boyhood sketch 21. HALLOWEEN HAUL

Mom sewed these garments

It was Murray and me. Neale had not yet arrived. I was ten and Murray was five. Household money was not spent on frivolity such as costumes. Halloween was what we kids made it. We were originals. We used cardboard boxes, fabrics, watercolour paint. That's the best that could be said. Families around our home were as poor as we were. They drop donuts and homemade stuff in our bags. We wanted candy, expensive candy. This year we asked Dad to drive us a few blocks, first to the streets around Montebello Park and then to the Glenridge area, posh homes, gleaming luxury cars. Dad dropped us off and parked and waited for us. We rang doorbells and at each home a stylishly dressed man or women greeted us, invited us inside, looked us over, and sometimes asked us if we could sing. Could we sing? We'd confidently answer "sure." What songs did we know? We were Sunday School kids. I would harmonize a tenor with Murray's little boy soprano. "Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so…." We'd sing the entire song and the people would applaud, stunned by the pure sound. They loaded our bags with great Halloween gifts. Within a few blocks we had more than we could carry and we'd ask Dad to take us home.

boyhood sketch 5. MONEY PANTS

here we were maybe 8 and 3 yrs

I was ten when Murray was five. He was a beautiful boy with long curly blond hair. I had already aged out of long hair and never had curls, simply white blonde waves. Murray wanted to follow me everywhere, and only as he grew older did I welcome him. Two houses up the street from our home at 10 Clark Street was a lane entrance to the Legion Hall and its large parking lot. One late afternoon, Murray and I wandered there. Men came out of the Hall after some drinks and they looked past me and saw Murray. He was an attraction to them, wearing tiny army fatigue trousers with large pockets down the sides of the legs, and that curly hair of course. They were inebriated, and this was one time that being drunk paid off, for Murray that is. By that I mean the men were drunk. And listen to this. The tipsy men told Murray to hold his pockets open. They would try to throw money into his pockets. Everything Murray caught in those pockets, he could keep they said. They threw coins, nickels, dimes and quarters and fifty-cent pieces. His pants became heavy with cash. Then one man jokingly said, "Let's get his pants.” Five year old Murray was sure he meant it. Murray took off, faster than Usain Bolt or any other Olympic sprinter and he was home before the men stopped laughing. They had fine entertainment at a reasonable price. And me? No curly hair and no cash.

boyhood sketch 1. FIRST TV ON THE BLOCK

I remember the boy that I was, and the life I lived. In a series of daily sketches I now recall the years from 1949-1956 when I was ages 7-13 in St. Catharines. Ontario. The stories are all true. 

I wouldn't trade my childhood for one with all the electronics today. I had a bike. I had imagination. I had a local library. I had really tall trees in my yard. I had friends on my street. We lived in simple homes on Clark Street. We were happy. We didn’t have a television but Eddie McArthy did. He lived three houses up the street on the other side. Each evening before supper, neighbourhood kids were allowed inside to watch Sagebrush Trail, Howdy Doody and Hopalong Cassidy. After about an hour when Mrs. McArthy called Eddie to the table, we knew it was time to go home. Brothers Ronnie & Jerry Barr, Joey Daniels, my brother Murray, and I never overstayed. On a couple of occasions Mrs. McArthy asked us whether we would like to stay for supper. Murray and I declined. We were certain that what our mom would prepare was far better than what we saw on Eddie's supper table. 

EDWARD RICHARD UNRUH DIED MAY 1, 2008

May 1st is the anniversary of my Dad's death. I cannot own him by myself. We are three sons of Edward Richard Unruh. Our father passed away on May 1, 2008.

Murray, Neale and I will remember him with pleasure today. Such a good man, a gentle man he was. Faithful, constant, loving in a reserved manner appropriate to his generation I suppose. Through the years, even as he aged, he seemed enduring, unchanging, always there when I visited, or Neale visited or when Murray regularly took him for a coffee at Horton's. Murray and Diane know our lasting gratitude for their years of loving care. Even during the last years when Mom's dementia required her care in a nursing facility, Dad remained in his apartment, looking after most of his own needs. And then he was gone, quietly, peacefully.

