A Bad Day on Portage Avenue

Summer time in Winnipeg can be just gorgeous! It was another beautiful sunny day with the temperature hovering around 30C. I had got on a Portage bus heading downtown at around 2 o'clock. My plan was to do a little bit of window shopping and then to take in a movie. It was a day off from work and I was really enjoying the day.

There are some days when you are as young as I was then that you think you will live forever.  You are in tip-top shape and looking forward to what the world has to offer you. No adventure is too difficult to enjoy. And so it was that I was riding the bus and looking out of the window at the passing scene on the north side of Portage Avenue.  I was seated in the row behind the bus driver about halfway down to the rear of the bus. As we slowly passed the building that now houses the RCMP headquarters, my safe world took a strange and brutal turn.

A car started to enter Portage Avenue from Dominion Street. It was starting to turn west on Portage when suddenly out of nowhere a motorcycle appeared. It was obviously exceeding the speed limit and apparently the car driver did not see the motorcyclist's approach.

There was a horrendous thump as the motorcycle slammed into the car where the rear passenger seat was located. The driver was immediately hurtled at the roof of the car and continued in a cart-wheeling motion about a hundred feet through the air to land in a crumpled heap on the pavement.

There was no movement from the motorcyclist. By this time the bus had stopped and we, the passengers and the driver were looking aghast at what had just transpired. A crowd of people gathered in the area where the motorcyclist lay. By this time all westbound traffic on Portage Avenue had ground to a halt.

Soon you could hear the sirens of an ambulance approaching. The bus driver had to move on. I debated getting off and becoming part of the curious group gawking at the accident victim. But I didn't because I was still in shock.

That day I came to realize how tenuous is our grip on life on our good planet Earth. One second you are carefree, happy, and enjoying life. The next minute you can be dead. I learned via news reports that the motorcyclist  had been killed instantly on impact with the car. He was dead  and somewhere was his unsuspecting family still carrying on with their lives, unaware of how their lives would soon be impacted. The driver of the car would carry with him forever the pain of what had transpired in a moment of either inattention or carelessness. He would carry with him forever the fact he was partly responsible for the death of a human being.

That was 53 years ago and it is still seared into my memory. I think it was then that I learned to enjoy each day for what it offered because you never knew what |"fate" had in store for you!

The Grand Theatre

The Grand Theatre opened about 1916 as the Province Theatre offering vaudeville and films.
The Province closed in 1937. The interior was remodeled in the art deco style and included a new marquee and signage outlined in neon. The newly renovated theatre was renamed the Rio, reopening in 1938. Sub run double features were the normal fare until it closed once again in 1950.
A further minor remodeling, mostly to the marquee and signage was carried out and it reopened in the same year with yet another (and final) name change to the Grand. I grew very familiar with this theatre in the winter of 1960-61.

I had just turned eighteen in November and that was about the time work for me at the CNR came to an almost complete halt. I worked a shift a week, sometimes two, if I was lucky, and on a rare occasion I got in a third shift. Usually that came when I would have to double through from the afternoon shift which started at four o'clock and ended at midnight. A late book-off would result in me getting a jump on some of my "older spare board members, seniority wise" and I would "double" through. That meant sixteen consecutive hours with no overtime because the midnight shift was the start of a new day and thus didn't qualify as over-time in the CNR books.

This meant I had a lot of spare time on my hands. The few friends I had in Winnipeg were working low paying jobs working for minimum wages during the normal working days. There were just no decent paying jobs available for us young ones! I couldn't meet with therm in the evenings because most of us were broke, lived far apart, and because I had to hang around home waiting for a possible call to work. Oh, to have had a cell phone back then.

My shifts were almost always afternoons with the occasional midnight shift and these fell mostly on weekends.This meant I had almost no social life. I was now living with my parents on Maryland Street in a suite on the top floor(3rd) of a large house near Misericordia Hospital. My dad managed to secure a day job delivering kosher meat for a Jewish butcher in the north end whose customers mostly lived in River Heights. We pooled our salaries. My folks had seen the writing on the wall as to the long range success of a small mixed farm in Saskatchewan. They auctioned off most of their belongings, and all their machinery and livestock, rented their land to a neighboring farmer, and followed their two sons to the beckoning glare of the neon lights of Winnipeg.

After checking with my spare board supervisor to see if there was even a remote possibility of working an afternoon shift -  and most often there was no such possibility - I would walk to the Grand Theatre which was located a half-block north of Portage Avenue and Fort Street at 209 Notre Dame Avenue where currently the space it occupied in 1960 is an open space, part of a bank plaza/park. This was a distance of a little over two kilometres or about a 30 minute walk. I would pay my admission fee of 25 cents and go in and buy a large ten cent bag of popcorn and settle in for a triple feature of second run movies.

There were many people there in similar straits and we could spend the time from one p.m. to six p.m. being temporarily released from our boredom. The movies were good B movies and they certainly beat out the viewing on the local  channels. Prior to November 12, CBWT was the only English channel available.  On November 12 CJAY TV (now CKY TV) and KCND started televising. One needed an antenna to pull in KCND which was located in Pembina in North Dakota.
With the exception of some programming on the hard-to-get KCND, the daytime fares on the local channels were unappealing to me.

When the movie was over I would walk home and wait for a possible phone call for a midnight shift. By walking to and from the Grand, I saved 30 cents, which defrayed the cost of my admission and half of the cost of my popcorn. So I paid 35 cents for a whole afternoon of entertainment.

I averaged 2 or 3 trips during the week to the Grand that winter. When spring started to near, more workers started scheduling holidays and more trains were also being run by the CNR. My number of shifts started to go up and my Grand Theatre attendance correspondingly dropped.

The Grand operated in it’s last years as a "grind house" leaning heavily on double and triple features consisting of westerns and ‘B’ movies. The Grand closed in 1961 and was demolished along with surrounding buildings to make way for the new high rise bank tower. With its demise I felt like I had lost a true friend.

The Long Walk and the Salisbury House Reward!

I stamp the snow off my boots as I enter the CNR yard office in Transcona. I have just come back from about a two mile walk checking three tracks in the main yard for my chief clerk. I know he didn't really need them checked but he hated to see me sitting in the yard office just because I had efficiently and quickly completed my checking assignments for the whole shift. He had sent me out into the snowy night because he could. I suspected that he didn't like me but I couldn't figure out why. All the other chief clerks thought I was a great worker and often specifically asked for me.

