Lydia’s son Stephen proves to be quite a handful, with tumbles and other shocks ending in frequent trips to the hospital, but it’s other parents who prove to be the sources of the greatest alarm.

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The day I was finally able to see and hold my baby Stephen was both exciting and scary. I decided to nurse him, and he took to the feeding hungrily, so after a while I was told to stop and burp him. Being still sore from the birthing I couldn’t sit properly, so I reclined and placed the baby across my chest and gently patted his back when all at once Stephen dug his little feet into the bed and gave himself such a push that he nearly went over me and onto the other side of the bed and the floor. The nurse jumped and told me to hang on to him, which I did from then on.

That should have been my second clue that Stephen was a very lively child and just couldn’t sit still for any length of time.

Previous chapters: Part 1 @ Part 2 @ Part 3 @ Part 4 @ Part 5 @ Part 6 @ Part 7

My friend Carolyn came to the hospital with her sister to see us and it was agreed that Mother would bring her on the day we were to go home. Poor Stephen cried all the way home, a trip of about half an hour, because they had circumcised him the day before and the diaper chafed. I couldn’t sit properly, so Carolyn had to hold him while Mother drove home as fast and as safely as she could.

The lady renting upstairs was waiting for us with two of her three children, and a fuss was made over the fact that Stephen was so small. I was nursing him downstairs when the oldest girl came home from school and stood in the doorway staring. She watched me feed the baby and then turned to her mother and asked, “What kind of bottle is that?” We all laughed while her mother explained and reminded her that her little brother had been nursed also.

Brother brought his little family over a few days later to meet the new addition to our own family and Tony, at five months, looked so huge compared to my small Stephen. Mother was called grandma now whenever we referred to her with the two children, and she took great delight in both of her grandsons. Later Stephen started calling her Brama and then shortened it to Bram.

At around one month old we had Stephen baptised, with Brother as godfather and Lynne as godmother. I enjoyed being a mother, but left a lot of the care to my own Mother, who loved fussing over the baby as soon as she got home from work in the morning. This gave her time to be alone with Stephen while I caught up on some much-needed sleep. One day a salesman came to see if we wanted a railing put around our front step and, while talking to Mother, found out about Stephen and that I wasn’t married. The next evening he returned with his wife and tried to adopt the baby, telling us he would pay us so much and all the advantages they could give him. Of course I said no and they went home, the woman weeping.

As the weather grew warmer I wanted to go for walks with the baby, being in the basement all day, but had no carriage, so Mother borrowed one until we could buy our own.

Now I could go to the store, church on Sunday or to Carolyn’s whenever I wanted without waiting for Mother to drive me. Someone must have reported me to the Children’s Aid Society because one day, just as I was ready to leave, a woman came and told me she was a social worker and had a report that I was running all over town with a new baby and keeping him out late at night. I saw red! The nerve of someone spying on me and reporting such lies. I flew into a tirade and told her that Brother could come and go as late as he wanted with his baby but because I wasn’t married I was reported. I told her the only way she was going to take Stephen away from me was to prove me an unfit mother and told her to leave, which she did. I was just 21 and knew the CAS would have a hard time proving that.

Carolyn and her father with Stephen.

I wasn’t sure, but I suspected that the person reporting me was Lonnie, who was still coming around once in a while and who still wanted me to give the baby up. Because of my suspicions and the way he reacted when I told him about the visit, my feelings for him started to change and I was seeing him in a totally different light, something I should have seen a long time ago but didn’t. The last time I did see Lonnie we took Stephen for a ride and I made him buy the baby a walker. This was around Stephen’s fifth month, and I thought his father should buy him something because he hadn’t done anything for him yet, emotionally or financially.

Stephen and Tony met often during that time because the Ford Company was on strike and Brother couldn’t afford the apartment and food, so he spent the days at out house. Mother told the lady upstairs to find another place because we were moving back upstairs and Brother was moving into the basement.