Like millions of other men, Dad distinguished himself, as son, a husband, and a father. I would like you to know him. He was born the last of four children to Cornelius K. Unruh and his wife Katherine. His childhood home was the prairie town of Hepburn, Saskatchewan, where he acquired a grade eleven education. Then he began to work at numerous jobs. Edward, fell in love with Tina Martha (Doerksen) Willems, four years younger than himself. Willems was her step family surname. Doerksen was on her birth certificate from Montana where her birth father Isaac Doerksen died when she was two years of age. Their love took them happily through 66 years until Mom passed away. In his twenties he owned and operated a 'filling' station as it was called (gas station). Together, Mom And Dad set up a coffee shop on the main street. Then WWII happened and Dad enlisted in the Canadian Air Force, which was an exceptional act in a town of Mennonite pacifists. He was an airplane mechanic. When the war was over, they looked at the future for their family, measured employment options, and the many factory jobs in Ontario seemed attractive. Dad, Mom and me at age four, moved to St. Catharines. Dad worked for Thompson Products, Ontario Paper Mill and finally Anthes Imperial, where he remained for over forty years. Anthes built furnaces and dad worked in the heat of the foundry, in the cab of an aerial crane, and then for decades on the assembly line. He often came home exhausted. He would clean up and settle down with his newspaper, sometimes draped over his face as he napped on the sofa. His work ethic was a commendable model for his three boys. Well into our own manhood, one day we asked him why he stayed at such difficult work for so long. A six-word reply revealed the man. “I did it for my boys.”

He purchased a family home before he turned forty years of age. He took his family to a rented cottage for summer vacations. He took us for Sunday afternoon car rides. He sang with us. He yodeled. He was proud of us. He loved our Mother. When we married, his love for our brides gave them a strong sense of comfort in an extended family. He trusted in God, and he supported all three of us as we took on Christian service vocations.

Dad never took a leadership position at church. If he was asked to be on committees or boards he declined. He knew his strengths and limitations. He enjoyed serving but the service had to be in the areas of comfort and competence. Smart man. Private man. Honorable man.

In November 2007, our Mom passed away. The night before the memorial service as our family stood together at her coffin, Dad said, "Goodnight sweetheart, I'll see you soon." His loss was profound, we are sure of that. Yet Dad was stoic. Mom had been ill for several years and it was time for her to go. Perhaps a man knows when it is his time as well. One evening six months later, he enjoyed a dinner at Murray and Diane's home. Beth and Eric were there, as were their daughters Selah and Karis. After the meal Murray drove him home. Before bed, a nurse arrived to dispense medication but found Dad lying on the floor. With no evident bruises, it was supposed that he felt unwell and was heading for the couch, but lay down on the rug and died there.

I AM 70 & I MISS MY FATHER

My father died five years ago. I wasn’t thinking about Dad as I drove to the Library to work on several communications I will deliver soon. I saw a man walking. His posture, his gait, his hat and glasses instantly activated a memory of my dad. As soon as the idea occurred that it was him, I corrected myself with the comprehension that I had lost him.

I was overcome by a sense of my loss. I miss my dad so much. My brothers Murray and Neale know this loss too, but so do our wives, because he was a gentle man and sweet towards his own sweetheart and to ours as well.

A fresh rush of gratitude fills me now as I recall that this humble soft-spoken factory line worker charmed grandchildren, nieces and nephews and friends. He was a man with whom it was natural to feel safe. He was good company, expected little, asked for nothing, had a generous spirit. If he was lonely when Mom left six months sooner, he kept this private. And then, the man who was always there when I would go home, who never seemed to change, was gone.

“Today, I felt your absence once again, Dad.”

THE INTEGRAL VALUE OF WHISTLING

Whistling. We must preserve the whistle.

My father whistled. I remember his whistle, musical, on pitch, pleasing to hear.  Only much later upon reflection did I associate his whistle with his temperament and his state of mind. Dad whistled most of the time, and he was predictably content. Only on the rare occasion when life was stress-filled, was there a conspicuous absence of the whistle.