For those of you who don't know, checking means walking beside a railway track from one end of the yard where there is a switch to the opposite end of the yard where there is another switch. It is these switches which the switchmen (unique choice of name) throw open when they are "breaking"up a newly arrived train by shunting cars into assigned tracks. It is a car checker's job - that would be me on this night - to then at different times throughout the day record the cars on a specific track. In this way the chief yard agent will know where any particular car is at any particular time.

With a board clutched in my left arm and a checking sheet  - basically a long manila tag sheet with ruled lines on it with dimensions of 30 cm by 10 cm - bound to the board with elastic bands, and a switchman's lamp clamped tightly under my left armpit, I walk between the adjoining tracks and check the cars on my left side. I record the car's origin e.g CNR, CPR, B&O, ATSF, etc. and its identifying number. By looking at the first three numbers, one can identify whether a car is a box car, an automobile carrier, a gondola car, a flat car, a cattle stock car, a horse stock car, a hopper car, a tank car, a caboose, or a work train car. I also record whether it has any Bad Order tags on it - these are B/O tags signifying that there is a problem with the car and that it should be taken to the car repair shop in the yard. I also register whether it is loaded. Boxcars have special metal seals on the doors if they are loaded. Other cars you simply bang on the side or check the car to see if it is loaded with any material with any raw materials or any load on a flat car. Sometimes I will check two tracks at a time making sure I enter the car numbers on the right corresponding sheet.

I had done this all evening and now I was looking anxiously at the clock. I had asked my chief clerk if he could let me go fifteen minutes early so I could catch the last black and white bus back to Winnipeg. It left at midnight and from where I was in the yard office, it was at least a ten minute walk to the small shack where the bus sat idling.

My boss was being a complete "dick-head" because he said if he let me go early, he would have to let everyone go early. I had told him everyone else here lived in Transcona. I was the only one who needed to catch that bus. He smiled without humor and told me, "Tough!"

As I sat there fuming, he noticed that other staff members were giving him the evil eye. Finally with a great show of largess  at eight minutes to twelve midnight, he said that I could go.

I ran out of the building and with my parka flapping, my switchman's lamp bouncing on my arm, and my boots slipping and sliding on the packed snow, I ran for the bus. As I neared the bus shack I could see that the bus had already left. Great! I was stranded. I could walk back to the yard office and spend the night sleeping on a chair in the brightly lit office or I could "suck-it-up" and walk the thirteen plus kilometres back to Maryland Street in Winnipeg.

Afraid I might do something rash if I went back to the yard office and the chief clerk was still there, I chose to walk home. I followed Pandora Street to Plessis Road and then followed Plessis south to Dugald Road. The cold started to set in but the snow had stopped falling. I followed Dugald Road until it merged into Marion Street.  All the walking kept me warm inside my WWII army surplus parka. It was heavy but not very warm. It was the exertion of the fast walking that was keeping me warm.

There was little or no traffic. Because most of the area was industrial there were no city buses running at this hour. Marion Street got me through St. Boniface and across the Red River on Main Street to Broadway. I followed Broadway Avenue up to Langside Street. I was now only a handful of blocks from home.

But I was starving from all the exertions of the day plus the long hike from Transcona. I must have walked thirty miles that day and my "supper" had been skimpy and hastily thrown together. I had almost enough money for a Salisbury House Big breakfast. I knew the three employees who worked the midnight shift and I knew that they would give me credit until I could pay them back.

I walked in and made for a space at the counter. The three employees I knew were working. I called them Larry, Curly, and Moe because they were a lot of fun and were always pulling pranks on each other or on steady customers they knew. The place was almost full. There were people who had stopped in for coffee or a late or early breakfast or for simply a Mr. Big Salisbury nip; policemen - no policewomen on the street back then - some cab drivers, the usual number of late party-goers who were "putting a lid" on their night of drinking, plus a few "street people". Street people back then were the social outcasts of the time.  Some were gay, some were transvestites, some obviously had some mental incapacity. But at the Sal's House after midnight all were welcome and all were accepted for what they were and no judgements were made or questions asked.

Occasionally some forgot the unwritten rules for behavior and were reminded. If they didn't want to mind the unwritten rule, they were asked to leave. Refusal meant that the police would be called or often the police were right there and the problem was quickly solved and everyone could enjoy the warmth and the good food of the House.

I ordered my breakfast, wrote out my IOU, and fell to with a very ravenous appetite that only a teenager can conjure up. Eventually warmed up from the food and several cups of coffee and after being "picked on" several times by either Larry or Curly or Moe, I left the warmth and security of the Sal's House and made my way home to my bed. it was 4:30 a.m. It had  been a full and interesting day.

Am I Feeling "Blue"?

I was only 17 when I discovered that life in the "big city" was not all I had envisioned it to be while I was growing up on our farm in Saskatchewan. Granted life was exciting during Monday through Saturday. But come Sunday it seemed that the city literally shut down.It was at this same time that I learned about the "blue laws"!

These were provincial or municipal(read city) laws which prohibited certain activities, particularly entertainment, sports, shopping, or drinking alcohol on Sunday. They were originally enacted across Canada  to encourage church attendance and to restrict activity only to that worthy (at least according to some)of observation on the Sabbath. These laws transformed over time from a religious proscription to simply reflecting the values of a given community.

Winnipeg had its fair share of blue laws. Now you can argue that they did do a lot of good for the family person if he or she could not work on Sunday. It made for a family day.  But when you are a young adult you feel the restriction of these laws as they limited the range of exciting things to do, exciting for a young person. You could do many outdoor things on Sunday but parks and the zoo soon lost their glamor. In summer you could head to the beach or go cycling or hang out in a friend's yard. In winter you could, if the weather was decent, go skating outdoors. You could  swim in the one indoor pool but that only permitted a small amount of people at any one time. You could watch the one channel of television, CBWT, the CBC affiliate, or the French version of CBC, which was CBWFT. So one's options were limited.

On long weekends in the warm months, there were massive lineups at the drive-in theatres on Sunday night for the quadruple features that started at one minute past midnight, or on Monday morning. These would run for about 5 hours and were to us young people a real "hoot" or hit! Occasional an epic film like Ben Hur or The Ten Commandments would be shown at one of the downtown theatres on Sunday at midnight. Drive-ins were popular places for "under-age" adults to be able to imbibe in some illicit drinks - legal drinking age was 21 - as well for some serious necking. As emigres from small towns across Manitoba and Saskatchewan, few of us owned any kind of vehicle and all of us lived mostly in rented one - room bachelor suites in private houses. Groups of noisy teenagers were not made very welcome by the landlords. A fortunate few got decent jobs and were able to share the rent of an two or three bedroom apartment. These could accommodate larger groups of kids but noise restrictions were severely enforced.Thus we had few places to congregate - pre-7/11 stores days!

