Sometime between my fourth and fifth birthdays my mother started working again.The place she worked was up on Collishaw Street,in one of the old buildings left over from the war,and it was a place that rented and sold landscaping and construction equipment.My father was still working too,so this required childcare for my sister and I.
At first we stayed at a place,a childcare center that was up near St.George Street,on one of the numbered streets between Pacific Avenue and Saint George.The place was located in an old house with a screened in porch,which was never used while we were there because it was winter,sometime close to Christmas time.It was on a bit of a side street,but it was still noisy from all of the trains over at the railroad shops,which were not far away.In fact,those shops made it difficult to get to and somewhat less than ideal in terms of convenience.First we would get into a taxi and it would go all the way down Killam Drive,then back down Pacific until it reached where it was letting us out.My mother would take us into the house,then disappear in another taxi,because to get back to work,she had to go the rest of the way around the railway shops.At night,we did the opposite.
Some of the children at the daycare(nobody actually called it daycare back then),didn't seem to like being there.They didn't like it when their parents left and would start crying and carrying on.Some of them cried all day long,except of course in the early afternoon when everybody was supposed to be sleeping.I don't really recall that either my sister or myself minded going there.There were a lot of other kids to play with and that seemed to suit us fine.There were also a lot more things to play with than what we had at our place,so it was an alright place to be.Every morning the woman who ran the place would tell us a story out of one of the many books she had.I don't recall most of those stories,but I do remember one,in which a man was going to move overseas,to Germany,so they were putting his car onto a ship,using a huge crane.I thought this was really neat,because I'd never seen this done to a car before and I'd never even knew that you could do that to a car.So,whenever I wasn't doing anything else,I tried to find that particular book,ans I would stare at the picture of the car for long periods of time.Or at least it seemed like a long time.Even then I seemed to prefer finding a book and playing by myself.The daycare had a lot of trucks to play with,and sometimes I would play trucks with the other boys,but mostly I preferred my own company.When the other children napped in the afternoon,I would usually stay awake because I was one of the older kids there and I hadn't been taking naps at home for some time.That was alright with the lady who ran the place,but I had to play quietly.Most of the other children there were only two or three,and there were even some babies in cribs,and they all slept right after lunch.I was encouraged to nap as well,but nobody ever insisted on it so usually I'd just sit with my favorite book.
We were not at he child care center for very long.In fact,it might only have been a couple of weeks.When we first started going there,there was no snow on the ground,so I'm thinking it was most likely November.But I recall that on the last day we went there,my mother came and got us in a taxi,and we went downtown to Eatons.It was snowing hard,looking a lot like Christmas,and my mother still had some shopping to do.Of course we were all excited about Christmas,and shopping and all of the snow. Eatons had a Christmas display in their window that year that included a really elaborate set up of model trains,and reindeer and a whole village of gingerbread houses next to this big snowy mountain.It was the best display I'd ever seen in the window at Eatons,which had a display every year.So that year we stopped and looked in at the trains,and it was snowing unbelievably hard.After an hour or so we were loaded down with parcels and we started for home on the city bus,which didn't go up into our neighborhood back then.We would get out on Mountain Road.On this particular night we got off at the corner of Mountain Road and Hastings,because there was a small store there,and we needed to get bread and maybe milk.So it was quite a walk home,and very nearly a blizzard.We were all dressed up in snow suits,except my mother,who was dressed for work,and wasn't much enjoying the weather.It was almost Christmas time,it was snowing so hard we could not even see a block ahead of ourselves,turning very cold,and there was nobody around.My sister and I were happy,looking up into the street lights,watching the snow in their greenish glow,trying to catch snowflakes with our tongues,and talking about building a snowman tomorrow.
When we got home,my mother started baking.My father was not home from work,so he would have been working either eight to four or four to twelve.So,he was either late,trying to get home in a major snowstorm,or safe at work,waiting to start out into the weather at midnight.We were sitting around in the living room,my sister and I coloring in some old coloring books.The Eatons bags which we'd brought home with us were laying there too,and they had some kind of an intricate design on them,so eventually we started coloring those as well,green and red for Christmas.The radio was playing Christmas Songs,and the smell of my mothers cooking filled up the whole house.It seemed like a great time to be alive.
And that was the last day we went to that child care place.I remember it because of the snow when we came home.It really was inconvenient.Really,it wasn't all that far away,but because the rail yards cut it off,you had to go halfway across town to get there,and taxis were expensive.Soon after that we started staying with a lady who lived up the street,on Sumner Avenue.