I remember learning to whistle as a boy and the habit, I prefer to call it the ability, is identified with me almost as much as with my father. It is a virtual compulsion, an addiction perhaps. I whistle when I am feeling positive and comfortable and I also feel well when I whistle. Whistling is an expression of pleasure with life and how I relate at the moment to my place in the world.

My brother Murray similarly displays the aptitude. It requires no external stimuli but a radio, CD or iPod will certainly inspire the whistle.  When Murray and I have enjoyed the privilege of painting together, we are invariably engaged in a symphonic duet.

I do not otherwise hear much whistling around me. People seldom whistle. That’s an indicator I believe of the quality of life and how it is being experienced within this information laden, distracted, digitized, driven and frenetic world.  So I am determined to foster the art of the whistle with my grandchildren. Each of my grandchildren has come to me at one time or another to demonstrate with pride an ability to generate a sound with curled tongue, over teeth and through pursed lips. Last night I asked Kale and Kadence to let me hear them whistle. Even with a missing front tooth Kale could do an abbreviated scale.  Certainly there are assorted and significant contributors to life fulfillment but the whistle is still one of the most personal and sincere confirmations of peace within.  Listen for the whistle.  

- REUNION TOUR - STAGE THREE - part 1 - DORCHESTER ONTARIO & VISITING NEALE

Dorchester Mill Pond, watercolour by Hilda Markson
Gray

My youngest brother is Neale, eleven years my junior. What were my parents doing spacing their children apart so far, five years between my brother Murray and I and then this substantial gap to the youngest? Neale was twelve years of age when Christine and I were married in 1967 – Canada’s Centennial Year. On Sunday afternoon I drove from Port Stanley to Dorchester where Neale and Kathy have lived for over thirty years. They live in a home located nod a across from farm fields which after all these years now contain a Shoppers Drug store on a far corner and will soon have a senior’s assisted care facility directly in front of them. The immediate country view will be gone but the drive to and from work will still wind through fields of corn and other grains.

Dorchester is rural and agricultural yet it serves London as a bedroom community for people who prefer to live away from the urban urgency and willing to make the 20 minute commute. Nonetheless, Dorchester has its own distinctive identity. I walked many of its streets this morning in the warm Ontario AM sunshine at 6:45 and I loved it. Brick is the exterior building material for most homes and I love the look and the durability as compared to the wooden exteriors of most of the BC homes with which I am now most familiar. Husky’s gas station sold me a Globe and Mail as I walked and Tim Horton’s sold me a coffee and a sausage and biscuit which I did not share or reveal to Christine or Neale and Kathy when I returned to their home. But they got me again with prying questions I could not deny. The three slept in until 8:30 AM and we are about to go out for breakfast. Neale’s and Kathy’s daughter Amy and husband Chris Hollywood will join us.

Last night at Neale’s we hung out for a while, enjoyed a great dinner of ribs and potatoes a la crock pot and then went for a walk to the Mill Pond to look for turtles and frogs. How invigorating to walk past bulrushes, to see families of wood ducks, a soaring crane coming in for a fluid splashdown. And then sleep in the darkest of nights, without city lights.

FATHER'S DAY 2011 - EDWARD RICHARD UNRUH

My dad was a good man. He was easy to love.

I can remember him being angry only a couple of times. Once it was with a man who was troubling my mother. Another time it was with me as a youth and I deserved his annoyance.

Edward was his name. Edward Richard. English names bestowed on a Mennonite boy born on the prairies of Canada. His father Cornelius, a more common Mennonite name broke with custom. Only the oldest son carried the father’s name and it was Anglicized as well to Neale. The middle brother was Harry. Three sons, the eldest five years older than the second and eleven years older than the youngest who was my dad.

Dad and mother Tina had three sons, me Ronald James (the eldest) and I am five years older than Murray Dennis and eleven years older than Neale Bryan. In the early years of his fatherhood Dad wanted us to be thoroughly Canadian, hampered in no way by any hang-ups derived from the heritage. Little could he know how important the connection with our family history would be to us when we were adults. He and Mom spoke the Low German dialect at home with which they themselves had been raised in their Saskatchewan homes of Hepburn and Waldheim. Since I was almost five years of age before Dad and Mom moved to Ontario, I was familiar with the dialect, understanding much of it but not able to speak it. For years I did not let on that I understood what they were saying when Mom and Dad spoke privately using Low German.

