D-I-V-O-R-C-E & V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N.

I can only recall my mother making a couple expensive purchases while we were living in Lawrence Heights. To the average family they would not at all be considered expensive purchases, but for our subsidized and budget conscience family they definitely were. Her first big buy was a recliner that she bought with her Eaton's staff discount. My brother and I could sit in the chair, but when my mother was home it was always her chair to sit in.

My mother loved her new recliner.

Over the years and through the generosity of our many Kingdom Hall friends we slowly began to accumulate more furniture, clothes and other non-essentials. We still had basically nothing, but now we just had a bit more of basically nothing. My mother was not proud and she would not hesitate to take things straight from the garbage if it was something she thought we needed or could use.

A case in point would be our couch.

One of her elderly JW friends who also lived in the Jungle right across the road from us had passed away. After her apartment was cleaned out her old ratty couch was thrown in the garbage. I had seen it sitting at the curb waiting to get picked up one morning on my way to school. When I returned home for lunch that day the ratty old couch was now sitting in our living room. After a trip up to Fabricland in the Yorkdale Mall my mother gave the couch a new life. She bought yards of material and she made a floral slipcover. I never remember my mother ever replacing that couch during the eleven years we lived on Flemington Rd, however she did make a couple new slipcovers.

My mother’s favorite motto was what’s old is new again and again and again.

My mother had forever always wanted a nice record player. All we ever had for years was a tiny solid state General Electric mono record player in a white plastic case and the one speaker was smaller than a hockey puck. She used her staff discount and purchased a Viking console hi-fi stereo. For the most part she just wanted to play all her Kingdom Hall songbook music. All 119 songs had been recorded if I recall on five or six white covered LP records and naturally she had them all.

She just loved stacking those records and having them play continuously for hours. She also had five other records I can recall her quite often playing. There was a Marty Robbins, Glenn Miller, Tammy Wynette, Glen Campbell and a Connie Francis record. There were two songs I will never forget because in both songs the title was spelled out in the song.

D-I-V-O-R-C-E and V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N.

Divorce I was very familiar with, but in all my years living with my mother I never went on one vacation. The three of us never went on one holiday together. I can’t say that I even missed going on a holiday and most of our closest friends living in the Jungle never went anywhere either. Like them we simply could not afford a vacation or a holiday and like I have always said, you can’t miss what you never had.

Although, I do vaguely recall a camping trip the three of us went on with another Witness family. We had to use all their stuff because we had no camping gear whatsoever. There was also the trip I went on by myself with a friend, his sister and parents to Wasaga Beach for a weekend. I was probably ten or eleven years old for both of those out of town excursions.

Over the years there were a few summer weekend trips up to Bradford on the Grey Coach bus to visit our only other Witness relatives. Visiting my aunt, uncle and my four cousins who were all girls just never seemed to be much of a holiday for me either. As well there was the one weekend the three of us spent up at unassigned territory in French River. It was by no means a holiday because we spent the complete weekend going door-to-door preaching to the locals who hardly ever saw the Witnesses in their area. I think the fact that we stayed in a little cabin made my mother think we were on a little holiday.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses are well known for their big summer assemblies. Thousands of JW’s who attend congregations from all over a district gather together annually. The Witnesses hold their big district and international assemblies in outdoor stadiums all around the world. I remember when I was nine years old we went to Buffalo for a big international assembly. It was my first time outside of Canada. My Uncle Nick drove my aunt, cousins and the three of us to Buffalo for the five day event. It was also the first time I had ever stayed in a hotel, but it was by no means a vacation.

Over the five days I sat through well over thirty hours of extremely boring bible instruction in the stifling heat. After the assembly ended on the Sunday afternoon I got lost in downtown Buffalo. There were very large crowds and I somehow got separated from my family so I just stood on the corner crying. A police officer drove me to the station in his police car and within an hour my family showed up to reclaim me. I remember my mother being so happy I had been found that she couldn't stop crying.

There was also the big five day assembly the three of us attended in Ottawa the following summer. My mother had arranged our transportation by school bus and we stayed in some type of hostel where everyone shared a bathroom. Ironically we were staying at the exact same place some of my classmates were also staying at. They were on a summer school field trip visiting the Parliament Buildings. They were all there on a real holiday having fun while I was with my mother and brother wearing a shirt and tie carrying my bible in my briefcase.

I was so embarrassed because my classmates were snickering at me.

Many of the big summer assemblies I attended were held up at the Woodbine Racetrack in Toronto. The Witnesses always got Woodbine a week earlier before the assembly began because they would literally clean and scrub the whole facility. It was a well known fact that Woodbine loved when the Witnesses took over the racetrack for two weeks in the summer. It was the only time the place got a thorough cleaning from top to bottom.

My mother always volunteered the three of us to help clean Woodbine. She assumed it would be a bit of a vacation for all of us. Seriously, she actually believed cleaning a filthy racetrack once a year was like a little holiday for us. I guess that since we were all together doing something different away from our apartment it qualified as a vacation to my mother. I spent too many summer weeks during the 70's cleaning Woodbine Racetrack and just like the assembly itself, I fuck’n hated it every time.

It would not be until I was almost twenty years old before I would finally go on my first real vacation. I went to Florida on spring break in 1980 with a friend I worked with at Collegiate Sports.

'V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N we're gonna have a ball'.

Connie Francis you nailed it.