Relatively Speaking.

Over the course of my life, I have quite often regretted not becoming closer with some of my extended family on my father's side. To some degree I can blame my mother, but once I got older I have no one to blame but myself.

While growing up all my relatives on my father’s side were for the most part non-existent to me and most of them I had never even met. I absolutely knew nothing about my other two uncles, my two aunts or any of my cousins. I only knew of my grandparents who lived in Aurora because I had visited them a few times before I became a teenager with my father. I also met my Uncle Sandy who was just three years older than me. Sandy was my father’s youngest brother and he still lived with my grandparents in Aurora. Other than those three who I had visited maybe four times in my life, I grew up never really knowing any of my father’s side of my family.

I firmly believe that my parents divorce as well as my mother's religious beliefs played a huge part as to why I was never a part of their lives. It would be decades later before I would meet any of my extended family on my father’s side.

My mother on the other hand had three siblings, one brother and two sisters. Her only brother, my Uncle Richard lived with us while we were living at my grandmother's house after my parents separated. When he got older he married a woman named Carol; they had two daughters, Shannon and Amber. Richard owned and operated a very successful Snap-On franchise and he lived in the well-to-do Bayview Village area of Toronto. The only time I can remember ever meeting my two cousins was when they were just toddlers. Richard had asked me to babysit the girls on a couple occasions when his regular babysitter was busy. I remember that they lived in a very nice home on Rean Drive.

Richard and Carol ended up getting divorced. He became estranged from both his girls after neither of them wanted nothing more to do with him. Within a few years Richard was remarried to a woman named Phyllis while at the same time I was married to Bonnie. Richard was a big man and lived a very unhealthy lifestyle, at one time he weighed close to 400 lbs. Richard and I wanted to try having some type of a relationship and every couple months or so we would meet them for dinner at a restaurant. If there was one thing Richard loved to do, it was eating at Italian restaurants.

I remember Richard and Phyllis gave us a beautiful 'Our Canada' large coffee table book for Christmas back in 1988. As well they gave Stephanie a Bunnykins Royal Doulton child’s place setting along with a hardcover Beatrix Potter book of nursery rhymes when she was born. I still have all of these items; they remind me of the very few happy times I spent with my Uncle Richard.

At first Bonnie and I really enjoyed their company, but Richard had a nasty habit of talking down to Phyllis. It was like she was beneath him and her opinions were worthless. It made both Bonnie and me very uncomfortable and we both felt embarrassed for Phyllis. I also remember on one occasion when Richard wept openly at the table while telling us how his two daughters wanted nothing more to do with him. I never really knew the whole story as to why Richard’s first marriage ended in divorce. Although it was none of my business, Richard always seemed to me like he would not be an easy person to live with.

Eventually, Bonnie and I stopped meeting them for dinner and we started always making excuses whenever Richard called. We would always have other plans and it wasn't too long before Richard got the message and just stopped calling altogether. My relationship with Richard was over before it ever really even got started. I always liked my Uncle Richard, but like my mother I think he had some mental health issues that he never dealt with. Richard had lost his father when he was just five years old and he had been babied his whole life by my grandmother. I don’t think Richard could ever cope with adulthood once he let go of his mother’s apron strings and got married to Carol.

After a few years, Richard and Phyllis divorced and he moved to Florida where he eventually married his third wife. I never saw my Uncle Richard again after he moved to the States and in December 2008, Richard passed away at the age of 62.

My mother’s younger sister was Marguerite; she was married to my Uncle Nick. Both of them more than anyone else are responsible for my mother becoming a Jehovah’s Witness. Marg and Nick had four daughters, my cousins Terry, Debbie, Lisa and Tammy. Marg and Nick’s train wreck of a marriage was saved after they became Witnesses. With my own parent’s marriage also heading for divorce my mother too would grasp onto anything to save her own marriage. My father wanted nothing to do with becoming a JW and my parent’s marriage could not be saved. However, Marg and Nick were still more than eager to prod my now single parent mother into becoming a Witness anyway. They also coordinated all the arrangements for the three of us to start attending the Kingdom Hall once we moved to Toronto from Montreal.

God, how I wish now that they would have just stayed out our lives altogether.

