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Growing up in Stratford

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Stratford

I grew up in Stratford where I lived with my parents, maternal grandmother, older brother

and sister, Bruce and Jean, and younger brother Arn. Stratford was a city of 19,000 surrounded by country, bush and farmland. The winding Avon River which was really a damned up stream, provided swimming, rafting, skating and hockey. This was before T.V. and with one movie theatre we had to make our own fun. Our entertainment coincided with the weather: circuses in the summer, cowboys

and Indians, rafting on the river like Huckleberry Finn, pulley rides on a rope from our climbing tree into a hedge, playing Tarzan in the abundant trees which also served as Sherwood Forest for Robin Hood games. A teepee made of blankets inspired corn roasts while a dugout in the garden was our hideout for smoking birch-bark cigarettes and stolen tobacco which made us sick. We had at different times, dogs, rabbits, pigeons, ferret, white mice, an owl, crows and turtles.

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In the winter we skated, played hockey, sleighed, tobogganed, skied, snowshoed, hunted rabbits with snares and cured their pelts with salt. We built snow forts, igloos and snowmen and had snowball wars.While skiing down the steep railway track hill on my own homemade skis, I fell on my face and broke a front tooth baring the nerve to the bitter cold. It was painful but the dentist Dr. Baker capped it with a gold band. Years later the nerve died and I was given a permanent gold front tooth.

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My brother Bruce, who was five years older, was a role model since my father was away a lot as a travelling salesman. He was a talented artist and athlete. I joined the YMCA and took up boxing, wrestling, fencing, basketball, swimming and gymnastics and won all the athletic cups for track and field in High School that also bore my brother’s name.

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Alec The Crow

I have fond memories of growing up in Stratford and one of the favorites was

Alec the Crow, which was also a favorite with my three daughters. When I was twelve my brother Bruce brought home a baby crow, which he had retrieved from its nest in the Old Grove. We named it Alec and fed it bread and milk and worms. As it grew older it became a neighbourhood pet and was free to flap about in the yard. It rode on my shoulder or the handlebars of my third hand welded bicycle. I was sure it could say words like “Alec” and “Hello” although others couldn’t understand. Alec was free to fly about the neigh borhood but late in the fall he took off with other crows to fly south for the winter. When the birds returned in the spring. Alec came back and perched in the fir trees nearby and our front balcony. We put out food, which he ate, and after a week he flew off with the other crows.The following spring Alec returned with the flock, but this time he had a mate. We knew it was Alec by his cul tivated “caw” but this time he didn’t sit on the balcony. In a few days he left with the others. Each spring when the crows returned I was sure one of them was Alec.

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Third in a Family of Four

I believe the order in which you are born has a lot to do with how you turn out. I was third in a family

of four kids. Bruce the older by six years, Jean my sister two years older, and younger by two years my brother Arn.My father was a travelling salesman, away from home for two weeks and then one week. My grandmoth er also lived with us (my mother’s mother).Bruce took advantage of Dad’s absence and became a young “hellion” - a frequent visitor to the princi-pal’s office at high school. Being the only girl, Jean got a lot of attention. Arn had turburcular bones and spent a year in the Sick Kids’ Hospital in Toronto.

My mother talked on the phone to her friend Mrs. Dempsey every afternoon. I would overhear her talking about Bruce, Jean, and Arn mostly and always wanted for her to mention me. I felt left out and developed a smile to get attention. I was a “good little boy.” I developed my own world of adventure and read books like Knights of the Round Table — books about saving some damsel in distress. Anyway I became an adven turer.

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Bruce was a role model, a talented artist and athlete. I had to win all the cups he had won for athletics at school and beat his records by training my butt off. Jean became a teacher. Bruce had exceptional tal ent and a few businessmen got him portrait commissions to pay his way through the Toronto College of Art, and some of these paintings of school principals and so on are still in Stratford — one of the Queen hangs

Portrait of William Stapleton, by Bruce Stapleton, 1943

in the Armories. He moved to Toronto and became an art director/artist at Rolph Clark Stone — the largest lithographer in Canada. He was excused for war service to do war posters for the Red Cross and won an award for creating a new standard for American poster art. Part of the reason was me being a bomber pilot in England. He painted a nice portrait of me in my uniform just hours before I left for overseas.