Some other blue laws in passing:
- a trip to the liquor store: just 40 years ago, buying liquor meant lining up at a counter so a clerk could retrieve the bottles from the back room. Every time you ordered, you had to fill out a form with all sorts of personal information so your purchases could be tracked. Plus they had limited hours and were closed on Sundays and holidays.

- all male beer parlors. Women and aboriginals were not allowed entry.

- want a cocktail at a restaurant? You need to order some food first.

- eventually movies and  some sporting events were allowed on Sunday provided they started in the afternoon.

- no businesses were allowed to open on a Sunday and only businesses that were self-owned or essential such as a pharmacy or a gas station could open with the owners providing the labor.e.g. Mom And Pop corner stores.

- only essential workers like police, fire-fighters, hospital employees, and transportation workers were exempt from Sunday laws prohibiting labor.

Again some of these laws did force people to slow down and actually relax on Sunday with family and/or friends. But it sure made for "Dog Day Sunday Afternoons"!

Hunger!

Hunger!
Have you ever been hungry? I mean really really hungry? Most of us in our daily lives seldom experience true hunger. Oh, sure, we get hunger pangs when we are late for or skip a meal. But to experience real hunger is something most of us have not had to do and hope not to ever have to do!
The definition of hunger according to Merriam-Webster dictionary:
a : a craving or urgent need for food or a specific nutrient b : an uneasy sensation occasioned by the lack of food c : a weakened condition brought about by prolonged lack of food.
The only time I truly experienced hunger was when I first arrived in the city of Winnipeg, a callow recently graduated-from-twelfth-grade youth. I arrived in the city in late July at the height of a recession. Jobs were scarce, especially for 17 year old children with no practical skills that people looking to hire someone would consider as assets. Sure I had a lot of skills and smarts that working on a farm instill in a person. But none of these were very obvious and though many of them would have been transferable to on the job training, no one was willing to take the chance. No one, that is, except for the CNR - also known as Canadian National Railways.
The CNR took me in because I could read and write and speak fluently in 2 languages with English being the main criteria. They hired me because I had completed my high school education, which at that time was a standing equivalent to a university degree today. I had all my body parts, excellent vision, and excellent hearing( this was before my phys-ed teaching days in poorly constructed non-acoustic gyms)and I showed up sober for my interview without any mad dog characteristics. I was hired on the spot to work out of the Fort Rouge, Transcona, East Yard, CNR Union Staion, and Paddington rail yards as a yard staff employee.
My first shift would come off the spare board where I was placed among 30 other recently and newly hired employees. I was the lowest man - there were no women on the yard staff - with the lowest seniority possible. I was inexperienced and my seniority number was lower than a snake's belly! Spare boards were designed to help fill immediate vacancies arising as a result of some one "booking off", that is calling in sick or because of some other emergency. Then the first person - the one with the greatest seniority - would be called with about 2 hours notice to fill in for the absentee at whatever yard the job took place.
My first week, I worked one shift as a callboy, a position dating back to pre-telephone days, when callboys were dispatched to the homes of train crew members to let them know that they were officially called to crew an outgoing freight or passenger train. With the advent of telephones, callboys were in less need and new duties were added to their job descriptions such as delivering inter-departmental mail and serving as general "joe-boys" for the chief clerk for whom they were working that shift. The pay was the minimum wage of the time as we were unionized wage earners. My salary for an eight hour shift was a dollar an hour or eight bucks. This wasn't as bad then as it seems now because bus fares were 15 cents, burgers were between 15 and 25 cents, bread was about 20 cents a loaf, a 6-pack of beer was a $1.25, and movie admissions were about 25 cents.
The second week I worked another shift as a callboy but in Transcona which was hard to get to if you didn't own a car. You had to catch a bus which ran once every hour from Portage and Main to Transcona. The fare was 20 cents plus the last bus from Transcona was at midnight. If the chief clerk didn't give you an early quit, that is let you go early, you would miss your bus, and for me it would have been 13 km walk or about 3 hours to get home.
So after two weeks I had accrued 16 hours or $16 in wages. As we were being paid every 2 weeks, I looked forward to receiving my first paycheck minus the usual deductions. When on payday I went to the pay office to pick up my scant pay, I discovered to my horror that because I was a new employee, my first check would come in the next pay period, a practice for better and more accurate accounting. Our pay checks were always for the two weeks previous to the last two weeks.
I was broke and I was now alone in the small 3 room suite that I shared with my brother and my cousin. I could have hit them up for a few bucks but my brother had just left to engineer some work on one of the airports in northern Manitoba and my cousin Merv had just gone home for a couple of weeks to help his dad with the haying and harvest season. The fridge and the cupboards were almost bare. To top it off I had only a dollar in cash and I needed it for bus fare so I could get to and from work. My shifts were in yards which were usually an hour or more of walking away from where I lived and because sometimes my spare-board assignments came at the last moment leaving me with very little wiggle time to get to work, I needed bus fare money.
I was okay for about a week and then all the food was gone. I ate the last of my ketchup sandwiches and drank the last of my Kool-Aid. There was no more food! I guess I could have begged some food from the neighbors but I was young and proud, so I "sucked it up" and lived on glasses of water. This went on for about 3 days ...no food, only water.
I was called to work once that week in Fort Rouge where I did my first shift as a car checker with an increase of my wage to $2 an hour but with a greater expenditure of energy as I would have to walk the tracks checking or writing down the numbers of rail cars on the track in their sequential order. Some of the tracks were a mile in length in the yard and that meant that I could walk up to 20 miles in a shift. Add to this some hunger pangs and my life did not have many positives in it.
Back then I lived just off off of Maryland Street south of Broadway. On Honeyman Street just west of Broadway was a small hole-in-the-wall grocery run by an older Jewish couple. Their store was the Ches-way Grocery and I think it was about 10 metres deep and about 4 metres wide and about 4 metres high and packed to to the brim with foods and household needs. They had a small meat counter and a fridge for dairy and frozen foods. We used to buy our groceries here because of convenience and closeness to home- the prices were higher than in the large supermarkets.
On the start of my fourth day of no food I was so hungry that I went to the store. Why? I don't know because when I walked into the store the smell of food almost drove me crazy. I wandered the store taking in all the wonderful aromas and tantalizing displays of foods and fresh fruits and veggies. I started salivating and I started contemplating for the first time in my life the act of shop lifting.
"They wouldn't miss a can of beans or maybe a package of biscuits if I was quick and quiet and unobtrusive, " I said to myself. But the Jewish couple were experienced in what they were doing and they probably sensed what I was contemplating, so there was always one of them nearby, ostensibly re-arranging cans or packages but probably to keep an eye on me so I wouldn't do anything rash.
Finally the woman said in a heavy accented English, "You are hungry, no?"
I nodded that I was. She then smiled and said, "You have no money, no?"
"No, " I replied, thinking now that I would be asked to leave the store. But no. She called her husband and they conferred for a minute in what I think was Yiddish. Then she smiled at me, and spoke the sweetest words a hungry person could hope to hear. "You take what you need and we will write it down and when you have money you will come and pay us, no?"
"Yes," I answered with tears of gratitude and joy . They asked me my name but they never asked me for my address or a phone number. It was complete trust and kindness.
Gratefully I loaded up 2 bags of groceries and quickly headed back to my place before they could change their minds. I feasted and I ate and I feasted. No, actually I was only able to eat some small amounts because my stomach had managed to shrink quite a bit in the previous weeks.
The next pay day, I cashed my check at a bank and the first order of business was to repay the trust of the beautiful Jewish couple who had done such a wonderful kindness for me. In the future I bought all my necessities there and I was always grateful for what they had done for me.
I really hope I never have to experience that kind of hunger again even though it was very mild compared to what so many people on our planet suffer through every day.

