my classes my love of history led to projects where they researched and built models in a room at the school set aside just for that. In 1966 my 8-G class won the first competition organized by the Toronto Historical Board for projects dealing with subjects drawn from Toronto’s history. Our prize was a weekend at Fort York, where we stayed in bunks in the East Blockhouse, ate our suppers in the Officers’ Mess, and fell in with the tasks that made up a soldier’s life. The kids had a ball and were left with memories lasting a lifetime.
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