Our Dad never struck us as a complex man. He was intelligent, interests in politics, current affairs and sports. He completed grade eleven, had no skilled trade but worked at available manual jobs. He was enlisted in the Canadian Air Force, never saw overseas action but was posted in the Yukon. Following WWII, our Dad, a hard working man, began a lifetime of work in factories. He was in love with his wife, committed to the care and provision of his three children, appreciated his church and what the Sunday lesson gave him for the week ahead.

He was not an ambitious man. He respected himself yet he may not have understood how well he was liked by others. He was friendly, helpful, kind. He never owned very much yet he shared what he could. He was satisfied easily. A day’s work and a day’s pay, and supper meal, and a newspaper, a nice place to sit in the back yard, a car to move the family around, a couple of weeks of summer vacation, a small pension at the end of a long time with the company.  He expected no more than that. God was good to him.

I respected him very much. As a young man if I was tempted to do anything that was at all wicked, my esteem for him, held me back. Of course he was much younger then, and most of our memories are of him advanced in years, still with a wonderful sense of humour and a pleasant spirit and endearing love for our Mom. I miss him a great deal. He died at age 93 and that was three years ago.

June 19 Addendum: Father's Day came on Sunday and I was asked to preach at our local church. I chose to speak about "God the Father" and I used the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6. The prayer begins with "Our Father who is in heaven..." Christine had prepared a light lunch and my son's and daughter's families came. After dinner I took my five grandchildren for a long walk to the school yard to play on the apparatus and then to the corner store for a slurpy. We hung around until early evening snacking on lunch leftovers. We enjoyed a good family day. I like that. 

From the Prairies to Ontario

It was 1947.

The Second World War had concluded. My father was home from his service in the Canadian Air Force. Canada had the role of trainer of pilots and aircrew for the Allied war effort under the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, an agreement signed in December 1939 by Canada, Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. Dad was one of the aircraft maintenance personnel that prepared aircraft, so he was stationed in Ontario, Vancouver and Skagway, Alaska. He had never shipped overseas.

Following he war my father and mother worked in their home town of Hepburn Saskatchewan but opportunities to advance oneself were absent so they chose the great adventure of moving east, to the golden triangle, the Niagara Peninsula, and specifically St. Catharines, the Garden City. I was four years old.

My parents found a run down wooden shack on Geneva Street in which they could live as they looked for work and settled into this new life. My mom was pregnant. I remember this place being back from the busy road, and consisting of one room, with a curtain pulled over the section where mom’s and dad’s bed was. An out house serviced us. Sunlight shone between the wall boards so before winter, my parents moved into a home owned by my Uncle Ed Willems.

On September 7th 1947 my bother, oops Freudian slip, my brother Murray was born. He was a beautiful looking little guy. It was maddening. He got so much attention. As he grew he had the blond, curly hair and blue eyes. I recall the day of his birth because after sharing with me his good news of a second son, my father took me to Montebello Park and gave me a gift box in which I found a pair of roller skates, the kind that are fastened to shoes with a tightening key. They are also known as quad skates. He sat and watched me for a long time as I skated around the wooden pavilion. The gift was not only celebrative of Murray’s birth but in anticipation of my birthday the following week, September 13th when I turned five years of age.

Montebello Park is located on Ontario Street, in the heart of the downtown area. With an adjacent band shell that still hosts musical concerts today. Montebello Park remains a prominent memory from my childhood and young adult years. On Sunday night my parents would walk with us to sit on a blanket to hear a summer evening concert. Often Mom brought some snacks for us to munch on while we listened. It was in the rose garden of this park that Christine and I and our wedding party had our pictures taken when we began our life together as husband and wife on August 12, 1967.

Pictures
*Dad (Edward)and his first two sons, Ron and Murray
*1910 Montebello Park
*Quad Roller Skates
*Montebello Park Pavillion and Band Stand 2009
*Ron and Murray