I did babysitting for this lady and one day, just after I bathed her son and was holding him on my knee, combing his curly hair, I noticed a white bug on his scalp. I called Mother over to ask her what it was and as soon as she saw it, she knew. Lice! I almost threw the child off my knee. And so began a regimen of hair, clothes and bedding washing for the whole household. The Health Unit was notified and so was the school. Luckily our family wasn’t infested very badly, but the upstairs was, and every evening we could hear the two girls crying while their mother washed their hair and combed out the nits with a fine-tooth comb. We were glad to get rid of that family. All through the war Mother had kept all of us lice-free during the most unsanitary and crowded conditions and now, here in Canada, with all the cleaning supplies we had available, we get lice. It still makes me shudder.

Now Brother was installed downstairs and we had two babies in the house. Stephen began to roll over soon after he came home from his first hospital stay after birth. I didn’t have enough milk for him and he was put on a supplementary formula, which didn’t agree with him. The doctor tried different kinds, all with the same results. After a feeding, the formula all came back up and Stephen cried and cried. We had to leave him in the hospital, where they made him sleep on his stomach. I guess he must have rolled over in there because whenever we saw him, there was a rolled-up blanket hugging his side. This was when he wasn’t quite three months old.

Finally stable and now no longer nursing, Stephen came home and scared all of us by pushing himself up by his arms and nearly rolling over on his back. Then one day he was screaming in anger, stiffened his arms, pushed and rolled over. The look on his face was pure terror. He stopped yelling and then began to cry. Mother, Sister and I didn’t know if we should be happy that he rolled over or sad because he had scared himself so much. We just all took turns holding him until he stopped crying.

After he came home from the hospital we took him to a new doctor who noticed his belly button protruding every time Stephen cried, which he did whenever he was undressed or redressed. The doctor told me he could feel the baby’s insides pushing against the skin and asked his nurse for one of her gown buttons, which he dipped in alcohol and taped over the spot.

Within a day Stephen stopped yelling so loudly, and in a matter of days, the belly button was normal when he cried. The doctor was an older man, and in his time all babies wore belly bands after birth, for just this purpose. Stephen thrived and was an active child who had a hard time staying still.

By five months he was pulling himself around on the floor, much to Tony’s bewilderment. Tony, at 10 months, still just sat where put and had no idea of how to crawl. If Stephen wanted a toy he pulled himself over to it, but if Tony wanted a toy he just cried. By living downstairs we got to know Brother’s family better, along with the way they raised their baby, and I didn’t like it at all. Both parents were very strict with Tony, and many times I would hear the poor child cry out of fear or frustration. One day I couldn’t stand it any longer and went down to tell them if they didn’t stop abusing Tony I would call the CAS. I was told to mind my own business, but the abuse stopped, to a degree.

Tony had a red mark on the side of his head one day, and when Mother asked what had happened, Brother told her his wife got angry with Tony and threw him into his crib, where he bounced and hit the side bars, raising the mark. We were horrified and told him so. We had known Brother’s wife had always wanted a girl baby and didn’t care much for Tony, but we didn’t think she would deliberately try to hurt him. She fed him and kept him clean but she never cuddled him or played with him. Brother doted on Tony, but soon even he followed her lead and just looked after Tony’s needs without too much emotional contact. This had an effect on Tony and it all came out as he got older.

Sister-in-law was again pregnant, and was to have her second child when Stephen was eight months old. Brother still lived with us, but as soon as the Ford Company was back to work they moved out.

Stephen loved crawling now, and would pull himself over to our low picture window and lean on the sill, where he hit his mouth and chin several times while trying to see out. But it didn’t stop him from trying again and again until he finally managed to see out without mishap. By seven months old, he could walk if held and, once standing, could move around the room from one piece of furniture to the other. However, although he pulled himself up, he didn’t know enough to bend his legs to sit down, and just let go, falling backwards. That put a lot of bumps and bruises on the back of his head until finally he learned to sit back down.

