Hitting it into the park

For as long as I can remember, I've liked High Park. 

A BENCH OF ONE'S OWN: What
more could an old guy want?

Now I love the place. 

Here's why.

When I was 11, I worked as a page at the Ontario Legislature. During that time, I lived in the far west end of Toronto with my sister Charlene, a Humber College nursing student, and her beautiful room mates, Cathy and Barb.  

Because I was away from home, didn't have to attend regular school, got paid real money, hung out in the big city, commuted to work on the streetcar every morning with the grownups and roomed with three very cool older women, my time as a page is almost too precious to be believed.  

I sometimes think I peaked at 11.

On more than one Sunday, Charlene and I visited High Park. We occasionally rented a row boat; visited the zoo or just hung out. It was also educational. From the handful of hopeful young men who made it their business to chat up Charlene, with her blazing red hair and long legs, I got flirting lessons,

Fifty six years later, I live within a 10-minute leisurely stroll of the park. I've been in the same area since moving to Toronto in 1985. 

And I've probably walked (and cycled and drove and skated) around as much of the park as anybody. 

ED OF HIS CLASS: He spent countless hours in
High Park with us.

I remember exploring the valleys and wooded areas of High Park when Helena and I were planning our wedding 38 years ago. 

Later we took our kids skating on Grenadier Pond; we snuck wine in to watch the Canadian Stage Company's Shakespearean productions at the outdoor theatre; we check out the Cherry-Blossom-festival festival goers every April. The people are more interesting than the trees. 

When my son Michel was a preteen he played outfield in in the High Park Baseball League.  At one game, a baseball mom asked me which player was my son; I pointed to Michel, and she said "He's very good looking." Her female companion felt it necessary to add, "Yeah, and he doesn't look at all like his father."

When my daughters Ewa and Ria were finishing grade eight at the nearby St. Vincent De Paul School, their class had a picnic in the park. My role? I took any young person who wanted for a ride around the park on the back of my black 1982 Yamaha Heritage Special motorbike. Teachers might not like that idea now.

BENCH IMPRESSING: Musician, husband,
brother, nephew, son, weight lifter,
and pun lover Paul

Around the same time, the  community rallied to erect a giant children's play structure. All the families we knew pitched in money and a bit of sweat equity, and if you visit the playground today and search hard enough you'll find a fence post with Ewa, Ria, Mick engraved on it. 

If in fact you do come, we should go for breakfast on the patio at the Grenadier Restaurant, located mid-park. 

But before we hit the patio, I am going to insist we pay a visit to the two most important places in the park. 

They are also the reason I'm writing this story.

North of the restaurant, and steps from the main entrance, are two benches with little plaques fastened to them; one in memory of my brother Ed and the other for my nephew (and Ed's Godson) Paul.

City crews installed the plaques in mid December. And it should come as a surprise to nobody that the memorials are the work of my sisters Charlene and Norma. 

Charlene worked with the City of Toronto Parks Department to have Paul memorialized; Norma did so for Ed.  

Ed died Jan. 31, 2022. Paul passed away after battling cancer on Aug. 25, 2023. 

I don't have to tell you how much we miss these men. Or that I'm tearing up as I write this. So I'll stop soon. 

But you have to know something. 

When you apply to the City of Toronto to participate in the memorial bench program, the City can't guarantee where your memorial plaque will appear. You can request a certain park, but there's no promises. 

And you can certainly hope with all your might that two memorial benches will be located near each other but that'd be like asking to move heaven and earth. 

The fact that Ed's and Paul's benches ended up within laughing distance of each other, in a park so near to our hearts and our home, where both men spent countless joy-filled hours, makes me wonder if somebody in heaven did a bit of earthly finagling. 

I wouldn't put it past them. I am so blessed.

Breakfast at the Grenadier's on me 

Getting what you parade for

MARY CHRISTMAS: If you can't laugh at  your sisters, what's the point of  having'em? Mary
on left, Norma and Charlene in the middle.
 

What follows are nine  things I learned marching in the 2024 Toronto Santa Claus parade as a snowman:

9)  Go before you go. At 11:05 a.m., and with a parade start time set at 11:30, I--fully rigged out in my snowman getup--realized I should have gone before I left home. Due to all the zippers, boots, hood, Velcro and whatnot, an activity that normally takes 30 seconds topped the 15-minute mark. At one point, I was standing at the urinal with the fluffy white snowman costume piled knee high round my ankles when a man behind me says, “You’re melting.”