At first we stayed at a place,a childcare center that was up near St.George Street,on one of the numbered streets between Pacific Avenue and Saint George.The place was located in an old house with a screened in porch,which was never used while we were there because it was winter,sometime close to Christmas time.It was on a bit of a side street,but it was still noisy from all of the trains over at the railroad shops,which were not far away.In fact,those shops made it difficult to get to and somewhat less than ideal in terms of convenience.First we would get into a taxi and it would go all the way down Killam Drive,then back down Pacific until it reached where it was letting us out.My mother would take us into the house,then disappear in another taxi,because to get back to work,she had to go the rest of the way around the railway shops.At night,we did the opposite.
Some of the children at the daycare(nobody actually called it daycare back then),didn't seem to like being there.They didn't like it when their parents left and would start crying and carrying on.Some of them cried all day long,except of course in the early afternoon when everybody was supposed to be sleeping.I don't really recall that either my sister or myself minded going there.There were a lot of other kids to play with and that seemed to suit us fine.There were also a lot more things to play with than what we had at our place,so it was an alright place to be.Every morning the woman who ran the place would tell us a story out of one of the many books she had.I don't recall most of those stories,but I do remember one,in which a man was going to move overseas,to Germany,so they were putting his car onto a ship,using a huge crane.I thought this was really neat,because I'd never seen this done to a car before and I'd never even knew that you could do that to a car.So,whenever I wasn't doing anything else,I tried to find that particular book,ans I would stare at the picture of the car for long periods of time.Or at least it seemed like a long time.Even then I seemed to prefer finding a book and playing by myself.The daycare had a lot of trucks to play with,and sometimes I would play trucks with the other boys,but mostly I preferred my own company.When the other children napped in the afternoon,I would usually stay awake because I was one of the older kids there and I hadn't been taking naps at home for some time.That was alright with the lady who ran the place,but I had to play quietly.Most of the other children there were only two or three,and there were even some babies in cribs,and they all slept right after lunch.I was encouraged to nap as well,but nobody ever insisted on it so usually I'd just sit with my favorite book.
We were not at he child care center for very long.In fact,it might only have been a couple of weeks.When we first started going there,there was no snow on the ground,so I'm thinking it was most likely November.But I recall that on the last day we went there,my mother came and got us in a taxi,and we went downtown to Eatons.It was snowing hard,looking a lot like Christmas,and my mother still had some shopping to do.Of course we were all excited about Christmas,and shopping and all of the snow. Eatons had a Christmas display in their window that year that included a really elaborate set up of model trains,and reindeer and a whole village of gingerbread houses next to this big snowy mountain.It was the best display I'd ever seen in the window at Eatons,which had a display every year.So that year we stopped and looked in at the trains,and it was snowing unbelievably hard.After an hour or so we were loaded down with parcels and we started for home on the city bus,which didn't go up into our neighborhood back then.We would get out on Mountain Road.On this particular night we got off at the corner of Mountain Road and Hastings,because there was a small store there,and we needed to get bread and maybe milk.So it was quite a walk home,and very nearly a blizzard.We were all dressed up in snow suits,except my mother,who was dressed for work,and wasn't much enjoying the weather.It was almost Christmas time,it was snowing so hard we could not even see a block ahead of ourselves,turning very cold,and there was nobody around.My sister and I were happy,looking up into the street lights,watching the snow in their greenish glow,trying to catch snowflakes with our tongues,and talking about building a snowman tomorrow.
When we got home,my mother started baking.My father was not home from work,so he would have been working either eight to four or four to twelve.So,he was either late,trying to get home in a major snowstorm,or safe at work,waiting to start out into the weather at midnight.We were sitting around in the living room,my sister and I coloring in some old coloring books.The Eatons bags which we'd brought home with us were laying there too,and they had some kind of an intricate design on them,so eventually we started coloring those as well,green and red for Christmas.The radio was playing Christmas Songs,and the smell of my mothers cooking filled up the whole house.It seemed like a great time to be alive.
And that was the last day we went to that child care place.I remember it because of the snow when we came home.It really was inconvenient.Really,it wasn't all that far away,but because the rail yards cut it off,you had to go halfway across town to get there,and taxis were expensive.Soon after that we started staying with a lady who lived up the street,on Sumner Avenue.
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