By now Stephen had added a few grey hairs to my head by first falling out of his stroller after church one day, right on the gravel, then somehow getting out of his crib and crawling to the open basement door and falling down the four steps to the first landing. We lowered his mattress to the bottom pins, but once he learned to get out we had a hard time keeping him in. Mother made him a harness that went under the mattress but he wriggled out of it so we finally put him into an ordinary bed.

Bottles were too slow for him and he grew frustrated trying to drink, so Mother started giving him his milk from a sippy cup, and after that he just pushed the nipple out of his mouth, demanding the cup. His soother was still his nighttime companion and he got his sucking sensation from that.

By nine months, Stephen was walking and saying quite a few words, whispering them for a few days until he was comfortable in saying them out loud. Because he was so active and hadn’t yet slept all the way through the night, I was on the go all day and part of the night and decided not to enter the Teachers’ college that fall. Besides, the school was so crowded that it was put on two shifts to accommodate all the students. I was to enter the following year.

When Stephen turned one we had a few friends and family over for his party, and Stephen was all excited with the prospect of ripping the presents open. Even at one, he seemed to know this was all for him and he delighted in greeting people at the door, taking the gifts from them and putting them on the coffee table. He ran around with the other children while Tony, who was by now 15 months, was still not too steady – he’d just learned to walk a short while before. His sister Debbie was four months old and the apple of her parent’s eye. Stephen blew out his one candle and loved his party, asking for more when everyone left. In the photo, that’s Tony with his mother on the left and Mother holding Debbie, all watching the birthday boy.

I kept a baby book for Stephen, and when filling out his family tree, got interested in my own background. I have always known that Mother had a famous ancestor in her background, but now I wanted to know more, so she filled me in. Mother’s maiden name was Kosciuszko, and a distant uncle became quite famous both in Poland and in the United States.

In fact Thaddeus Kosciuszko was listed in every encyclopedia that I ever looked in as a Polish patriot that fought in the American Revolution, was an engineer under George Washington and was even featured in Ripley’s Believe It or Not. The Kosctiuszko family also has their own crest.

So Mother started to tell me about her side of the family and I started looking the name up and found a lot of information, which I collected for Stephen and Brother’s children. There were several relatives living in Poland who Mother wrote to regularly, as well as my Uncle Walter in Australia, but I didn’t write Polish so I didn’t keep in touch with any of them. Uncle Walter and his family remained close and I got to meet his son, Andrew, just a few years ago. Mother’s relatives sent her many pictures of family members, so I was quite familiar with seeing their faces and putting names to them.

Father’s side didn’t have much information other than the names of his parents, so I included those in the baby book. Of the four children, only Father and his sister, the nun, remained, and now Father was gone as well. We learned later that his mother was still living, but behind the Iron Curtain, so we had no contact with her. Sister Josephata, through the Ukrainian sisters, managed to find where she was, and a picture was smuggled out showing my paternal grandmother with a group of women, who were nuns but dressed as lay people, and that’s the only picture I have of her. Father’s youngest brother Yaroslaw died young, but we had a corner of a school picture showing him with a group of boys at about nine years old. The other child was a girl, but we had no picture of her, just the name Olesia. Sister Josaphata’s name was Stephania, and when I named my son Stephen she was honoured and very pleased.

In the summer of ’62 I visited Georgetown, by bus, and spent the day with some of my former pupils and their parents. I couldn’t get over how the children had grown up in such a short period of time, but was pleased to see them.

Another trip I made was to Windsor, to visit two girls from my Mount Mary days when we were first in Canada. Their father and my parents were friends, so it was like seeing family. Chicky and Bev lived at home and Bev had a little girl, just older than Stephen, nicknamed Ponytail, or Pony for short. The two children had a lot of fun together, and while there we also visited Detroit and the people who sold us their house after Father died.

While shopping with them Stephen wouldn’t let go of a doll stroller, so the lady bought it for him and he pushed it all over for the next few months, with his cars in it.