8) Have a dad joke ready for emergencies. It's a personal policy of mine on a day-to-day basis to have a joke ready in case you need it, but in the excitement leading up to the parade, I forgot. But then, after marching for about five minutes,  the parade stopped. And I was within talking distance of the crowd. I suppose a person might possibly stand still, smile, wave and say Merry Christmas over and over again, but I'm me! Between the first and second stops, I came up with: “What does a Snowman's favourite meal? Frosted Flakes. What's a Snowman's least favourite meal? Tuna Melt."

 

7) Why do I always think of the right thing to say too late?  In a work meeting, I'll sit there and think "everybody here sounds smart and every thing I say sounds dorky." Seven and a half minutes after the meeting's done, I'll come up with zingers; clever comments that would have, moments earlier, morphed me into c-suite material. But nope. Never happens at the meeting. Same thing with my parade jokes. I was already ordering a main course at our post-parade meetup at Queen's Pasta restaurant when I assembled the bones of a joke ending with "What? And give up snow biz!???" 

GOLD, FRANKINCENSE AND MERCH: The cool
tee was the handiwork of Frosty Fan Jon Butler!

6) Real show biz must be hard for other reasons than you might think. When I first tried the Frosted Flakes line, kids in the crowd laughed and the snowperson beside me leaned over and said she thought it was funny. Pretty sure she didn't find it so hilarious the next 600 or so times. 

5) A cure for belated brilliance syndrome (BBS) would be a billion-Bitcoin invention. This just came to me: "My wife thinks I'm flaky." And now this: "I feel like I'm on the verge of a meltdown!" See what I mean?

4) You never know where you're going to find something that makes you happy. Take, for example, the word "of". This whole parade thing was my sister Charlene's idea. She marched as a clown in last year's parade and had such a great time she talked me, and my  sisters Norma and Mary, to join this year. So, I got to say I marched with three "of" my older sisters; not my three older sisters. See what I'm getting at here? My fourth older sister, Bertholde, stayed home in Sudbury with our brother Alex. Imagine a guy my age still having siblings to spare! And them goofy enough to want to join in a Santa parade.

3) Some clowns have more fun than others. I was a snowman. Norma and Charlene were upside down clowns and Mary an upside-up clown. The upside-down clowns were crowd favourites, but  they didn't get to tell jokes and high-five dozens of thousands of mitted hands like I did. Before the parade got underway, somebody mentioned that we marchers were not to touch the people on the sidelines, which would have meant no high-fives or mitt-slapping. I could have asked somebody in authority if I’d heard correctly but decided I would pretend I hadn’t heard anything. 

2) I watch too much Netflix. Did you know that there's a Christmas feelgood movie streaming this month called Hot Frosty about a beautiful widow named Kathy who's working hard to keep her daughter and friends in Christmas moods even though she's lonely and her pals are trying to set her up but she's too busy but then she magically turns a snowman into a hunky boyfriend and, well never mind, it's just that I knew about Hot Frosty and maybe just maybe I was hoping would connect me with the movie title? Like maybe yell it from the crowd? My sister Mary mentioned Hot Frosty but she's my sister; it's not the same. Was I disappointed? No I was not. I am too mature for that. 

1)  If this last one isn't proof the magic of Christmas is real, I'll eat my snowman  hat. “It’s not bad now but I bet it’s going to be bad soon,” is what I thought for the first kilometre or two of the parade. I was dead certain that I'd be tired and cranky and sore at parade's end, that I'd be itching, desperate even, to join my sisters for beer and Italian food, as we'd planned. I was wrong! The parade was nearing the final corner, I thought, "I don't want this to end!" I could have walked another parade! Turns out, prancing around and joking and high-fiving strangers and making an ass of myself in front of 750,000 happy people is what I was put on earth to do. 

Imagine me, preferring to march than go for Italian food and beer. Like I said, if that's not magic I don't know what is. I sure hope you get to experience the magic of the season his year, like Frosty did. And like he plans on doing again in 2025. Merry everything!

 

   

Another fun recipe from the Carter sisters' kookbook

Two days ago, one of my cousins who is very close to my age, asked me the following: "Is 'clown beauty sleep' really a thing?"

