Made in Canada - Peter

One of Dad’s favorite books and stolen anecdotes comes from “Cheaper By the Dozen”.  I can remember Dad using the line that he left the other half of the family in the car when store folks commented on the tribe of 6 lined up behind my parents during certain shopping expeditions.  I thought it was embarrassing and funny at the same time (and original). 

Peter was born a year after Jill’s passing and I was the one holding him on my lap on the way home.  He was quite yellow with jaundice and I kept asking my parents “are you sure he is ours?  He looks Chinese”.  I remember us driving down the escarpment near Hamilton, looking at the rocks and then looking and Peter and really feeling like “was he ours?”  Well, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree and it was really never a doubt once Peter got home and made himself known.  He was loud, he was a little Paul from the beginning.  As he got older he had an amazing, quick wit and the gift of the gab.  Mom had 5 quiet kids but Peter was the talker.  She would tell the teachers “I have 3 other children that I have been told are too quiet and now I  finally have one who talks I am not going to tell him to be quiet”.  She was very funny about it.  Mom was generally an accommodating parent but this was one time she stood her ground.

Peter was the first of the “second” trio of kids but in the beginning he was of course just blended in with the three of us.  I was 6 when he was born and not yet the uber baby sitter, I was still a playmate though our play was limited in my recollection.  Peter mostly played with John but he was also very devoted to Nette.  They were amigos for years, he would nap and even sleep with her, she would tell him stories and they played well together.

When Peter and I talk he tells me he doesn’t remember Daddy the way I do.  He doesn’t remember a lot of the fun things we did in Burlington.  His recollections seems to start in Winnipeg and of course that was the time when Dad, always a hard worker with long hours, had an even longer work day than in Burlington (if that was even possible).  Plus Winnipeg was not the easiest place to live, our neighbour was new and very boring.  The only fun thing we had was the artificial lake but that got lame fairly fast since no one was allowed to swim or boat in it.  It was just “decoration”.

In Burlington we would go on drives, not in Winnipeg.  We had places where we could go for family picnics, we could go to Niagara Falls, Fort George and Fort William.  There was little to see in Winnipeg; we went once to Fort Gary but it was boring.  Winters were long, and boring.  There was no Rattlesnake Point and crazy drives down the “mountain”. 

Peter missed a lot of cool play.  Or thinks he did.