In the fall I registered at the Teacher’s College, where they put me on the afternoon shift, which was fine with me. I had to walk about a mile to catch the city bus, so afternoons were perfect. Mother looked after Stephen when I left for classes, and when Sister came home from her school she helped out. I got home in the early evening and studied most of the night. Here’s Stephen and me in the yard.

Stephen was still not sleeping through the night, so I had a very rough time. The work at school wasn’t hard, but I just couldn’t manage to get all the studying and preparation for practice teaching done, and when our
shifts switched during the new year I just had to give up for the time being. There was no way I could get to morning classes before 7am. I now stayed home and concentrated on Stephen.

Carolyn and I had met some Morman missionaries who came to her house, and they got a group of young people together for fun and games. I was included with Carolyn so we went bowling and had sing-songs. Once we went on a hayride and, since they lived in Ancaster, they held baseball games for anyone who wanted to join in. These missionaries had to work in the field for two years each and they were to spend a few months in Ancaster. I was never at any of their religious meetings, but Carolyn told me that they had some heated discussions with her father. As far as I knew they didn’t convert anyone to their form of worship, but they sure made the summer interesting for us that year.

Stephen really enjoyed his second Christmas. Tony and Stephen were both awed by the glittering tree and all the wrapped presents, mostly for them and Debbie. Mother made the traditional Ukrainian supper and everyone enjoyed the meal before going to Midnight Mass. In the new year Mother found a man to rent one of our bedrooms who had a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, and she became my charge while he worked.

Cindy was a good child and got along with Stephen, so there were no problems, and I enjoyed being with the two of them. However, the father was something else. One nice spring evening he invited Stephen and me to go to a drive-in with Cindy and him, so we got the kids ready in their pyjamas and left. I stayed in the back seat with Stephen while Cindy stayed in the front with her father, who started drinking almost as soon as we got there. As the evening progressed he got more and more inebriated and started to demand I move up front, which I wouldn’t. By the end of the show he was so drunk that I was afraid to go home with him and said I was taking the children and finding my own way home. Stephen and I got out but he wouldn’t let me take Cindy, so I left her there and walked to the projection shed, where a young man agreed to drive me home because I had no money. I don’t know what time they finally got in but the next day Mother told him to find another place to stay and we never saw either of them again.

Mother bought lumber to build a sandbox for Stephen, and he spent hours playing in it. One day when we were getting him ready for bed he cried when we undressed him and, because his nose was running, we thought he had a cold and didn’t give him a bath that night. Next day he again cried when we were dressing him, and this time we checked his body in case he had something pricking him and discovered a bruise below his neck and took him to the doctor. He found that Stephen had a broken collarbone, so he taped him up and said it would heal by itself. Mother wasn’t satisfied and called Brother’s children’s doctor, who examined him and put an elastic bandage on him, showing us how to loosen and tighten it until Stephen healed.

That February Brother and his wife had a third child, Tommy, so when Stephen turned two they had their hands full with three little ones under three so they didn’t attend his birthday party. Things were more stable at their house, and because they lived elsewhere we didn’t see them too often.

With no extra rent coming in, Mother decided to sell the house and move to Hamilton, where she would be closer to work and Sister could attend a school for hairdressers, since she had dropped out of high school. She found us an upstairs apartment in a private home and we moved before the end of the summer. I was registered to enter my final year in Teacher’s College and Stephen was entered in a nursery school. Life was finally starting to come together for me. I was to go to school by bus, and by now the classes weren’t on shifts so we had regular hours, which I could manage.

Stephen adjusted to nursery school very well, but was still very active and lively, never sitting still. While Mother was washing her car on the street, he was riding his tricycle off the sidewalk and backing back up, over and over again, until he missed the slope, hit the curb, fell over backwards and split the back of his head. He required two stitches to close the cut.