My response?  "I love you and I will try rilly rilly hard to not tell anyone that you asked if clown beauty sleep is really a thing. But no promises."

The reason this Halifax-based cousin asked about clown beauty sleep is, she was wondering whether I would be attending the Taylor Swift concert here in Toronto, on Saturday, Nov. 23rd.

Of course, the answer is no. 

It's not that I don't like Taylor Swift. In fact,  if her other songs are as good as the two that I am familiar with, Carolina and Mean, I totally get the fuss.

I also admit, I totally dreamt about Taylor Swift. 

Last Friday. I know because I wrote it down after I woke up, something I rarely do. 

My late brother Ed was there, too. He and I were working as funeral home assistants at Taylor Swift's funeral. And at the dress rehearsal, while her dancers practised their routine in one corner of the funeral home, other people lined up at the coffin to bid the singer goodbye. 

In true Ed fashion, he said "Pete if we don't do this, we'll regret it forever," so he and I got in line. When we arrived at Swift's casket, Ed reached over to brush some hair out of her eyes. She sat up. 

Ed was like, "Oh-oh." 

Swift proceeded to stand and dance, right there in the coffin. 

I've had a similar dream about Ed.

But never mind that. 

When my cousin asked about her concert, I said I couldn't stay up late that night because the next day, Sunday November 24, I and three of my sisters are marching in the Toronto Santa Claus parade as clowns, so we would need our clown beauty sleep.

Ha-ha.

Clown beauty sleep might not be a thing, but me, Charlene, Norma and Mary as clowns in the 120-year-old parade sure is. It's almost hard to believe this is happening but there you go.

Charlene and Norma will be upside down clowns; Mary a musical elf carrying a giant eighth note. I'll be a snowman. Wearing a top hat.

It was Charlene's idea. She was a  clown last year and persuaded us to join her this go-round. 

I am the youngest of the four but the maturest.

I'm very happy about this turn of events. It's important to celebrate happy moments.  

I just hope parade day's not too warm.  This snowman does have to go to work the next morning. 

Thanksgiving & thanksgetting

THEM APPLES:
When it comes to questions
 Michelle sure
knows how to pick’em. 

Wednesday morning two weeks ago, after I arrived at my office, Michelle Huang--one of the most important people in our company (I'm talking 35,000 people around the world)--asked, "How are you, Peter?" 

Poor Michelle. 

She is such a good sport. She probably didn't deserve my answer. And odds are good she was hoping for a "fine thanks how about you?"

What she got instead was firehosed, with an impromptu litany of all the elements that had to work seamlessly to get me from my bed to my office. 

Like the lights working in our bathroom back home. And the plumbing.

The fridge.

The toaster. 

The garage door opener.

The ignition on my motorcycle. And the clutch cable. Have you ever considered how many times the clutch cable on a motorcycle gets used? And it just keeps clutching and unclutching. 

So many things must mesh to make Peter's world work.

Michelle, who is very patient, put up with the following: "Between my house and here, there's hundreds if not thousands of traffic signals; the roads are all paved; and the other drivers all drive vehicles that are working, safely. I'm even amazed at the elevator that took me all the way to the ninth floor just now." 

Like I said. Poor Michelle. Everybody at our office is crazy about Michelle. I'm thankful I get to work with her.

Yesterday my wife Helena and I had an online appointment with a financial adviser at the TD Bank. 

His name's Mario and he's been helping us for, like, 20 years. I call him Super Mario.

Yesterday, before we started talking business, I wasted probably a dozen of Super Mario's minutes expressing my pleasure, surprise, glee and sheer astonishment that:

A: We have money;
B: We have a financial adviser:
C: We could meet with him from the comfort of my liviing room, which would not have been possible five years ago. And if you want to hear Super Mario laugh, tell him, as I did "I bet you didn't realize I'm not wearing any pants."

On Monday, we had some friends over for Thanksgiving and I read the following, citing each guest by name. 

God is great and God is good;
Let us thank him for our food:

God is great; He's not too shabby;
So thank you God for our friend Gabby.

Speaking of, thank you for Mick
Mateus, too, who's growing quick.

Listen God, don't think you owe me
 God, damn it's cool you sent Naomi.

Thanks for Frank, who came from Chad
And thanks for Gayle who's always glad.