A Brief Encounter with Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau

My only encounter with a prime minister face to face was in June of 1968. It occured when I lent my sombrero to Prime Minister Trudeau as he rode in the back of a convertible leading the 1968 Manisphere Parade down Portage Avenue.  I was sitting on a lawn chair on the boulevard as his car slowly passed by us.  He yelled out to me that he could sure use that hat as the temperature was about 32C under a blazing sun on one of the longest days of the year.  I ran to the car and handed it to him.  He put it on with a big smile. I thought I would never again see that sombrero, a souvenir of a 1961 trip to Tijuana.  About 20 minutes later an RCMP plainclothes officer handed it to me as he had been instructed by the prime minister whose car had reached the end of the parade route while the rest of the parade was still passing by us.

September, 1972, World Hockey Summit Series

Game three of the World Hockey Summit Series between the Canadian NHL all-stars and the Russian National hockey team was played in Winnipeg. We all wondered wondered which Team Canada would show up: The one that bombed in Montreal, or that dominated inToronto? The answer was both. Canada probably should have won the game, but they blew two two-goal leads during this game. It became obvious that this team was not yet in good enough condition or playing as a cohesive unit. My biggest impression of the game in which I was the penalty time-keeper, was watching Phil Esposito score a goal on the Russian goalie, Tretiak, at the end of the first period. This would have given Canada a 3-1 lead. The referee waved it off because the period had already ended. No one heard the buzzer because the 10,000 people in the jam-packed arena were making so much noise! I was watching Tretiak preparing to block the anticipated shot from Esposito when suddenly I saw him just relax and watch the puck as it sailed by him into the net. He made no attempt to stop it because he had seen the green light go on behind the Canadian goalie, Tony Esposito, at the opposite end of the rink. The green light meant the period was over. 

The Canadians’ glee turned to anger and Phil Esposito skated over to our time-keepers’ area and started berating us in very “colorful” language. He wouldn’t listen to our pleas that we had no control over the level of sound the buzzer made. Fortunately the Mahovlich brothers, Frank and Pete, pulled him away to go to the dressing room. To give Esposito his due, he didn’t hear the buzzer along with most of the people in the arena. And he took his frustration out on us. Before the start of the second period, he skated over to us and apologized for his tantrum. As he said, “We are playing under a lot of pressure!” 

After years of the Canadian National team, which was made up of excellent amateur players,being beaten by the Russians on the world stage, this series between the Russians and our best professionals would show the Russians how much superior we were to them. Obviously the whole series became a vindication for the amateur Canadian National team who had played so well against the Russians but failed to defeat them in meaningful games. It was also a wake-up call to Hockey Canada. An added note: the Winnipeg Enterprises which was responsible for running the old barn, Winnipeg Arena, shortly after installed a loud klaxon-like horn to signal the end of a period.

International Hockey Winnipeg Arena

International Hockey Winnipeg Arena

As the penalty time keeper and official score-keeper, I am sitting in the penalty box with Valeri Kharmalov whom I think is the greatest hockey player in the world ever. It is the decade of the 1960's and his touring  Russian National Team is once again beating their opponents, the Canadian National Team in an exhibition game with nothing at stake but national pride . 

I am speaking to Valeri in Ukrainian. He replies in Russian.  We are able to understand each other fairly well. His piercing eyes sparkle as we talk of the tough brand of hockey the Canadian team plays, of all the beautiful women in the crowd, of what a pussycat big Alexander Pavlovich "Rags" Ragulin is off the ice, how hard it was to be on the road for weeks at a time, how to read the numbers on the time-clock in English, and how our time clock works opposite to the European way, counting down instead of up.

Kharlamov is widely considered to be one of the best players of this era, despite never having played in the NHL. Although small in stature, Kharlamov is speedy, intelligent and skilled. Teammates and opposing players consider him one of the best players in the world. While in the penalty box, he gets a new stick from one of his team-mates during a stoppage in play. He leaves me his hockey stick which was cracked in the upper part. 

In 1981, he and his wife and her cousin will die in a car accident in Russia. He will be greatly mourned by the hockey community! I will miss him and remember with sadness the brief but poignant encounter we had.

January, 1961, Paddington Yard

It is two o’clock in the morning on a winter’s night in 1961 in Paddington Yard which was in the process of being transformed into the ultra-modern Symington Hump and Marshaling yards. I am checking cars for my supervisor who is miles away in the Fort Rouge yards. I walk along the top of the boxcars on track B2. As I come to end of the car, I note down the number of the car on my right on track B1 and the number of the car on my left on B3. I have already recorded the number of the car I am walking on as I ran/stepped across the space between the cars. I will do this to the end of the track. Each track holds about a hundred cars which are bonded. As they are released from “bondage”, train crews need to know their location and pull them out of the lineup to be put into a new lineup of cars and made into a train which then is cleared through customs for shipping to the U.S.A.

At age 18 one often feels invulnerable! I walk along a foot-wide path of either boards or steel grating along the middle of the top of the boxcar. Depending on the type of boxcar, I am between 5 to 7 metres above the ground. My switchman’s lamp is looped around my left arm above the elbow. In my left hand is my checker’s pad for writing down the numbers. On this pad are 3 30 cm long strips of cardboard which parallel each other. On each 10 cm-wide strip I have entered a track number. In correct sequence I enter the number of the car and the initials of the railroad company it belongs to from each track. I am checking 3 cars at a time. When I get to the end of the track or if there is a long break between the cars I am walking on, I climb down the ladder located at the end of each car and resume checking when I reach the next string of cars. 