Once my mother became a Jehovah’s Witness, it would be Marg and Nick who she gravitated to most. We spent many weekends over the years visiting them at their home up in Bradford. My uncle was a real estate agent for a period of time and they were always moving around the Bradford area. I swear I can recall ten different houses that they lived and where we visited them at. Many times when I was a kid we went up for the weekend on the Grey Coach bus. My mother always considered visiting my aunt, uncle and four cousins in Bradford like a little holiday for us.

I never did.

On most of our visits there was always some type of Kingdom Hall function that we would attend with the Bradford congregation. Even though we were away from our own congregation, we still attended the Sunday morning meeting at the Bradford Kingdom Hall.

Heaven forbid if we ever missed a fuck'n meeting.

My Uncle Nick was always very kind to me over the years when I was a kid. Once I started giving bible talks at the Kingdom Hall, it was my Uncle Nick who bought me my first suit. I remember it was light blue in colour and had a button up vest. It was also Nick who gave me my first bicycle. I am also pretty sure he also bought my brother and me our new beds and dressers back on that first day when we moved into our apartment on Flemington Road.

There were also the countless times he took the three of us out to a restaurant for dinner. Uncle Nick would also be the first to introduce me to one of my favorite all time eateries, Swiss Chalet. I had never seen finger bowls with lemon before. I will always be grateful and thankful for everything my Uncle Nick did for us; he was a generous, good hearted man. Although he too was also a Jehovah’s Witness, he was balanced and was never even close to the fanatical zealot that my mother had become.

Sadly in September 1995, my Uncle Nick passed away in Bradford.

My mother’s final sibling and her youngest sister would be my Aunt Mary. Aunt Mary hands down was my favorite relative. She had been married and divorced before I began living at my grandmother’s house on Byng Ave. I never met her husband and she never had any children. I have so many fond memories of Mary from when I was a little boy.

After moving into Lawrence Heights, my mother, brother and I would visit my grandmother every month. We would always take the bus over and on most of our visits Mary would join us there. As I got older and into my later teenage years, my visits became a lot less frequent and I can never remember the three of us ever visiting Mary at her apartment on Oakburn Crescent. Likewise I can never remember Mary visiting us at our apartment in the Jungle. All of my visits with my Aunt Mary when I was a kid were at my grandmother’s house in Willowdale.

I remember all Mary would ever talk about was her job and her best friend Gayle. Seriously, that was all her conversations ever revolved around. It was almost like she had nothing else in her life but her job and her best friend. I always felt like I knew Gayle personally although I had never met her. Mary was also an avid tenpin bowler and she competed in a weekly league. I always thought it was pretty cool how she had her own bowling ball and shoes. She eventually had to give up bowling due to a nagging wrist injury that even after surgery never healed properly.

Back then Mary drove an old Volkswagen Beetle and on many of our winter visits she would drive us home so we didn’t have to take the bus late at night. The Yonge Street subway expansion was still in the development stage back in the early 70's so we would have had to wait in the freezing cold for three buses on the drastically reduced weekend evening schedule. Although it would only take us an hour to arrive at my grandmother’s house, it would always take us more than a couple hours getting back home on the bus. On many of those very cold winter nights, Mary’s defroster never worked properly and her little car would never warm up. The three of us would be scraping the inside windows of ice all the way home just so Mary could see out of them and we would all be frozen by the time she dropped us off at home.

Mary like my grandmother was a staunch Anglican and also attended St. George's on Yonge Street. I remember hearing many heated conversations coming out from my grandmother’s kitchen anytime the topic of religion came up. Neither my grandmother or my Aunt Mary had any use for the Jehovah’s Witnesses or anything they stood for. There was no doubt that being a Jehovah’s Witness prevented my mother from having the same close sibling relationship with Richard and Mary that she enjoyed with Marg.

Back when we first moved into Lawrence Heights, my brother and I received the monthly National Geographic in the mail. I guess it was Mary’s way of helping us see the rest of the world because she knew that with us now living in the projects we weren’t going to be going anywhere anytime soon. She must have renewed our subscription for many years because I remember we had a pretty large stack of them in our closet. Although I never recall reading the National Geographic, I always liked looking at the amazing photos.