A few days later, he tried carrying his tricycle up to the verandah, fell with the bike on top of him and the handle gave him a black eye. We kept him in, but he found the end of a lamp cord that mother had cut off, plugged it in and burned his hand, as well as getting a mild shock. Back to the hospital we went but everything was all right except for a red, sore hand. He now was watched more closely than ever, but still managed to get hurt. While drinking Kool-aid he swallowed an ice cube and nearly choked, and then when he was sliding from the back of the couch to the cushions, he forgot to sit down, his feet hit the cushion and he was propelled into the coffee table, where the scalloped edge cut his chin, requiring stitches, again. Stephen carries that scalloped scar to this day.

I was now a total wreck. I called my doctor requesting something to calm me down or I would not be able to start school in the next few days. He gave Stephen something instead, which so changed the boy’s initiative that we threw the pills away. Now we had to rush Stephen to the hospital with the croup, and he stayed there for a few days while I began Teacher’s College.

A few weeks into the semester, and after Stephen’s second hospitalisation for croup, he was admitted to have his tonsils removed. I was allowed to skip the class that day and stayed with my son at the hospital. Children recover quickly, and Stephen was home the next day, as if nothing had happened. We had Stephen’s third birthday at that home and things were quiet for a while.

The owners needed the upstairs again, though, so we moved to a third floor of a house not far away. Sister got married there in November and Carolyn and I were bridesmaids. She moved to another street, just behind us.

That’s Brother and his wife with Tony in front of the groom, Sister with Stephen in front, Mother with Debbie in front and me with the flower girl, Leslie, a friend.

I met a girl soon after I moved to Hamilton who had a son a year younger than Stephen, and we became good friends. Through her husband I met a man who was in the army, and we went out for a while, but I just couldn’t see myself with him, so I called it off. I was away visiting friends one weekend when Mother rushed Stephen to the hospital with breathing problems. Upon my return I saw him in intensive care, in an oxygen tent. His epiglotis had swollen, nearly choking him. That was a very scary time for all of us, until we finally got him home.

By now, I was almost finished schooling and needed a job. I contacted the Georgetown board and was again hired to teach kindergarten. The school had grown by leaps and bounds and now was bilingual as well. At least the school was – not the students. Half the school housed the English-speaking students and half housed the French. My old room was used as a regular classroom, but there was an addition being built and my new room would be in there. I agreed and made arrangements to move to Georgetown and find a place for Stephen and myself.

I found an apartment, and so began my third year in Georgetown. The mother of One of my former pupils agreed to babysit Stephen, and I began at the school, but not in the kindergarten. The Grade 5 teacher still hadn’t arrived from India, so I was given her class. With more than 40 students, the room was crowded, and I wasn’t really prepared to teach that grade, but with books – and imagination – we survived. We were studying Marco Polo, so I had the students do a lot of hands-on crafts on the subject. One was making papier mache puppets of Marco Polo over an old light bulb. We had fun, and I’m sure most of them never forgot that gentleman from history.

Soon my room was ready, and because I had taken all my previous toys home, the room was again empty. This time we didn’t even have the counting sticks or blocks because the French Grade 1 class was using them, and most of the rhythm instruments were scattered through other rooms. So Stephen’s toys came to school and we started. I loved having the little children back again and knew quite a few of them as younger siblings to former students.

About this time, friends convinced me to ask Lonnie for child support, and when he didn’t respond I took him to court, where he lied about being with me for months before and after I got pregnant and said he wasn’t sure who’s baby Stephen was. Now I was so crushed that any feelings I had left for him were completely gone and I couldn’t stand the sight of him. I didn’t know he was going to lie and didn’t bring the pictures of us, clearly showing the year on the licence plate and the background of summer. To this day I harbour resentment that he could do that to his son and to me.

Our apartment in Georgetown wasn’t working out too well, and when one of the French teachers who lived in Hamilton offered to let me share her commute, I moved back in with Mother. Stephen went back to nursery school and I drove back and forth each day.
Stephen’s fourth birthday was spent there, and so far he stayed out of the hospital. When the ground floor became vacant in Sister’s house, Stephen and I moved there and mother shared Sister’s flat. Commuting to Georgetown was hard, but it was easier on Stephen so I stayed there.

