Memories of Growing up In Vaughan Township

In my father’s personal records, one of which I found most interesting, was his business card as the Reeve of Vaughan of 1962. On the reverse side, it listed various statistics of Vaughan. Though shocked by the low mill rate and other figures, it was the population numbers that floored me: 15,957 citizens in 1960. This has soared to nearly 15 times that amount.

My first four years (1958 – 1962) were spent at the corner of Keele St. and Major Mackenzie as my father had his first drug store (he went on to have several in Vaughan and King) three doors up on the west side. My parents and I lived in an apartment upstairs. Their best friends, Dougald and Helen McCowan, lived next door and they owned the IGA grocery store in town. They sold it to Ron Nichol a few decades later, who became quite an icon for supporting the community in several ways from the ‘70’s thru to the 90’s when he retired.

I recall my mother taking me to Toronto at Christmas to see the windows of Eaton’s and Simpson’s as a wee lad. I could stand there forever, enraptured by the animated action of the elves. My mother became renowned for her Christmas displays in the windows of my father’s stores. She ensured that they were different each year and always entertained the locals.

One of my daily pleasures was waiting at one of the big picture windows of our apartment waiting for the arrival of “Ingm” (Mr. Ingram) in his pickup. I would dash downstairs and hop into the passenger side of the truck and be his copilot as he wound his way to the train station to pick up the daily mail drop. Since becoming his cohort, he knew to pick me up earlier than necessary, as I loved to explore the station. Upon loading the mail into the truck we would head back to the post office for the folks there to distribute the envelopes and packages.

We moved to Kleinburg in 1962 to reside beside the newly established golf course. Our lot was at the end of the road, and contrary to how developments happen now, there was one lot sold a year. Hard to imagine that now, isn’t it? We had just over an acre with half of it wooded before the back end opened up overlooking the first hole of the course and one side dropped off into a valley.

My parents were good friends of the owners of the course and became members. I was quickly brought into the enjoyment (and frustration) of golfing. As soon as I’d come home from school I’d grab a putter and seven iron and play until it was too dark to see the ball. This was back in the days when golfers would be in the 19th hole by 5 pm.

I was taken under the wing of the golf pro, who asked me to join the juniour pro tour when I was all of 11. I was such a shy kid then that I begged off. Those that know me now find it hard to believe I was ever shy.

Growing up with Tarzan, Robinson Crusoe and Captain Nemo and being surrounded by forest, I had quite the Land of Fantasia to play in. My mother, a very talented dress maker, made me, and my tribe, leopard print loincloths. I could climb trees like a monkey, run through the bush in my bare feet and even strike a match on my soles to impress my “tribe”. Down the valley was a scary swamp. Until I “befriended” a dragon (a fallen cedar tree) that became my saviour and guardian as we battled pirates and zombies arising from the primordial ooze of the marsh.

My mother likes to tell the tale of how I would pitch my tent in the back yard, come spring. Every year I would move the tent further away from the house, until she couldn’t see it from the house. I would cook my meals over an open fire and teach my friends how to live “in the bush” - n the wilds of Kleinburg - and listen to the wolves at night.

I joined the local Cub troup and was immediately impressed by our leaders. All of them were local businessman, who had sons. I enjoyed several years growing up with this group, through Scouts, where I helped with the Cubs, and on to Ventures. I’ll never forget our big campouts just north of Kleinburg, where we had hundreds of acres donated to us to run around, play capture the flag and fish in the creek.

Saturday nights were great, in that our parents would come out for The Big Bonfire. A huge 20 foot high (well, at that age it seemed to be) log cabin of wood that would be doused with combustible fuel, then torched. As it burned down, Pierre Berton would regale us with tall tales and direct us in rotating choruses of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” and other classics. He would actually leap through the bonfire flames with no regard to his safety.

I miss Pierre and have read most of his books. If only our education system had embraced his endearing stories of our Canadian history, I wouldn’t have dropped history as a subject in high school. I was sick of memorizing “names, dates and places”. He introduced you to the people of the time. He personalized it. He put you there. To feel what the folks of that time were experiencing.

Winters were quite different then. Being the little capitalist I was, I took on a Globe & Mail paper route at the tender age of six. My mother still feels guilty about watching me trudge through five feet of snow at six in the morning, as, to dutifully deliver the paper to the loyal readers, as the wind whipped around my little body.

The first Binder Twine was held in 1967, as Kleinburg’s contribution to the country’s 100 year Centennial celebrations. Since I didn’t have the attributes to enter the Binder Twine Queen Contest, where the girls had to milk a cow and smile through a toilet seat, I decided to go for another event. I did win second prize for the pet parade, showing off The Pethouse Apartments, a stack of six levels of cages some of the critters I had at the time: Cats, bunnies, guinea pigs, hamsters and gerbils all strapped down onto a wagon. For my efforts I won a huge stuffed bear from John Wayne, of Wayne and Shuster fame.

I watched the Binder Twine grow from an event, where the few hundred locals celebrated their history to a mammoth event of 50,000 plus people, with all the trappings of a highly commercial event.

How times change.