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Category Archives: Childhood

The Book Of Thank You ~ Post 7: The Canadian National Exhibition

01 Monday Aug 2016

Posted by duckykoren in Childhood, Education, Entertainment, Family Stories, Father, Grandmothers, Ice Cream, relationships, Rock And Roll, Thanks, Toronto, Tourism, Uncategorized

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Children, Family, ferris wheel, grandfathers, Grandmothers, grief, midway, Music, Platters, Stories, Toronto, Travel, Writing

 

The month of August always brings thoughts of a family tradition started by my Father in 1966.

That is when we would make our annual visit to the Canadian National Exhibition, or more commonly known to the people of Toronto as the C.N.E.

On the last day of school in late June, every child would be given a free children’s pass to this annual event.

Father was never one to let something free pass him by.

Set in the middle of downtown Toronto and bordering on Lake Ontario, the C.N.E. covers 192 acres of ground filled with a stadium, bandshell, coliseum, midway, fountains, picnic areas and much more.

Using Toronto’s public transportation, Father and I always went on the first Saturday after the grand opening. This usually coincided with the annual grand Scottish Tattoo parades where the sounds of bagpipes could be heard at every turn.

My Father didn’t care for bagpipes, and I remember how he would cover his ears and whisk me off to a quieter venue, a building perhaps, one of the many which would showcase countries from around the world, cars, or home shows.

The food building was a grand concourse featuring kiosks of cuisine from all over the world. I was partial to the corn dogs, while Father always contented himself with a cardboard bowl of spaghetti which cost only twenty-five cents.

Throughout the course of the day we collected free magazines, brochures, samples and souvenirs. By the time we left at the end of the day we would usually have three full bags of treasure to take home. I carried one while Father carried two.

I was allowed to purchase one souvenir of choice which was usually a punching ball, or an invisible dog leash.

The last time that I went to the C.N.E. with my Father was in the early 1990’s.

We brought my two young daughters to share the experience with us.

What I remember the most about that day was when we went to the bandshell where their was a rock and roll revival being held hosted by Bowser from the group SHA-NA-NA. We found a patch of grass to stand and watch. While the Platters were on stage singing their hit UNDER THE BOARDWALK, my daughters and I twirled and danced to the music.

Those were very happy moments.

In 1969, while my Father was away on business, my Grandparents took me for my annual pilgrimage to the C.N.E.

All these years later, it’s hard for me to decide which memories of that day are dearest to me.

Is it the memories of going on the Ferris wheel with my Grandmother?

She handled my rocking the carriage very well. I could be a handful at times.

Shortly after that, as I took another turn on the Ferris wheel alone, she won me an orange stuffed teddy bear. To this day, I think she paid off the carnie just so that she could see the joy on my face as she presented me with a new toy. I named the bear Godfrey.

We were very fortunate that day as our visit to the C.N.E. coincided with the visit of Canada’s current Prime Minister, Pierre Elliot Trudeau, who was there for a cinematic premiere at the Queen Elizabeth building.

My Grandmother and I stood less than ten feet from him as he stood for photographs and welcoming speeches.

At one point, he turned his head left, looked at me and smiled. I smiled back.

Now, my Grandmother has always been of the opinion that the Prime Minister was smiling at her and not me.

Indeed, every time that we found ourselves together in the following thirty-five years we would lovingly spar  with each other over this:

“Trudeau was laughing at me…” she’s say.

“No, he was laughing at me…” I’d respond.

Then we would end the discussion by laughing at ourselves.

One of the last times that I visited the C.N.E. Was in 2005, seven months after my Father had passed away. I brought my two daughters and a good friend.

We made new memories as we walked our way through trapeze artists, upside down rides, tall cups of lemonade, tall ships, log flumes, ice cream, all behind the beautiful backdrop of the Toronto skyline.

It was good to be reacquainted with one of my childhood joys and be able to set aside my lingering grief.

Thank you C.N.E. for those new memories.

May there be many more.

 

 

❤

The Book Of Thank You ~ Post Five: Thank You Uncle Martin

28 Thursday Jul 2016

Posted by duckykoren in Childhood, Television, Thanks, Uncategorized

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Entertainment, Mars, Martian, Ray Walston, Science Fiction, Space, Television

 

A long time ago on a planet far, far away, there came from the planet Mars…

…a Martian.

One day this Martian was flying in his spaceship just above our Earth when things started to go wrong. The next thing he knew was that he had crashed his spaceship into our planet.

Coming quickly to the martian’s aid was a very nice man called Tim O’Hara who worked in a newspaper office.

They become friends.

Before long Tim O’Hara invited Uncle Martin to come and stay with him until he could repair his spaceship which had taken up residence in Tim’s garage.

It was then up to Tim then to come up with a cover story. He told his neighbours and friends that his Uncle Martin had come to stay with him.

That, my dear readers sums up the first episode of what was my first favourite television show which came out in 1963.

This show was called MY FAVOURITE MARTIAN.

I was only six years old.