Whenever Canada Post issued a new stamp, I would always receive the stamp from the first printing. The stamp was on a glossy postcard with a detailed history behind the stamp. Mary had me enrolled in a subscription that she paid for so I could start collecting stamps. She thought it might be a nice hobby I would be interested in pursuing as I got older. I never was interested in stamp collecting whatsoever and for years thereafter every new stamp I received, I just threw it in a drawer. Looking back I would rather Mary have bought me new hockey cards every year instead of stamps. I always thanked her for her kindness and told her I was collecting all the stamps Canada Post sent me. I just never told her I was collecting them in a drawer and had no idea about the history behind any of them.

I remember Mary worked right downtown at the RCMP Toronto Building on Jarvis Street. It was kind of ironic that the RCMP cafeteria was also one of my weekly accounts for ice cream. In all the years I delivered ice cream, I never ran into Mary once while I was in the building where she worked. She never left the building during the day because she thought that the Dundas and Jarvis area of Toronto was a creepy part of the city.

She was right; it was indeed a creepy part of town.

Once Stephanie was born Mary would frequently visit us at our house in Mississauga. She would often pick up my mother so they could both spend the afternoon with us before dinner. Like my mother Mary also continually struggled with her weight and she too like my mother was always on the heavy side. It was clearly obvious that there was some bad genetics within my mother’s family because Richard and Marg also struggled with diets and were forever trying to lose weight.

Bonnie would always put out a tray of cookies or butter tarts to have with tea and Mary would have no problem gobbling up three or four of them. Mary always lamented how she could never understand why she was such a big woman because she only ate small portions of food. It was obvious to me that her problem wasn’t how much she ate, but more of what she ate. That was the same issue with my mother, Richard and Marg as to why they were all overweight. Eventually Mary needed her first knee replacement because her knee could no longer support her weight. Once she had her knee replaced Mary still struggled with trying to lose weight and she was in constant pain. She needed to walk with a cane for as long as I can remember after her surgery.

I knew that although I was a lean slim guy, I could just as easily pack on the pounds due to my mother’s bad genetics. Because I was very active and never consumed alcohol, I never had a weight issue. But, there were a couple times when I was less active and I gained twenty pounds rather quickly. I have always tried to stress to my daughter that she too albeit to a smaller degree has the same genetic makeup. She needs to keep herself active, watch both her diet and alcohol intake otherwise she too would struggle with weight issues.

It's all hereditary and in our family, big genes equals big jeans.

I can only remember my Aunt Mary having two different addresses and both were small apartments. She lived on Oakburn Crescent which was behind the old Maclean Hunter building at Yonge Street and Hwy 401. The street was dotted with numerous little three story apartment buildings. For well over a decade the residents were warned that eventually a huge condo development was on the horizon and Mary's building would need to be demolished.

Mary loved living there, but after forty years of living in her basement apartment, the writing was finally on the wall. Mary signed her last one year lease and would need to be finding another place to live. With Mary now retired from the RCMP and living on a pension, she moved to her second apartment up in Bradford. Mary liked the fact that she was finally out of the city and closer to her sister Marg along with a couple nieces who still lived in the area.

Sadly, it would be her last address. My Aunt Mary passed away in her apartment from a heart attack on January 18th 2011 at the age of 71.

I will always remember my Aunt Mary for her kindness and thoughtfulness. Mary always remembered my birthday and without fail every year would send me a birthday card. My Aunt Mary loved elephants and she had a rather large collection of over three hundred scattered all around her tiny apartment. I picked up a few that I wanted to have as a keepsake after her funeral.

Aunt Mary had an absolute fear of spiders and living in her basement apartment on Oakburn provided her with many memorable battles with the eight legged creatures. Mary was forever evicting spiders that would spin a web and take up residence in her apartment. There seemed to always be another new daddy longlegs story every time I saw Mary.

I used to think it was also pretty cool how at one time both Mary and I were big fans of the British soap opera Coronation Street. For years I faithfully watched the show almost daily. Mary had been a fan since the 60's when the show began and she had every season of Corrie recorded on video. Eventually I lost interest, but Mary was still actively watching the show daily right up until her death.

One thing I will always be grateful for is that my daughter got to spend time with my Aunt Mary. Although they were never really close, I always told Stephanie that my Aunt Mary was my favorite relative. If the truth be told, I am pretty sure my Aunt Mary would also have been Stephanie’s favorite relative of her dads.

Afterall, there really weren't that many of them.