Your tallest angel's also here:
I'm talking Doug, I think that's clear.

And Helena...you've met the missus:
She showers me with love and kisses

So thanks for her a lot, I say,
She's stuck it out both night and day.

Thanks for all the joy and luck:
Because without friends, this life would suck.

God is great and God is big;
It's dinner time so in we dig.

Amen.

I've been told sometimes people get tired of my positivity. My mom would say those people are just jealous.

Oh. Thanks for reading.

Tilt!

ARTISTIC DRIVER'S LICENCE: I just learned that the
waitress looked a lot like pinball-machine artist Paul Faris' real
girlfriend and that that's Faris himself leaning out the truck window.

So my friend Macbeth Swackhammer and I were sitting in the bar side of  the Anchor Inn in Little Current, Ont., on a Tuesday afternoon, when two guys came in to remove the pinball machine. 

They told us they were bringing it to the shop in Sudbury. I asked how much it'd cost to buy. I forget the amount but said "sold." 

The pair trucked it to my apartment, and my life hasn't been the same since. 

That was more than 40 years ago. 

What's important now is that the pinball machine--Night Rider, by the Bally company, of Chicago--has followed me through the years and sits in my basement in Toronto.

I just came upstairs after investing 45 minutes trying to win a game. (I can use the same quarter over and over again.)

Hadn't played in years but this morning, I watched a documentary called Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game, about a tall skinny brownhaired wannabe writer with a porn-star moustache who wrote the definitive history of pinball, and the movie inspired me to fire up Night Rider and doing so bro 

Sorry. 

I haven't a clue what was supposed to come after that ''bro."

My sister Norma phoned. 

While she and I were talking, I cracked a can of Sleeman's Premium Original Draft, the conversation took me away from writing, and that was five days ago. I'm only getting back to this now.

It just occured to me that this is the second blog entry since June that opens with me in the bar at the Anchor Inn.  

The "bro" could have been the first part of "brought," as in "brought back memories" or it might have had something with how my life hasn't been the same since the pinball machine. (One way it's the same? Beer in the afternoon can still yield surprising outcomes.)

But really. 

The person I'd like to meet is the person whose life hasn't changed after 40 years. That'd be a blog worth wasting your time on!

Where was I?

A letter from Peter to the Thessalonians

WHY DON'T LAUGHTER AND DAUGHTER RHYME?
Such are the things that go through a dad's head
on such an historic road trip.

In 1949, my dad, Tom, was the first person to drive the length of Highway 129, which runs north from the village of Thessalon, Ontario (population about 1,200) to Chapleau (2,000, give or take). Total distance: 220.7 kilometres. 

The trip took Tom and his friend Frank Korpela two days, and even though the car was outfitted with winter tires and chains, the snow got so heavy at some points, the guys had to dig ruts in the road to move forward. 

Their pioneering adventure made the local paper; i.e. the Chapleau Post,which quoted Tom saying 129 was "the most interesting highway" he'd ever been on.

Until a few days ago, I'd never seen Highway 129. 

But on Sunday, September 15, 2024, my daughter Ria, riding her 2003 BMW f650gs and I, on my aging Harley Sporstster 883, followed in Tom's and Frank's footsteps, except we went north to south. 

FATHER KNEW BEST: The most
interesting highway ever!

And in the days leading up to the trip, if anybody asked me why we were going, I answered: "To see if my dad was telling the truth."  

So.

Was 129 an interesting highway?

The answer is this: When I was a little kid growing up in Sudbury, before I started school, my late brother's Eddie's best friend in the world was Johnny Cosgrove, who lived a few houses north of us on the other side of Eyre Street, in a second-storey apartment with his mom, dad and kid sister Judy. 

When I was in grade two or three, Mr. Cosgrove, who worked for CN Rail, got transferred to North Bay, a two-hour drive east from Sudbury. At the time, our sister Mary lived in North Bay so sometmes when we went to see Mary, Eddie got to visit Johnny. 

A few years later, Mr. Cosgove got transferred to Chapleau.

ON THE SHOULDERS OF THOSE WHO WENT BEFORE:
Over one 100-kilometre stretch, Ria and I spotted six vehicles.

Bored yet? 

You won't be. 