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I would send him sketches occasionally and years later, when he was doing a portrait of my daughter Judy, he told her that I was a better artist. His wife Isabel Orr of Stratford was a dependent woman. Anyway it didn’t work out and Bruce took to drinking. He got fired, and then went to work for E.S. & A. Robinson but continued to drink on the job. A move to Vancouver helped a little, and so did A.A. He died at only 70. The National Archives is still looking for some of his work.My father was artistic and encouraged our efforts. He read poetry and could recite all of Grey’s Elegy in a Country Graveyard until he was 80. Arn became the youngest V.P. at General Motors worldwide. He was a lawyer. Jean married well, which is what was expected of girls in those days. Her husband Hugh Shortill became a millionaire.

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My first recollection of Arn was when he was brought back from Toronto where

he had spent a year in the Sick Children’s Hospital. Mother had him dressed in a white fur coat and hat with a fur whisk standing up like a feather. He had tubercular bones and was operated on by specialist Doctor Allen Brown.This meant he had to be protected from further injury and colds so mother kept a close eye on him. My parents couldn’t afford more medical bills. As he got older mother wouldn’t allow him to play sports like football or hockey for fear of injury. He did play basketball and could have made the Raptors.When he was about three he decided to strike out on his own and took off in his wagon for the railway station- about 2 miles away. The whole town was alerted, including the police chief who lived next door. Everyone was frantic. Then someone reported a small boy and a wagon at the railway station. It was Arn, just watching the trains. He didn’t have money for a ticket to Toronto.This overprotection affected his later life. He recently said that all his life everything had always been done for him. I understood.

Brother Arn

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Andy Bob Johnson was the younger brother of George “the snake eater”, our circus attrac tion.

He and my younger brother, Arn, were playmates. Andy had a bit of a lisp which made him sound “wimpish”.Andy’s “thing” was reciting this poem, which I still remember:

David was a shepherd lad And a hefty wittle cuss. He said to old Gowieth “You made an awful muss”. Gowieth said, “a looka the kid, a looka the kid to bust”. So David picked a pwebble up And heaved it through his cwust:

The Johnson’s had a coal business with a barn, horses and a hired man. During the war Andy was in England serving as adjutant at an army base. One day, a soldier entered his office and instead of saluting, he said “Well, if it isn’t Andy Bob Johnson” It was the hired man.

Andy Bob

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Before TV and radio, kids had to create their own fun. Reading books like Huckleberry Finn and Tom

Sawyer sparked the imagination. We already had the Avon River a couple of blocks away which we enlarged into the Mississippi. All we needed was a raft. Now there happened to be a lumberyard on Gore Street, two blocks from where we lived on Cambria Street. “We” was Howie Sylvester, my friend (a year older) who became Huck, and I was Tom. After scouting the yard we “borrowed” two doors and some boards and hauled them down through the old grove to the banks of the “Mississippi”. With borrowed tools, a houseboat took shape with a little cabin for rough weather.The raft, which we called the Mississippi Queen, was concealed in the large willow trees over hanging the river. It even floated, so we paddled downstream in the shallow water, then pulled it back up with ropes to our hideout. We kept it more or less secret so the big kids wouldn’t horn in. Now, it took a great deal of imagi nation to convert the Avon River into the Mississippi. The Avon River was really just a large stream that had been dammed up to form a pond. Raw sewage was drained into the lower part so it was rather dirty and smelled. We fished out condoms with a stick. In the spring when the ice broke up, the river became rapids, which added some risk. We even rode on ice flows on the shallow pond, occasionally getting wet. Riding down the rapids was a real thrill and it took the two of us to keep it from getting grounded. Huck and Tom were river pirates and even

Mississippi Queen

hoisted a flag. Once we even let Margie Dempsey (a neighbor girl) come aboard after being sworn to secrecy. We hadn’t reckoned on getting the raft back upstream in the fast flowing rapids to its mooring place in the willows. The raft had to be beached on the shore, open to view. That was the last I saw of the Mississippi Queen. It was probably stolen by some lawless river pirates and taken to the Gulf of Mexico (no insurance).

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Around the same time we had Alec the crow, my brother Bruce acquired a white ferret. As usual, I

got to feed and look after it. Ferrets can be real mean and I wore heavy gloves when handling him. They are good rabbit hunters. They chase the rabbit out of its hole and then you snare the rabbit or shoot it. One day the ferret escaped. On the way home from school I often dropped into the corner grocery store

Aaach A White Rat! Stratford 1927to buy some candy. The owner, Frieda Signer, a short fat German woman, was not behind the counter but I heard her yelling “aaach a white rat! “ in the back of the store. There she was, standing on a chair swinging a broom at what she thought was a white rat. I didn’t want to admit to ownership of the ferret for fear he had done damage that I would have to pay for, so I quietly left. That was the last time I saw the ferret.