If the night is long and I am tired, I sometimes get careless. This is where the invulnerability factor kicks in.On two separate occasions I stepped off the end of a car only to discover there was no other car to run or jump onto. In the first case I was fortunate in that after a 6 metre drop, I fortunately landed correctly into about a foot of snow and rolled . The second time I landed in a gondola with a load of fine sand which cushioned my landing.  Had I suffered a broken ankle or leg or other injury, I would have probably frozen to death before anyone would be able to find me.

I do 3 tracks from west to east. I return on B5, checking B4 and B6 on either side of me as I walk along the tops of the cars. When I reach the end of the cars, I start checking B7 and B8 while walking at ground level and checking the cars to either side of me.  It is cold. It is dark. It is silent except for the sounds of my footsteps crunching on the snow or crushed rock and the sound of my breathing.  I work quickly and efficiently. When I reach the east end again. I walk north across a vast expanse of empty tracks, the soon to be finished Local yard where smaller trains will be assembled for delivery to communities in Manitoba. In the West yard, I will repeat the process 3 more times and by then I will be back at the switch-men’s shack. I will have covered 10 kilometres, 7 of them high above the ground.

 In the shack there is a company phone which will enable me to contact my chief in Fort Rouge. If he can arrange a ride for me, I will be back in the yard office there in time for them to edit my checks and get them to the switching crew which will then head out to Paddington to start pulling out cars from the various tracks. If not, I will have to wait for the crew to arrive and they will have to look through my checks to find the cars they need to locate and pull out. This makes the process longer and may entail overtime for them and for me. We don’t mind the over-time.

At the end of the shift or even later, depending on the amount of over-time, I walk another 2 kilometres to catch a bus back to down-town at Portage and Main. Here, if I am lucky, I transfer to another bus to get home. If not it's a couple of kilometres hike to home! At home I crawl into bed for a well-deserved sleep after being up all night.

Cold, Wintry January Night, 1961

Today as I went outside and the extreme cold of our latest polar vortex hit me like a boxer's blow to the body, I had a flashback to a wintry night in January in 1961. It is 2:00 in the morning and I am walking on the snow-packed sidewalk along Pembina Highway with the Union Station on Broadway and Main as my destination. There are no buses traveling at this time of night and I do not have the luxury of owning a car, so I am walking. I have just left the Fort Rouge Yard Office of my employer, Canadian National Railways. I am bundled up for the long cold walk in a surplus WW2 army coat. The great-coat is reasonably warm but not even close in warmth in comparison to present day winter wear. It is full length with a hood and it weighs several pounds. I wear woolen mittens with leather mitts pulled over them. Beneath the great-coat, I have on a pair of half-johns under a pair of denim jeans. On my feet are heavy woolen socks and a pair of winter shoes. I waddle along penguin-like.

Soon I reach what will be Confusion Corner. On this day, it is where Corydon runs into Osborne Street which in turn crosses Pembina Highway. On the south-west corner is the Grill, a cafe which stays open 24/7. In it will be the usual collection of revelers who have stopped in for some coffee and food after a night out of partying. Interspersed among them on counter stools and in booths will be the usual collection of CNR workers from the nearby Fort Rouge rail-yard who are having a coffee break or splurging on a mid-shift meal. More discreetly seated is the small collection of transvestites who find this cafe to be a safe place for gay men.

The cashier waves at me but knows I will not be sitting down, that I am only warming up. I acknowledge with a small nod of my head some of the people I know from previous encounters there. After about five minutes, I head out into the bitter cold on my walk along Pembina which has now turned into Donald Street.

I cross Stradbrook and River avenues and approach the fairly recently constructed Midtown Bridge. This is a bridge which I will learn to fear crossing during warm weather as it is made of welded hexagonal steel which provides a clear view of the river below. I have an innate fear of heights and also of water due to some near drowning experiences on the farm. Combine these two and walking across "transparent" steel always wakes up a fearful stirring in my stomach. In winter, the bridge tends to be icy but it remains free of snow as the snow falls through the "holes" down to the river below. In winter I can walk across with much less trepidation. Occasionally I stop to admire the frozen river below.

I was observing the river below on another cold night when a Winnipeg police car pulled up beside me and a flashlight beam of light was directed onto my face. "And just what are you doing here at this time of night?" Somewhat taken aback, I managed to get out an answer that I was a CNR call boy on my way to the CNR Union Depot on Main Street at Broadway Avenue. I showed him my pack of mail to be delivered. With a laugh, he said that it was too cold a night for call boys or call girls to be out. They drove off. I muttered to myself that the CNR didn't have any call girls on staff. It took a while for his joke to finally register with me.

A call boy was a relic left over from the early railroading days when there were few phones. Trainmen and yardmen would be advised of their changes of shift and work assignments by a boy or young man who would cycle to their home with written instructions. Now we were simply glorified delivery boys and go-phers. And I guess you all know the connotation of call girl.

These same officers would often on cold nights pull alongside of me as I was walking on Pembina Avenue or Donald Street. The cop riding shotgun would holler at me to get in the back. Then they would drive me to Broadway and Main to the Union Station. At the station the shotgun cop would get out and open the back door for me. It wasn’t because he was being polite or kind. I had no way of getting out because the inner back door handles of the police cruiser had been removed to prevent any escape attempts by suspects. I was always grateful and would thank them profusely. They simply smiled and as they drove off to their police station on Rupert Avenue, the shotgun cop would always holler out, “See ya around, kid!”

As I reach Broadway Avenue I can see the new electric sign hanging on the side of an insurance building. This new innovation had the ability to show you the up-to-date temperature in Farenheit degrees, and also, the time, alternating every few seconds between the two. Tonight it was reading -37F or -38C. It is at -40 that Fahrenheit and Celsius have the same value. I feel colder as I turn right onto Broadway. A few blocks ahead is the Union Station which had been modeled after Grand Central Station in New York City.

Because I am cold, I pick up my pace and soon I walk in through the doors into the rotunda of the station. A security person checks my name off and notes my time of entry. My heavy boots resound through the vast empty space of the rotunda. I make my way to the second and third floors where my delivery of letters takes place. Each office is empty and silent. I leave the required mail at each office and pick up the occasional piece of out-going mail that is addressed to the staff members at the Fort Rouge yard.

There is no life up here. The offices have been swept and mopped and cleaned by the afternoon crew of cleaners who work from 4 p.m. to 12 midnight. It is after 3:00 a.m. and I am the only person moving through the upper part of the building. No wonder they call this the graveyard shift.