He was doing better about staying out of hospitals, but had another bout of the croup, and when we brought him into the children’s ward a nurse looked at his chart and exclaimed, “Oh, we have Stephen here again!” The picture shows him playing by the hospital window.

I loved the apartment on Duke Street. It was a sort of a dead-end street, with an apartment complex at the end that didn’t get much traffic, and there were several children for Stephen to play with. Next door was Butch and across the street was Michael, and both boys became Stephen’s friends.

I bought Stephen a scooter so he could learn the art of balancing a two-wheeler, and other than once again being admitted with the croup, things were fine. His fifth birthday was spent with most of the children on the street attending.
In Georgetown, I loved my students, and we were progressing well into our reading and simple arithmetic. However, there were rumblings in the French section of the school because their kindergarten couldn’t be accommodated at the school for lack of space and was being held in the basement of some restaurant. They wanted their children in the school along with the others. So French university students from Toronto held a sit-in in the foyer of our school, demanding that the kindergarten pupils be housed in the building.
We now couldn’t walk from one end of the school to the other because they wouldn’t let us through, so we had to go around the outside. There were news media there daily, as well as cameras and reporters from CBC. I was beginning to feel the stress when I was asked to meet with the board chairman and my principal, who had a proposal for me. If I agreed to accept all the French children into my room, along with their teacher, the sit-in would be called off and we could go on educating children.

My room was just a perfect size, with about 18 to 20 children in each of the morning and afternoon classes, and I didn’t want to add extra pupils and their teacher, but they talked and talked, while I pondered and cried, and finally I decided that because it was now May and I would be done by the end of June, I didn’t care, so I got the French children and their teacher and the university students went home. Everyone was happy, except me.
I made one stipulation before I gave in: The French teacher could be in my room, but not when I was teaching the class, so they divided our mornings and afternoons in half, with each of us teaching in shifts. That worked out well for me, because I could still go on with my work without having another person there with me. However, my students were now reading and doing math while the French students were still learning to write their names and learning to count. Soon the French parents objected to my pushing their children into work they couldn’t handle, and the principal told me not to go on with my curriculum. That really angered me, but I had no choice, so I just quit all regular work and let the children play, wasting the rest of the school year.

Most of these French children were from Belle Island, Newfoundland, who had come here after the coal mines closed there, and they spoke little or no English. One little girl used to come to school very unkempt, with her hair in tangles, so I began to clean her up when she got to class in the afternoon and comb her hair, putting in clips to keep the tresses out of her eyes. This went on for a while, when one day Mona showed me a large purple bruise on her arm, and she said her dad gave her. I was shocked. Up to that time I had never seen a child being beaten by a parent, so I went to tell the principal. The French principal happened to be in there as well, and when I told them what Mona told me, the French principal pooh-poohed the whole event and said Mona was always lying and probably hurt her arm climbing a tree. Since I was being so dismissed, I went back to my room.
A few days later Mona appeared in the morning with her dress on backwards, dirty and her hair in a terrible state. I cleaned her up and asked why she was there so early, but received no answer.

This went on for three or four days, so I decided to take Mona back home during my lunch hour and explain to the parents that she shouldn’t be coming both morning and afternoon. Mona was to show me where she lived, but we walked all over Georgetown before I finally found a telephone and called the school for her address.

Going up the walk, I was at the front steps when I noticed Mona was nowhere around. As I ran back toward the street I found her hiding behind a tree, afraid to go in, so I told her I was going in with her, still believing she was scared for coming to school when she shouldn’t have. Once inside I met her father, who had been sleeping and was unshaven, smelled of beer and surprised that I had Mona with me. She just hid behind me and I could now sense her terror. I talked to the man and told him about Mona coming to school in the mornings, which he hadn’t known and he started to yell at her. I explained that it was all right, but from now on she should only come in the afternoon.

After he calmed down he told her to get ready for the afternoon class and mixed a glass of Carnation milk with water, and that was her lunch. I waited until she was finished, got her cleaned up and we returned to school, where I fed her. From then until the end of June, Mona came only in the afternoon, and I always brought her some lunch. There was an older brother in Grade 1 and a younger brother at a babysitter’s, and both were looked after and clean. Why Mona was treated like that I never found out.