By way of television, he was one of my after school babysitters at 4:30 every day until my parents arrived home from work.

Uncle Martin had a friendly demeanour, a kind face and a wonderful smile. When he wanted, he could even make antennae rise up from the top of his head which allowed him to become invisible.

Uncle Martin got Tim into all sorts of trouble with his neighbours, his boss and his girlfriends.

Sadly however, Uncle Martin never seemed to be able to fix his ship or get back to Mars.

Eventually, the series ended, and I doubted I would ever see Uncle Martin again.

Then sometime during the 1980’s a new television series AMAZING STORIES by Steven Spielberg premiered on television.

How quickly I rediscovered my six year old glee when I glimpsed him during the opening credits.

Not long after that he became an infrequent visitor on STAR TREK THE NEXT GENERATION and STAR TREK VOYAGER series. He played BOOTHBY, a kind and wizened groundskeeper at Starfleet Academy in San Francisco.

When DVDs where at their height of popularity, I was finally able to purchase the first season of MY FAVOURITE MARTIAN. I was a little nervous when I first sat down to watch it as I wondered if I would find it old, cheesy and filled with dated humour.

My worry quickly turned to wonder as I once again fell under my old Uncle Martin’s spell. The show was as fresh and funny as I had remembered it.

In reality, Uncle Martin was played by Ray Walston who had a long string of successful roles in both television and movies. Tim O’Hara was played by Bill Bixby who later went on to star in the television series THE INCREDIBLE HULK.

In 1999 MY FAVOURITE MARTIAN, the movie was released starring Jeff Daniels as Tim O’Hara and Christopher Lloyd as the Martian.

Perhaps you’ve seen it.

My own Uncle Martin even made a cameo appearance as he revived his role at the end of the movie. I’m sure that I levitated out of my movie theatre seat.

Although the actor Ray Walston passed away January 2001 from lupus, my fond memories of Uncle Martin will be with me always.

For that, I am grateful.

Thank you my dear Uncle Martin.

 

 

 

❤

My.Daily.Distraction ~ Post 169: 1.800.SANDMAN

15 Wednesday Apr 2015

Posted by duckykoren in Childhood, Fiction, Folklore, Health, Myths, Parenting, Stories

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Bed, Children, Fairy Tales, Folklore, Myths, Parenting, Sand, Sandman, Sleep, Sprinkle, Stories

When I was a little girl, I remember the grown ups always referring to the sandman. For example, when my parents wanted me to go to bed, they would tell me that the sandman is coming. They also told me the sandman would take some sand from his bucket and sprinkle it in my eyes to make me go to sleep.

Upon hearing this, a lot of alarm bells would go off inside my head. This sent me a lot of mixed signals, and some of them were pretty scary.

I had some serious questions about this sandman that the adults were always talking about.

Questions like:

Why would my parents allow a strange man into the house?

Will the sand hurt my eyes?

Could he be trusted?

Does he have a proper name?

Does he like to sing?

A grown man intentionally putting sand in a young child’s eyes did not seem socially acceptable to me, even in the 1960’s. If I ever sprinkled sand into my playmates eyes, I would be promptly punished. So, how does the sandman get away with it?

I remember lying awake in my bed while waiting for the sandman. I wanted to see if he was the friendly sort or not. Sometimes, I’d sit by my bedroom window and look up and down the street to see if he was coming. Unfortunately, I always fell asleep before he arrived.

To this day, I still haven’t met him.

I’m beginning to wonder if he really even exists.

So, if you ever see the sandman, could you please do me a favour and pass on the message that I’ve waited a long time to try out that sleeping sand of his.

Tell him to bring me lots of sand.

Tell him to make sure it’s the good stuff.

My.Daily.Distraction ~ Post 151: Lucky Stars

22 Sunday Mar 2015

Posted by duckykoren in Astronomy, Childhood, Fiction, literature, Money, Music, Poetry, saving, Science, Society, songs

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

allowance, astronomy, binoculars, fathers, ice cream, money, Music, piggy bank, Science, Songs, stars, Toronto, universe

I am one of the lucky ones.

This is because when I was seven years old my Father saw to it that I had my own pair of binoculars.

First, he planted the seed that lit the spark.

He always talked about stars, and the moon and the sun. I was barely four years old when my Father would take me for evening walks down Dufferin street, in a popular Toronto suburb. As we walked, he would point to the moon and the stars and tell me how far away they were and how glorious and mysterious this universe was.

He even taught me a little German children’s song called “Weiss Du Wie Viel Sternlein Stehen.”

We would sing it together as we walked the circumference of our apartment building while out for our evening walks.

The melody was lovely, and the sentiment equally so.

Try to imagine me as a four year old child, stumbling through the following German verse:

Weißt du, wieviel Sternlein stehen
An dem blauen Himmelszelt?
Weißt du, wieviel Wolken gehen
Weithin über alle Welt?
Gott der Herr hat, sie gezählet,
Dass ihm auch nicht eines fehlet
An der ganzen großen Zahl,
An der ganzen großen Zahl.

