My Father, But Never My Dad.

My parent's divorce would soon be finalized not too long after we moved into Lawrence Heights. One of the 'brothers' at our Kingdom Hall who was a lawyer took care of all the legalities. My father was court ordered to pay support for my mother and the two sons he fathered.

Back in the 70's the system was so unfair towards single mothers from broken marriages who were raising their kids. It was just too easy to simply plop them all into a housing project and just hope for the best. Chasing fathers for back support that they legally owed was like a dog chasing his tail.

It was a no win situation.

Fast forward fifty years later and my how times have changed. Fathers like mine would not have a driver’s license, passport, government pension or benefits should they decide to pull the same stunts that my father did with us. Even as favorable as the system was towards working fathers back then, my own father still could not bring himself to even honour his minimal obligations. As I recall the court had awarded my mother a lousy ten fuck'n dollars a month and his total monthly court ordered support payment for all three of us was less than a hundred bucks a month.

Yet, he continually flipped the bird at not just the courts, but the three of us.

He never paid.

Wait, I shouldn’t say that he never paid.

On at least two occasions the court system tracked him down and would garnishee his wages. My mother got that support money, but after a few weeks he just moved on to another job. He had once again escaped the court system, the hide and seek game would start all over.

Like I said, it was like a dog chasing his tail.

My father worked in the telephone business all his life and my mother told me that he would never be out of a job. He had worked at many different companies and was always employed. Even had my father paid what he was court ordered, the three of us still most likely would have ended up living in subsidized housing and on welfare. Lawrence Heights was full of single mothers from failed marriages with no support. There was no other option but to go on welfare and live in a housing project. Even after everything my father did to screw us over, I can never recall my mother speaking ill of him. I guess speaking ill of the man who fathered me and who kicked me to the curb like yesterday’s garbage will be left solely up to me.

I have no problem there.

Once I started to write my memories, I thought writing my recollections down on paper would be difficult. But as time passes I have found it very easy to share my experiences and my true feelings. I also find writing my memories to be very therapeutic.

I have very few happy recollections of the time I spent with my father. When I say very few, I mean you could easily count them all on one hand. Whether it was at my grandparents urging or he actually wanted a relationship with his two sons I have no idea, but I do remember him coming to our apartment and picking both me and my brother up. He would then take us up to Aurora to visit our grandparents who up to then we had never visited.

I would assume my father had some kind of visitation rights after the divorce. The three of us would drive up north on Yonge Street for about an hour or so before we got to our grandparent's house on Aurora Heights Drive. There are four things about each one of those trips I will never forget.

The first one was my father was always smoking. Both my brother and I always reeked of cigarette smoke by the time he dropped us off back home at night.

Two, was Bond Lake in Oak Ridges just before Aurora. On each drive my father told us that the lake was bottomless. He told us that many years ago a fire truck had gone into the lake and was never found. Back then before all the urban sprawl, the drive up Yonge Street was nothing like it is today. There was forested green space and farms in between the little towns. Yonge Street was nothing but a two lane road back then and there were very few traffic lights. I remember Bond Lake freaked me out and I always imagined that the fire truck came out somewhere in China on the other side of the world.

The third memory was the Aurora Cemetery which was on the east side of Yonge Street. Not once did we drive past without him making the exact same comment every time. “You know people are just dying to get in there” he would always say while pointing over towards the numerous graves with cigarette in hand.

The fourth memory was just past the cemetery. It would be us driving under the very low green CN Bridge after passing the little green sign just before the bridge. The sign simply read 'AURORA'. I will never forget any of those memories on each of the four maybe five drives up to visit my grandparents with my father.

I remember always thinking back then that my grandparents were so rich because they had everything we didn’t have. They had a nice house, a car, a lawnmower and a cat named Mitzy.

My Uncle Sandy was my father’s youngest brother and he still lived in the house with my grandparents. He went to high school and played hockey for the Aurora Tigers. My father always told me that someday Sandy was going to play in the NHL. My mother had told me that my nanna gave birth to Sandy when she was in her fifties and at the time she had been one of the oldest women to ever give birth in Canada. I don't think Sandy was more than three years older than me even though he was my uncle.