As a special treat for the children I arranged with several parents to take the whole kindergarten class on a picnic to the park and spend the day playing there. We must have looked a sight, walking to the park by twos, and between the long walks and the day spent playing, we managed to use up the time until the school day ended. That day I brought Stephen to school, and he enjoyed mixing in with all the children, as well as seeing where I worked and what I did all day.

With school now over, I was now looking for some sort of work to pay my rent. There was an experimental class being set up to teach secretarial skills, using a new form of shorthand called speed-writing. We would be paid so much a day to attend, and I enrolled. By September I started on a new career. The work wasn’t hard, but we had a lot of practice to do to learn this new skill, as well as typing and English grammar. Everything that was needed to work in an office was taught, and I enjoyed it. This school was again on two shifts, and I was lucky to be on the afternoon one, so I had the mornings at home, when Mother could sleep, and she looked after Stephen while I was away.

Here I met Susan, the young mother of Shelley, who became a close friend. Susan was married, but they weren’t getting along, so she began spending more and more time at my house. Soon I began to make other friends, who would come over after I got home from school, both male and female, and while the men played cards the girls made coffee and watched. Susan met a man she really liked and they became an item. No one interested me much, other than just being friends, and a lot of my evenings were spent in pleasant company.

One day I was reading the newspaper when I got the shock of my life. There was a picture of a child in Sick Children’s Hospital in Toronto, all bandaged up with only her eyes and mouth showing. She was in a hospital bed, and the story named her as Mona, the same child I taught in Georgetown.

Her father was in jail, charged with child abuse, and she was so badly beaten that her spleen was ruptured and she had a ruptured ear drum. Oh, how I cried! I was so upset at what had been done to Mona and that no one had believed her, and even blamed myself for not pursuing if further when I was still teaching, but now Mona was in the care of Children’s Aid, and I hoped that her French principal carried the guilt of what she had done for the rest of her life. I tried to find out what had happened to the family after that, but no one seemed to remember them.

Things were running smoothly at the school and I was learning so much. By now I could take dictation quickly, using the speed-writing, and learning the other things needed to run an office. That November, while in class, our power went out, and after an hour or so we were told we could go home. Once at home, Mother told me that Stephen was having a bath when the power went out and before she could find a candle, his screams echoed throughout the house.

She had a hard time calming him down while trying to light the candle, and by the time I got home he was asleep. We listened to my battery-operated radio and learned that we were part of the great power blackout that blanketed New York and Ontario. We were lucky we weren’t caught anywhere electricity was needed to get us out.

Christmas that year was hectic for me, with school, shopping and trying to keep an active four-year-old from finding his gifts around the house. Just lately Stephen told me he had climbed on the counter and found some plastic rollerskates in a top cupboard. So much for hiding presents with that child!

We got him a Super Helmet Seven, a gift he wanted very badly. On top of the helmet was a device that did seven different things, from flashing a light to making a siren sound. He also received a large, yellow, battery-run transport truck that was advertised on TV. He watched a lot of children’s programs and joined some of their clubs. Sometimes his shows were interrupted by a horse race from Toronto, and I would hear, “They’re off” while I was in the kitchen. Stephen liked to see those horses race.
In February we had to switch to the morning shift, and again I couldn’t manage getting to the school that early, and had no one to look after Stephen since Mother had to sleep mornings, so I dropped the course. Susan continued, and now I looked after her Shelly, so that helped my finances a bit, though I still had to apply for welfare.