When Eddie was between either grades seven and eight or grades eight and nine--definitely before high school--my dad had reason to drive to Sault Ste. Marie, which is four hours west of Sudbury. The trip required him to pass through Thessalon. 

Thoughtful dad that he was, Tom agreed to drop  Ed at Thessalon so he could thumb a ride up to to see Johnny. 

You read that right. 

My dad let his little boy Eddie hitchhike alone, 220 kilometres north, along a remote highway that was quiet even by Northern Ontario standards. 

What the hell? 

And to think my mom bought into Tom and Ed's hitchhiking scheme! 

When Ria and I were on 129 Sunday, I barely let her out of my sight! And my folks let skinny little Eddie who couldn't fight his way out of a smelt net head out on his own, up through the backwoods of Area Code 705, behind the trees of which who knew what lurked? Did they even like much less love him?

WHAT? MOM WORRY: She had 
bigger kids than me to lose sleep over.

Then again, when I was 12, those same parents put me, alone, on a 1,300-kilometre-long train trip from Sudbury to Sioux Lookout, so I could visit Clyde Donnelly, one of the kids who'd been a page with me at Queen's Park. Sioux Lookout's way farther than Chapleau. 

My parents also let me take rides astride the gas tank of my late brother Tom's friend Charlie MacMillan's Ariel Square 4 motorbike. Without a helmet.

There are times, I have this image of my mom and dad, in bed, at night. They're tired; after a busy day convincing us 10 Carters that they loved us. 

In my imagination, mom and dad are lying beside each other laughing and swapping ideas for risk-filled games of derring-do, like the people who dream up Survivor-style TV shows do; except instead of a group of contestants who didn't know one another, my folks cast us Carter kids. And if one or two of us got lost in the mix, they'd just make some more.

Ha ha. I'm only kidding. Of course my parents loved us to pieces. Right? 

They also knew that guardian angels are out and out invincible.

Turns out Highway 129 was way more interesting than I thought it was going to be when I started writing this blog.

Giddy up a oom papa oom papa meow meow!

KEYBORED: Best example of pure (or should that be purr) 
research I've ever seen

I sometimes get asked about Iris the Cat. 

Short answer? She's fine.

Professor Iris Cat's turning 16 any day now. Iris came to us on my son Michel's 16th birthday in 2008. Because Iris is a pound kitty, we don't know her exact age. 

She's still healthy, pleased with herself, and active. Iris once in a while lets fling  a random loud, omnidirectional -- how shall I put this? -- string of potty mouth invective, but who, I ask you -- at least among those living in my house -- doesn't?

Mostly, life is grand.  Just yesterday Iris sat on the bottom step of our front porch and watched a parade of tykes from a local daycare centre march past our house on the way to the park at the end of the block.  

This, incidentally, is the most adorable parade you're ever going to witness. Pride, Caribana, Santa Claus, they got nothing on the daycare kids. About 20 of them, between one and a half and three and carefully watched over by a half dozen daycare workers, march hand in hand. No two kids have the same walking style; and they all talk all the time. Loudly. Sounds like a bunch of birds and chipmunks or something. What two-and-a-half-year olds have to discuss is beyond me. It's not like they've watched a lot of Netflix or read many James Patterson thrillers. 

But they all--daycare staff included--smile when they see Iris. 

Iris smiles back.

I admit she's getting on and not as quick to jump up on tables as she used to, but are you?

IRIS AS COPY CAT: Copy cat.That's a 
journalism joke. Reporters call stories and
 headlines copy. I didn't say it was a good
journalism joke.

Whenever Iris seems to slow down or have uncertain senior cat moments, Helena and I start discussing, in euphemisms but within earshot of Iris, how our grandparents dealt with aging house pets. That livens her right up. Iris I mean. Not Helena.

Sometimes after Iris enters a room she looks around and wonders why she came in, but again, who doesn't?

She's still pretty and in fact she's aged a heck of lot better than lots of other old white cats.  

Iris also greets me, same as she has for years, every morning, and--bonus points!--she has recently inspired her own earworm, courtesy of the Oak Ridge Boys' biggest hit.

Try this at home.

Sing the opening few lines but where Duane Allen sings "Elvira," you stick in "Old Iris." Do it more than twice and you'll think it's our Iris who's got "eyes that look like heaven."

And that's what goes through my head every single freaking morning of the week. "Old Iris."

Hi Ho Silver Away!