I really liked Sandy and thought he was super cool. I always wished he was my big brother instead of my uncle. A couple of times we went to watch him play for the Tigers at the Aurora Community Centre and each time he scored a couple goals. I remember chewing Juicy Fruit gum and drinking hot chocolate while I watched Sandy play hockey with my father. There was a large park across the road from the arena where my father took us down to skate on the little outdoor rink during one of our winter visits.

I always loved to visit my nanna and poppy. I loved the smell of the pipe poppy would always smoke in his den while my nanna cooked us supper. My nanna always cooked a big supper and the one thing I will never forget were the parsnips. Parsnips were vile; I ate them on every visit because nanna wanted her lamb chop and puddin' pie to grow up to be big and strong like our Uncle Sandy. Although I’m not 100% certain, I’m pretty sure I was lamb chop and my brother was puddin' pie.

After our visits my brother and I would both fall asleep in the car on the drive home. On one of our visits my father had taken us to a store and outfitted both of us in the Boston Bruins uniform. We drove all the way home dressed in our new gear. When our mother answered the door he told her that Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito were now back home. The Boston Bruins won the Stanley Cup in both 1970 and 1972. Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito were the two best players on both of those teams.

I can only remember one overnight visit with my father. He took us away up north one Christmas. We didn’t celebrate Christmas, but it must have been part of his visitation rights and my mother had no choice in the matter. Because if she did there was absolutely no way she would be letting us celebrate a pagan holiday like Christmas. It would be my one and only Christmas that I can ever remember celebrating during all of my childhood.

Anyways, he takes both of us up to some little house in Orillia where another single mother and her two sons lived. I remember the house was more like a cabin, it was on a lake and there were snowmobilers zipping across on the frozen water. I still have no idea who those three people were, but I can only assume it was my father’s new girlfriend and her two kids.

As far as I know, my father never remarried.

The two kids were the same ages as my brother and me and we all seemed to get along. My father kept telling us that Santa was coming to bring us presents that night while we were sleeping. My brother and I shared a bed and he fell asleep right away. I heard some tapping sounds and I got out of bed to see what they were. The cabin didn’t have any proper doors with doorknobs in any of the rooms. All the rooms had thin folding panel doors. The door in our bedroom was not completely closed and I peeked through the tiny crack. I saw my father, cigarette dangling from his mouth building a toy tractor in the kitchen. It would be the same toy tractor left under the tree for my brother the next morning by Santa Clause himself.

On Christmas morning all four of us kids got identical rapid fire toy machine guns with flashing lights and sounds. We played with them all day, shooting and killing each other over and over. It would be the only day my brother and I would get to play with them. That night after getting back home our mother immediately threw the two toy guns in our apartment incinerator. She then told us we were forbidden to play with toy guns ever again.

The last time my father would have anything to do with my brother or me was the afternoon he took us to the circus at Maple Leaf Gardens. I was probably about twelve years old. That evening after my father took us back home, he would walk out of our lives once again. And this time it would be for good.

This is what I remember about that day.

It was dark inside the Gardens and the show was about to start when we got to our seats. My father was sitting between my brother and me and within minutes the national anthem began playing so everyone naturally stood up. Everyone that is except for my brother and me. I can't imagine how embarrassing it must have been for my father to have his two sons disrespecting our flag and country. My brother and I remained seated for the whole anthem. We refused to stand for Oh Canada.

Why?

Once again it was because both of us lived in fear of our mother. The fear of her impending wrath should she ever find out her sons had put their country before Jehovah. My mother already had us both excused from Oh Canada and the Lord’s Prayer every morning at our school. Jehovah’s Witnesses do not stand for the national anthem of any country as their allegiance is to their God Jehovah and to Jehovah only.

My mother had warned my brother and me to never stand for the national anthem, so we didn’t.