But then I come to an office where there is human life. In it are men who operate a vast board depicting rail traffic in and around Winnipeg. With the push of a switch they can change traffic lights over the main rail lines from green to yellow to red thus stopping or allowing traffic on the rails to proceed. They can also switch trains from one track to another by pushing a switch which signals electronically to activate the switching devise on tracks several hundred miles away. They control traffic west from Winnipeg to Regina and Saskatoon and east to Ontario. They are ground traffic controllers who control all rail traffic in a similar way to air traffic controller who control air traffic in the skies. However their domain is two-dimensional and the routes are fixed.

I always take my allocated 15 minute break here and take off my greatcoat. Then I watch the blinking lights, listen to the exchange of radio talk between the engineers and the controllers, and watch the progress of any moving trains approaching or departing the Fort Rouge or the Transcona yards. I am careful not to disturb the concentration of any of the controllers, but those who see me respond with a nod and a smile or a small wave. I feel part of the "brotherhood" of those who move goods and people around Canada through all hours of the night and day.

I put on my greatcoat, gather up my mail, and take my leave. Downstairs I check out with the security guard and then I start my return journey retracing my route back to the yard office.  I arrive back near 5:00 a.m. I distribute my mail into the proper pigeon holes and then I pick up my local yard mail and set off on a circuitous tour of the Fort Rouge Yard. I walk to the east end of the yard where there is a warming shack. There I leave mail and also paste some bulletins into a switchmen's bulletin book.  These are sheets of paper which tell of openings of jobs on various shifts in the yard. The men can bid on these jobs as they come open. Jobs are filled on basis of seniority and not ability which is why for many years the CNR is a money-losing company.

Then I head to the south end of the yard to the shack there where I duplicate my delivery and pasting and then I make my way to the west-end shack where I do more of the same. Finally I walk back to the yard office. I always am careful of where I am walking, constantly on the lookout for moving trains or shunted cars which can come rolling down the track, 40 tons or more of silent deadly battering ram.

I report to the chief clerk and if he is satisfied with my work for the night, I will hear a few words of praise and the sought after expression, "OK, Bryski. Bugger off... but don't get caught by any of the brass!' These are men who are now arriving for their day shifts from 8 to 4.
I exit the building and walk to the Salisbury House located near the infamous Bobby-Jo's Motel near the corner of Pembina and Stafford. There I wait until my southbound electric trolley bus enters the loop. I watch the driver change the route designation on the front, check into the little shack or toilet, and then I patiently wait while he has a smoke. When he is finished, I board the bus and pay my 15 cent fare and we are off, north bound on Stafford.

The trolley bus heads north on Stafford picking up people along the way who are going to work downtown. The bus then turns right on Academy, crosses the Maryland Bridge, and heads north on Sherbrook. I get off at Preston, cross the street, and walk a block west to Maryland Street where I live.  It is 7:30 a.m.  I have walked over 15 kilometres during my shift and I look forward to my bed and about a 7 hour sleep.  I will wake at 2:00 p.m. and be ready to accept my next assignment from the crew who handles the spare board at the yard office. I am on the spare board because I am a fairly new employee and I don't have the seniority to bid on and receive either a temporary vacancy or a full-time job. If by 3:00 p.m. I haven't received a call, I will go back to bed for a few more hours sleep. The night was cold but it was a good shift.

The Coldest Night of the Century, 18 February 1966

I knew it was going to be a cold night in the old barn, the Winnipeg Arena. Although the wind was almost calm, I parked my car on the east side of the arena so that it was slightly sheltered from any wind there was. It was already -38F (39C). I was working the time-keeper's bench as the official scorekeeper. Besides the teams and the arena staff and our officiating crew, there was only a handful of fans scattered throughout the 10,000 seat arena. Why they didn't postpone this game between two Manitoba Junior League teams, I don’t know.  Perhaps because it was getting late in the season and they didn't want to have to deal with makeup games.

I don't remember the out-come of the game but I do remember how everyone vacated the arena as soon as possible after the conclusion of the game. As I exited the building, I noticed that there wasn't a breath of air moving. The air had a fog-like quality to it and the streetlights had haloes surrounding the lamps. My car barely turned over as it hadn't been plugged in for several hours.

After letting the Olds88 convertible warm up, I started for St. James Street. The car seemed to move on square tires and the transmission was very sluggish.  The temperature outside was now -44F (-48C). There were no wind chill values issued in 1966, but if there were, the wind chill value would have not come into effect because there was no wind.

The streets were deserted. Polo Park parking lot was empty, the stores closed. As I neared Portage Avenue, I noticed a few cars on the lot at the Paddock which stood where the Olive Garden and Red Lobster restaurants now stand. Curious to see what other idiots besides myself were out on a night like this, I pulled into the lot, parked, and went inside. The restaurant part was empty except for a few desultory employees. In the bar there was soft music playing and the lights were down low. With the exception of the bartender and one lonely looking customer nursing his drink, the bar was deserted!

I recognized the man nursing his drink and enjoying his cigarette. It was none other than “Cactus” Jack Wells, the sports announcer for CKY radio and CJAY TV, and the color commentator at the Winnipeg Blue Bomber games. He was one of the most interesting and colorful persons you would ever want to meet. He motioned to me to come over and join him.

“What’ll you have?” I remember him asking. He motioned to the bartender for a refill and I had a Scotch on the rocks courtesy of Mr. Wells. I do not remember the rest of the conversation but I do remember asking him whether his opening line on his sports-casts was apt today. He always opened with, “Well, it turned out nice again today!” He smiled and with his drink, pointed around the bar, and said, “No one to bother me, I have a good listener in you, some rye and 7Up in my glass, and an Export A cigarette. It’s a great night!”

After visiting with him for an hour, I went out to my cold car. This time as I closed the door, the back window in the ragtop cracked down the middle because of the air pressure on it from the closing of the door and the extreme cold. Oh, joy! I turned on the radio and I heard the announcer saying that it was currently -47F (-44C). That was the coldest temperature I had ever experienced and the night was not over yet. My car had barely had a chance to warm up on the short kilometre trip home.

I plugged in the car and noted how still and barren and frozen everything looked as I headed inside to a warm bed. Next morning it was official – the coldest temperature of the 20^th century in Winnipeg had been recorded!  It had bottomed out at a mind and body numbing −49 F (−45C) set on February 18, 1966. Only one other lower temperature had been recorded in Winnipeg and that was −54.0F (−47.8C) in December 1879.