Which in English translates into:

Do you know how many little stars there are
In the wide blue sky?
Do you know how many clouds
There are over the whole wide world?
The Lord God counted them so well,
That none are missing
From the whole big lot of them,
From the whole big lot of them.

My imagination had been sparked.

Then, I started receiving an allowance of ten cents a week when I was five years old.

My father had procured a ceramic piggy bank into which each week we would both ceremoniously insert a dime. This allowance was earned by making my bed, brushing my teeth, and generally for being a good girl.

From time to time, family and friends would give me small monetary gifts, a quarter here, a nickel there. Once, I received a dollar from a Grandparent in a birthday card.

“This is for ice cream,” read my Grandmother’s all too familiar handwriting script.

However, I knew better. Dad’s rules were that should I ever receive any money, half had to be saved. Happily, that still left me enough money for an ice cream cone at the local Dairy Queen.

By the time I was seven old I had saved six dollars. Not long after that, my Father saw a newspaper flyer advertising binoculars on sale at Canadian Tire. He told me that the magnification was very powerful, but I had no idea what that meant.

The price was $14.

Dad and I had an agreement that as long as I kept saving for a pair of binoculars he would help pay for half.

Luckily Dad was so excited about these new binoculars he was willing to throw in the last two dollars that I needed.

I remember the first time that I held those binoculars. They were heavy, shiny, black, and well made. That was a time before everything was made of plastic.

Those binoculars lasted almost fifty years.

An unfortunate fall from a high closet smashed it into two.

I was heartbroken, and kept a small piece of the leather strap as a memento.

It wasn’t until 20 years ago I read Antoine De Saint Exupery’s book, THE LITTLE PRINCE, for the first time.

He swept me away with his simple yet eloquent writer’s voice.

It was in his quiet narrative that I realized that I was indeed one of the lucky ones.

At the beginning of the book the main character explains how he once made a simple drawing.

This picture to everyone else looked like a plain ordinary fedora style hat.

But it was not a hat.

What he had actually drawn was a snake who had just eaten an elephant.

Then he writes:

I have lived a great deal among grown-ups. I have seen them intimately, close at hand. And that hasn’t much improved my opinion of them.

Whenever I met one of them who seemed to me at all clear-sighted, I tried the experiment of showing him my drawing number one, which I have always kept. I would try to find out, so, if this was a person of true understanding. But, whoever it was, he, or she, would always say: that is a hat. Then I would nevertalk to him about Boa constrictors, or primeval forest, or stars. I would bring myself down to his level. I would talk to him about bridge, and golf, and politics, and neckties. And the grown-up would be greatly pleased to have met such a sensible man.

This passage was an epoch in my life.

For years, I felt myself strange that I could sit in a circle of women at work who were endlessly discussing their searches for store coupons, pretty window dressings, the latest gossip, and feel completely alone. They became silent when I voiced my passion for social justice, reading, writing, and science.

In time, I began to eat alone.

That’s when I began to seek out like minded people, who In St. Exupery’s words I could about talk about…

Boa constrictors, or primeval forest, or stars…

I found them, or rather, we found each other.

Yes, I am one of the lucky ones…

I have been since I was four years old when my Father taught me a song about stars during an evening walk that lit the spark that led to a love of astronomy, primevil forests, children’s songs, and Antoine De Saint Exupery.

Thank you Father.

Thank you Friends.

X

My.Daily.Diversion Post 4: My Colourful 1st Life Lesson

04 Tuesday Nov 2014

Posted by duckykoren in Childhood, Children, Education, Society

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Candy, Color, Colour, Doctors, Education, Green, Learning, Lollipop, School, Society

My first memories of colours, candy, and candy colours were the lollipops that were dispensed by my doctor after every visit.

I was a very young four years old when my doctor would always ask after each visit:

“And what colour of lollipop would you like?”

I was so young at that time I had not yet learned about colours and their different names.

Getting no answer, the doctor then assuming that I had no preference always went to the default colour…

…green.

Obviously, everyone went for the red and the purple ones.

Hence, there was always an over abundance of green lollipops in his lollipop bowl.

Little did he know that I didn’t care for green lollipops.

I had absolutely had my fill of them.

All I ever got was green lollipops.

And finally one day at nursery school I finally began to understand what the word “colour” was all about.

I even learned the name of a color and save this epiphany for my next trip to the doctor.

At long last game the day when once again took me for a visit to the doctor.

I eagerly waited for the moment he would ask me what color of lollipop I would like to have.

When he finally held the bowl out to me he asked what color lollipop I would like,

I looked into his eyes and said…

“Green.”

It’s hard to describe how utterly heartbroken I was when I was handed yet another green lollipop.

“And what do you say for the lollipop?”

Mother asked me as I took the ugly green lollipop from the doctor…

“Thank you,” I said trying to muster a smile.

1st life lesson learned by me in 1963 as my Mother drove me home while I enjoyed my green lollipop:

What’s the big deal about adults and colour?

… Because even green lollipops can taste wonderful.

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