I guess my father wasn’t too mad, because after the circus he wanted to take us out for a burger before taking us home. Immediately my brother and without any hesitation blurted out we could not eat burgers because they had blood in them. Once again it was out of fear of our mother because she had warned us to never eat burgers outside of our home. It was just another example of how fanatical my mother could be. We were the only Witnesses that I knew of who could never eat burgers when they went out.

That would be the final straw and my father had enough. He immediately drove us home and when my mother answered the door all he said was “I don’t know what you’ve done to these kids.” He then walked out of our building and out of my life.

Again.

And just like that there would be no more visiting my nanna and poppy in Aurora. I would never see my poppy again; he passed away in February of 1974 and is resting in the Aurora Cemetery. There would be no more parsnips, no more watching my Uncle Sandy play hockey. No more passing Bond Lake or driving under the railroad bridge. No more smelling like cigarette smoke or smelling poppy’s pipe. No more circuses or skating in the park.

No more of anything with my father.

After telling our mother what had happened that afternoon, she was very pleased that both my brother and I did not stand for Oh Canada. She was equally pleased we had not eaten burgers outside of our home. More importantly she told us that Jehovah was pleased. I was quickly learning that pleasing Jehovah was the only thing that ever mattered to my mother.

As time passed and without my father's support the three of us learned to make do with what we had. We had very little and our rent in the Jungle was always based on my mother’s income. She was now working part-time in the woman’s shoe dept. at the Eaton’s store in the Yorkdale Mall and she would also receive a monthly mother’s allowance cheque. On occasion she was also given a bit of money from a wealthy 'brother' at the Kingdom Hall to help us make ends meet. My mother had even pawned her wedding ring to get some much needed extra cash and she never complained, but instead just played the hand she was dealt. My mother by no means was a winner, but she was not a loser either.

My mother was a survivor.

We treaded water all the years we lived in the Jungle, always keeping our heads just above water. There were many months I can recall dropping off a monthly rent cheque for just fifteen bucks on my way to school. We sure could have used the support money that my father refused to pay.

The second last time I would ever see my father would be at the Yorkdale Mall. To me the memory is so vivid and it will always feel as if it happened yesterday. However, it was back in 1975 give or take a year.

My mother, brother and I were grocery shopping. It was a hot summer day and my mother was buying the three of us a small ice cream cone at the Kresge’s ice cream counter. My father was also in the mall on that afternoon. He was walking in the mall with a work colleague and I remember they were both wearing black suits. My father saw us at the exact same time we had seen him and he walked over to say hi. I am absolutely positive that if we had not seen him, he would have just kept walking quickly right past us.

It made for an awkward situation to say the least.

He then took a wad of twenty dollar bills from his pocket and peeled off five of the bills right before my eyes. He handed my mother the hundred bucks and told her to take my brother and me to the CNE (Canadian National Exhibition). Without being rude my mother told him politely to basically shove his money up his ass. My father then walked away with his wad of cash still intact. I could not believe what I had just seen and I was angry with my mother. We never went to the CNE and almost everyone I knew in the Jungle went to the Ex at least once every summer.

It would be years later before I realized my mother had indeed done the right thing by not accepting that cash from our father. The man had ignored his responsibilities for years and after a chance encounter, he acts all like the big wheel pulling out a wad of cash in front of his two boys. The same two boys he had neglected and who were now on welfare living in a housing project. The same two boys he had chosen to no longer be part of their lives or give a rat’s ass about.

I will never fault my parents for getting divorced.

Shit happens.

My mother always did what she thought was right for us and I know it could not have been easy. I will always be grateful for her providing the necessities and keeping us safe. My brother and I had at least one parent who cared. There were many kids living in the Jungle whose parents never cared.

My father, I will never have any respect for.

Boys especially need a father figure in their lives while growing up. They need a dad to teach them all the guy things only a dad can teach. All those little things that will see a boy eventually grow up to be just like his father.

Every boy needs a dad in his life.

I never had a dad, I had a father and I am grateful that I grew up to be nothing like him.

When a son says he is grateful that he grew up to be nothing like his own father, it speaks volumes. I think any outsider would be able to grasp just what kind of man my father was after reading such a comment.