London, England - May, 1975

It is Monday morning. I am aboard a train, The Royal Scot, in Euston Station. I am heading on a 7 hour ride to Glasgow as a guest of the British Council. Passengers are slowly boarding and finding their assigned seats. Many are inebriated and showing lack of sleep. Almost all are Scottish fans returning from a football match which was played at Wembley Stadium on this past Saturday afternoon between the Scottish National team and the English National team, the British Home Championship game. The winner of this game would be the winner of the championship of the British Isles. England had played lead up matches against Wales and Northern Ireland and both games had ended in draws, giving them 2 points.  The Scots in their matches against these same two teams, played to a 0-0 draw against Wales and defeated Northern Ireland 3-0 giving them 3 points. They needed only a tie to win the championship.
Saturday morning had found me in Hyde Park near Speakers' Corner where there were many Scotsmen getting up on soap-boxes to describe in mostly vulgar terms what the Scottish National team was going to do to the English National team. They had reason to boast because the English team's record in recent competitions had been poor, and against the Scots, had been abysmal. I heard no rebuttals from the English fans.
I had made my way to Wembley stadium with over a hundred thousand other fans, hoping to be able to buy a "scalped" ticket to the sold-out game. I was out of luck, so I got on the tube and made my way back to my hotel located near Hyde Park. I found a small nearby pub to enjoy the game on the telly and also to enjoy a few pints of bitters. The game to the extreme delight of the English fans, was a resounding victory for the English.The final score was 5 - 1 for the English side. It was, according to the English fans, a most satisfying rout! All night I heard the revelry of the fans, the English celebrating while the Scottish fans drank to forget.
The next morning, a Sunday, I had eaten my breakfast of toast, kippers and tea and again I had made my way to Speakers Corner in Hyde Park. There were the usual political soapbox speeches but also a large number of English fans rubbing salt into the wounds of the now downcast Scottish fans who had been lording it over the English fans the previous morning. The phrases tossed out were vulgar and in many cases down-right crude alluding to the poor Scottish fans as having come from the union of a Scottish shepherd and his favorite ewe. In Canada this would have precipitated a brawl. I watched carefully for reactions from the mostly young Scotsmen, but they took their lumps without retribution.
Morning had turned into afternoon and as I had made my way back to the hotel, I discovered a part of the park where there was a large open field. At one end of it there was a stage. Around the stage there must have been about 10,000 mostly young people. They were focused on the stage on a man in glasses in front of a mike who was playing his guitar and singing. The sound didn't really appeal to me but all the fans were rapt in their attention.  I had asked who this was. I found out it was some British "rocker" I had never heard of...a John Elton or was it Elton John? It didn't matter. From what I had heard, I figured he would never mount to much! I had moved on, anxious to get through this crowd to get to my hotel and do my packing for the trip to Glasgow on Monday. Showed what a good judge of talent I was!
Monday on the train, and I am surrounded by young Scots making their way home from a most disappointing soccer match. Out came the cans of Scottish beer and then the arguments of who was responsible for this national travesty, nay, national tragedy. When it was found out that I was Canadian, I had enough beers thrust at me to start my own pub. The ride was interesting and became more so when the singing of football songs started. I nursed my beer as I did not want to arrive in Glasgow and meet my British Council rep in an inebriated capacity. There was constant traffic between the passenger cars. The lineups to the washrooms grew longer by each passing mile.
When we got to Crewe, the train was split and half of the cars were shunted off to form the Royal Scot which would go to Edinburgh. Some of the fans gathered me up and wanted me to accompany them to Edinburgh. Fortunately for me, the Glasgow fans declared that they had found me first and I was their Canadian. "So, hands off!"
We finally arrived in Glasgow and I was able to safely disengage from my friendly abductors. Now when I see the Celtic and Ranger teams from Glasgow on television playing their usual excellent brand of soccer, I think back to London in1975 and how fortunate I had been to experience this excellent piece of Britannia!

A Careless Night in the Fort Rouge Rail Yard, February, 1961

It's just past 2:00 a.m. on a crisp cold February night.  I am walking down between tracks B11 and B12 heading toward the west end of the large rail yard in Fort Rouge. I have been sent out by the midnight shift's chief clerk to find out what cars are on these two tracks. They are looking for a missing car of merchandise which is scheduled to go out on "#408 train heading east in a few hours. It was to have been shunted onto B8 for easy pickup but obviously had been accidentally switched onto a different track.
I had already checked tracks B2 through B10 to no avail. B2 was where the #408 was going to be assembled just as soon as the east end yard crew finished switching the cars of a local transfer that had arrived from the East Yard at the depot around midnight.
I could hear the cars being shunted onto the various tracks and the sound of the big diesel yard engine as it powered up or down according to need. I could also hear the sound of the cars as they were shunted into a track and the sound they made as they ran into stationery cars already on the track.
The distance from the east end of the tracks was about a mile to the west end. I was still several hundred metres away from the west end and I could see the outline of some cars on B12 near to the west end.
As I trudged along mindful of where I was stepping, my path lit by my switchman's lamp, I thought of what a long day it had been so far. I was doubling through which meant that I had started my afternoon shift at 4:00 p.m. the previous day. When my afternoon shift ended at midnight, I simply started my midnight shift which would last until 8:00 a.m. There would be no overtime pay involved because this was a new day and you could only claim overtime if the shifts ran consecutively on the same day. Since today was a new day I was simply doing another shift at its start.
I was tired and I was hungry knowing my teenage stomach would have no nourishment until I got to the Sal's House at Pembina and Stafford after my shift was over. Glancing up at the sky I could make out some of the brighter stars. They sparkled in the cold air. I held my checking board under my arm as I continued plodding along in a sort of zombie like state.
Suddenly something struck me on my right side sending the checking board flying out of my hands and knocking me to the ground. Fortunately as I fell, I instinctively rolled away from the track on my right. As I hit the ground an empty flat car glided past me silently on the track beside me. It hadn't made any noise, not a squeak, as it had borne down on me from the east end where it had been shunted into B11 track. This 52 foot (about 15 m) long flat car weighed about 20 tons when empty. It had traveled almost the entire length of the track which meant it had probably been shunted in at a fairly high rate of speed. This also meant the switching crew was in a hurry to finish the dispersal of the cars of the transfer and were becoming somewhat careless.
How do you not notice a behemoth like this bearing down on you?