We asked all the children on the street to Stephen’s fifth birthday party, and by then there were quite a few people who were using my house as a gathering place each evening, and I was beginning to resent some of them. Sister was expecting her first child, but didn’t seem as excited as most new mothers-to-be should be. Her husband drank a lot and became abusive if crossed. One day as he came in fairly late, he turned off the hall light, which was left on all the time. I turned it back on and he got angry and started pushing me and trying to hit me. One of the friends in my home came out and told him to leave me alone and stop trying to fight. That’s when Sister’s husband took a swing at the man, missed and broke the glass in the sliding door to my apartment, waking up the whole house. Sister was crying, Mother was angry with him and I was pleased someone stood up for me. Now I understood why Sister wasn’t that pleased with the upcoming birth. She knew her husband’s temper.

My tonsils were very infected that late spring and I had to have them out. Mother took some time off work to stay with Stephen, and the day after I was operated on I was listening to the radio at lunchtime when the news came that a four-year-old boy had been hit by a delivery truck on Duke Street. They weren’t releasing his name because his mother was in another hospital having an operation. The tray and contents went flying off my bed and I ran to the nurse’s station to call home, where no one answered. Now I was in a panic, and demanded to see someone about releasing me, but no one else was around. I called one of my friends and asked to be driven to St Joseph’s, and when I got there Stephen was in intensive care with a hairline skull fracture and bruises.

Mother had made Stephen toast that morning and left him on the steps eating, when he went off to play with the children down the street. Without looking he ran out from between two parked cars, right into the path of the delivery van. Mother and Sister heard the commotion, and while running down the stairs, Sister slipped and jarred herself badly. An ambulance took Mother and Stephen to St Joseph’s, and I was there shortly afterwards.
When I saw Stephen was going to be all right, I realised my throat was sore and asked the doctor if I could have something for the pain. Instead I was admitted and put under the care of Stephen’s doctor as well.

We both spent a few days hospitalised before being released. Sister in the meantime was having problems stemming from the slip she’d taken, and she too wound up in the hospital, where a short time later she gave birth to a premature baby boy. The night the baby was born her husband came home, drunk, and entered my bedroom, wanting to talk about the baby. He described him to me and was getting all weepy about becoming a father, but that didn’t stop him from trying to crawl into my bed and telling me we could “keep it in the family”. I was never very fond of this brother-in-law, and now I detested him. I managed to get him out of my room and locked the door. I felt sorry for Sister, being married to such a man.

Things with my friends were getting out of hand as well, and I couldn’t control them. Being up most of the night because of the card games and getting up early with Stephen soon had my health spiraling downward. I needed iron pills to build my blood up and sleeping pills to get me to sleep. After a particularly hectic day, I took too many sleeping pills and woke up in the hospital, where my stomach had been pumped out and I was under close scrutiny. After two weeks I was back home and decided to change my lifestyle as well as my friends.

In June I started scouring the want ads, looking for a teaching position where I’d be hired under a Letter of Permission, since I still needed those two Grade 13 subjects and couldn’t get my permanent certificate until I did. I found two places that accepted me, and was all excited to leave Hamilton. Both were in northern Ontario, in one-room schools. I accepted the one in a small place called Nemegos, although I had no idea where it was. I received a call from a woman who told me there were no roads into the place, just the train. Also there was no hydro, and I had a choice of two homes, both very, very cheap, but heated with wood. My pioneer spirit soared at those prospects, but Mother brought me down to earth by reminding me about all the care Stephen needed with his active style, and she didn’t think I should go there.

Before I had to decide, I got a second phone call, this one from Englehart, from the Holy Family School Board, telling me my name had been forwarded by the second school I had applied to, which was just closing. The man offered me a job teaching Grades 1 to 3 in a three-room school, which I was familiar with, having been taught in one and having taught at another. So I accepted, and now had to find out where I was moving.
Packing began in earnest and a moving company called.

When all was done, it was nearly the middle of July and time for us to move. We had two going-away parties, one for all the kids on the street (that’s Stephen in the print shirt at the back) and one for my friends. We had to borrow chairs because all my stuff was now gone, and we said good bye to everyone. In the picture from my party, that’s Stephen, Shelley and Michael.

In the morning, Stephen had a picture taken with Mother, and we were driven to catch a train for the next stage of our life.

Continue to Part 9.