Dad Ticks Me Off

I didn’t write anything until this next entry:

Sept 3, 1969  Lately I haven’t favored you with much of my attention but nothing has really happened. Tomorrow the grand day! School starts for me and I’m not too sad because these pasta two days Peter, Erik, Ole and Nette have been going to school. I really haven’t had much to do. I hope I study really hard this year because my marks last June were hideous. They really were a disgrace. I think I’m a little hurt at what my father said a little while ago. He said he wouldn’t let me repeat grade 123 and if I had to I didn’t have the brains to be a doctor. That stung! If he thinks I’m going to let myself repeat even one year he’s out of his mind. I have absolutely no intentions of going thru another year of high school especially at Windsor Park Collegiate. Everybody says people out wet are nice but they aren’t. At least not to me. They are cold people and they don’t care about other people. And my parents say people in Quebec are cold They aren’t.  Why my best friends, Ninette Bendahan and Joan Rourke live in Montreal and they are nice people. Especially Nini. Burlington (Ontario) people are also nice. I have only 2 real friends there, Susan Rolston and Heidi Harris. I count Heidi from before I moved, not after. (WE had a fight thru mail). Well Bye!

NOTE:  I should perhaps say that after school ended in Grade 9 we moved to Montreal in early July of 1969 where I attended Lindsay Place High School and met my best friend of 50 years – Ninette.  Because I had moved from Ontario to Wpg in Grade 9 I was technically a year behind in Math due to Ontario having Grade 13 while the rest of the country on went to Gr. 12. Then we moved to Montreal where my math teacher was an alcoholic that jumped around on desk to the point where we were terrified he would step on us.  I didn’t not learn one thing in that class except to be afraid.  When I say my marks were hideous it was mostly my math, which I barely passed. Because the subjects were different I had to catch up on geography (I had history in Mtl) and was doing science in Wpg where I had been doing Biology in Montreal. So the marks were downgraded considerably since we moved back mid-March.  However that may be, Dad was a tyrant in ensuring that my marks came back up to at least a B average which was really not even the best I usually did.  Up to and including Grade 9 I was always in the top 5 in my class – that never happened afterwards, but let me say this, I basically maintained a B average WITHOUT STUDYING.