At night with very poor visibility this flat car would not show up on the track obviously like a box car or tank car or gondola car. I had glanced around as I walked ever alert to traffic around me. This is why we never walked on a track between the two rails but rather between two tracks. Why hadn't I heard it? Because sometimes they simply do roll very quietly and if a person was tired and not necessarily as alert as I should have been, this is what happens.
I heard it come to a stop against the cars on the track at the west end. When I got there, I noticed that there was a piece of broken railing that was partly jutting out at the very front of the car. Had this hooked into my coat, it could have pulled me under the wheels and the rail yard would have chalked up another fatality due to carelessness on the part of the employee. I was lucky that I only caught a glancing blow. Ironically the car that the flat car had rolled into which brought it to a stop was the car I had been sent out find. I noted it on my pad along with the number of the flatcar and returned to the yard office.
As I turned in my checking card I told the chief clerk about the flatcar that was immediately in front of it on B11.  I said it needed a Bad Order card tacked on as it had some jutting part on it that could injure an unsuspecting worker in the yard. He took the number of the car and its location from me and phoned it into the carshop where someone would look after it. I went to the staffroom and had a coffee and thought for a long while about what a fortunate person I was.

March 4, 1966 Blizzard

The winter of early 1966 was the third coldest year of the century. January of 1966 tied January, 1875 for the coldest month since records were kept at Red River. In a previous blog of mine I described how in February of 1966, Winnipeg reached -49F the lowest February temperature ever recorded and the second coldest day ever. Winnipeg did not see the temperature go above zero for 90 days. But up until then the city was without much snow.

If you are over 50 years of age you might recall the blizzard of 1966, or I should say, "The Blizzard of 1966!" as it became a benchmark for blizzards to be compared to. It happened on March 4, which was a Friday and it shut down Winnipeg like it had never been shut down before. Buses stopped running. Snowmobiles took nurses and doctors to work and thousands of people were stuck downtown and slept overnight at Eaton’s and the Bay.

That Friday morning I came down from my morning ritual of getting ready to go teach my 6th grade class at St. Alphonsus School. My brother and I both had moved in with my parents paying them room and board to help them make the transition from farm life to city life. They had spent their whole lives on the farm. My dad despite being a man of many talents was only able to find a low paying job as he only had a 6th grade and my mom was a stay at home person as she had minimal English, although she could read, write, and speak Ukrainian and Polish fluently. As I sat down at the table for the delicious breakfast my mom had prepared for me, I noticed my dad and my brother dawdling over their coffee.

"You guys are running a bit late this morning," I commented as I dug into my eggs and toast. They looked at me and both just nodded. There wasn't much conversation although I did note that it seemed kind of windy outside.

My brother agreed and said, "Yes, it is a bit windy."

I put on my coat and gloves, grabbed my briefcase, and headed for the backdoor to the backyard where the cars were parked. I told them in passing that some of us had to work for a living.

I went down 4 steps to the landing, turned on the outside light because at 7:30 a.m. it was still dark out there. I opened the backdoor only to discover a 4 foot high snow drift blocking my way. As I looked over the drift, all I could see were 2 radio antennas sticking up out of the deep snow. The cars were completely buried and there appeared to be a fierce snowstorm in progress.

I closed the door, made my way back into the house, shedding my coat and gloves, and muttering "Blizzard!" under my breath as I passed my brother and my dad who were still seated at the table. By this time I realized I had been set up. They smiled as we all started to listen to Peter Warren on CJOB.

Snow had started to fall after midnight on Thursday and despite the heavy snow, on Friday morning, March 4, many people still went to work. But by mid-morning the streets became impassable.

The buses were called in by 11:00 am.

Schools closed for the Friday and the following Monday as did stores, restaurants and theatres. The big storm piled up 14.6 inches (almost 37 cm)  and was driven by winds gusting up to 70 miles mph (almost 115 kmph) . This was the worst winter storm since March 1902.

Mayor Juba had been awakened by a CJOB reporter, probably Mr. Warren, and told of the blizzard. He was able to make his way to City Hall in his big Cadillac. He set up an emergency headquarters. But by afternoon city hall had also become a shelter for people that could not make their way home.

The Chief of Police, Mr. George Blow, urged people to stay off the streets. Snowmobiles which were legally not allowed to drive within the city limits were offered by volunteer owners to the police.

Other volunteers were granted permission to operate their own snowmobiles to take people to hospital and to deliver drugs to patients. CB radios were used for the first time to create an emergency communications network. The CBC radio station became part of the emergency civil defense network. Unable to get home, CBC staff stayed at the Mall hotel for the night.

Because the buses had been pulled off the streets, many people who could not walk home were stuck wherever they were. Thousands of people were stranded at City Hall and at stores like Eaton’s and the Bay, both on Portage Avenue. It was reported that 1600 people were stranded at the two stores. Eaton’s looked after 700 of its own staff and 400 customers. The women slept on the 9th floor and the men on the 7th.

By evening, except for the emergency snowmobiles, the city was snowed in.

Eight foot high drifts were reported in many places and later during the cleanup snow plows created 12 foot high walls of snow along some of the major routes. Hundreds of cars were reported stranded on the TransCanada Highway. The Grain Exchange did not open for the first time in its 61 year history.

But on this Friday night friends of ours who lived in the Hillsboro House, a huge 8 story upscale apartment block which catered to a younger group of professionals and which was located behind Rae and Jerry's Steakhouse, had phoned to say that there was a huge party in progress with many of the snowbound tenants drifting from suite to suite. We were asked to come but only if we had any liquid refreshments.

We both put on our heavy jackets and mitts and toques and left our house, my brother on his alpine skis, and me on snowshoes. I was also pulling a toboggan. We were headed for the Fox and Hound Inn which at the time of the storm was called the St. James Hotel whose beer vendor had remained open because he couldn’t get home. It was a mile of skiing and snow-shoeing there. The storm was easing up by now and a stillness enveloped the city. There were no cars, trucks, buses or snow plows moving. The silence was broken only by the sounds our movement over the snow, the abating wind, and the occasional whine of a snowmobile in the distance.

When we got to the hotel, I bought 6 boxes of 24 beers in each. I felt that that was the maximum load we could pull and still make it to the party. It was “tough sledding”. It was a mile back to the party. We were pretty tired when we got there. We buzzed our friend’s apartment and were immediately buzzed in. My brother went up while I stayed to guard our cargo.

He came back with a slew of people to help carry the beer and toboggan to the party. We received such a heroes’ welcome that for a while I felt like we were going to be hoisted on their shoulders and paraded from suite to suite.

A collection was taken and I received more than double what I had spent. I protested to no avail that this was way too much. The consensus from the crowd was that these liquid refreshments which had been gained through hard work and on a night that really wasn’t pleasant to go out in were worth their weight in gold. The party continued with music, singing, dancing, sharing of stories, food, and beverages.

When my brother and I finally got home early Sunday morning, all we could say was, “Wasn’t that a party?!!!!”