During my Mac days, dean of men Les Prince was remarkable to a bunch of us students. He took us under his wing and had a huge role in making our university days special and memorable. In my case, he did me a great favour during my less-than-distinguished experiment with football. Somehow, after scouring stores and other sources, he turned up a pair of extra-large football shoes for me. These were almost impossible to find, and he went the extra mile; I only wish I could have filled them in a way that would have better rewarded his kindness. Oh, well, at least he knew I tried. It wasn’t the only time Les helped me out with my water-ski feet. Early on, even before the football shoe hunt, he had encouraged me to get active in general athletics at Mac. I tried to beg off and visited him in his office to confess that it was impossible to find sneakers, so I would have to pass. But he said, “Look, young man, when it’s warm outside you can go barefoot, and then when it’s cold and we are indoors you can wear socks. You can find socks, can’t you? The physical activity is important for you, and it’s good for making friends.” It was sage advice that I took, and, as usual, he was right.
After I graduated from McMaster, I was intent on joining the whitecollar workforce at Stelco in Hamilton. But that was 1949 and I again came face-to-face with racism. During summers while at university, I had worked in the open hearth at Stelco. Along with dozens of other Mac grads like me, I believed I had an advantage as a war veteran and a university graduate, and I had experience at the plant, so I applied for a job at Stelco. University graduates at that time were a relatively rare and valuable commodity. Stelco was falling all over itself to hire my fellow grads. The company was also willing to give me a job but, unlike the other grads, I was offered a position in the plant, back in the open hearth. I had applied for sales. I wanted what everybody else with a B.A. was getting. Everyone from my university assisted me, and even the city’s mayor tried to help me to change the minds of Stelco’s management, but to no avail.
The clear and unacceptable implication was that the company felt having a black in sales would harm its image. There was no room for a black among the white-collar types, university education or not. I suppose it would have been easy to take the factory job and keep my mouth shut, but my belief in education and what it could offer held firm. Largely as a result of this experience, I decided to become a lawyer and be with my friend Jack Millar.
Meanwhile, my life was changing in another important way, and so much for the better. Events were coming together that would have a profound, wonderful effect on me. These events came together through Yvonne. When I was young, I used to drink a lot. In the air force, for example, I figured I was immortal. I did everything a red-blooded young Canadian man would do — not all of it good, and a fair bit of it with the potential for causing trouble. I spent a lot of time on the dark side, smoking, drinking, and partying. It might not have seemed like the dark side at the time, but once you emerge into the light and look back, there were some things I’m not proud of. So, honestly, if I hadn’t married Yvonne, I don’t know what I would have become.
I have been fortunate to have two strong, intelligent, insightful women in my life: Yvonne and my mother. From the first moment we were together, Yvonne “Tody” Harrison became the most influential force in my life. Yvonne was the daughter of Robert Harrison and Edythe Harrison (née Lewis). Her mother and father were born in Canada, and her father was part Native Canadian. Yvonne’s father, Robert, was a railway porter and, so the story goes, whenever he returned to town, Yvonne, his sweet little girl, would go down to the station to meet him. On one of these occasions, apparently, he coined for her the affectionate name “my little toad.” Pretty soon he and Yvonne’s sisters had spun that name into Tody, and it stuck for life. Yvonne was not fond of her nickname, but it was certainly used in fondness by others.
Yvonne and her three older sisters were fourth-generation Hamilton blacks, descended from American slaves who escaped to Canada through the Underground Railroad. The Harrisons were part of a small black community of about five hundred, most of whom worked as bellhops at the posh Royal Connaught Hotel or as janitors and domestics. Yvonne’s father, as I’ve noted, was a railway porter, like my dad. Because he was half Native Canadian, he had straight black hair, and Yvonne had certain aboriginal features as well. She, too, faced discrimination throughout her life, particularly when she was younger. She graduated in secretarial training from high school but found it impossible to get work related to her education. She always handled such things with a quiet dignity that I admired and that, I think, in many ways defined her as a person.
The war had intervened after our initial meeting in 1940, and I left to join the air force. While I was away during the war, even though the other guys and I were fooling around with a lot of women, Yvonne had my heart. I always had Yvonne in the back of my mind. I wrote to her regularly, but she didn’t write much, although she saved all my letters. When I came back, I made a beeline for Hamilton and we resumed our friendship. She was five years older than I, and she didn’t want to go out with me because she thought people would laugh at her for robbing the cradle. But I knew she loved me.
I wouldn’t be here, or anywhere else for that matter, without Yvonne. I had never met such a beautiful woman. She didn’t like it, but I called her my first, my last, my everything. That’s not my line, either. Some blues singer’s. I was hopelessly attracted to her. I loved her very deeply. I treated her with respect. I had made up my mind that she was going to be my wife.
I proposed to Yvonne in a restaurant in east Hamilton in 1946. I gave her an ultimatum: she had to choose either me or her family. Her family considered me a con artist and looked down on me, but you don’t have to get very high up to look down on someone. Yvonne was very shy, and her mother had taught her not to trust men. Her mom thought I was a womanizer, but I wasn’t. I didn’t like Mrs. Harrison. She wasn’t too kind to my mother, and Yvonne had told her mother that her behaviour was not acceptable, but it took years before there was any sense of warmth from that woman. We were married on September 10, 1948, while I was still at McMaster. But even after we had been married for maybe five years, her family didn’t like having me around the house.
They all treated her father terribly. Yvonne was the only one who treated him like a human being. Her mother had planted that seed of thought that men are no good, and the other sisters adopted that attitude toward him and me. Yvonne was the kind of woman who wouldn’t buy into that stuff. She was a warm, loving person, while her mother and sisters — Juanita, Audrey, and Fern — treated Robert Harrison horribly. I used to hate it.
I didn’t break through with that family until one day when I was coming home from law school. Yvonne was working, and I wanted to see our son, Keith. Her mother and sisters were looking after him, so I went to their house and told her mother enough was enough. But they never really accepted me until I became a lawyer. Then they bragged about me. How two-faced! In the long run, I became Yvonne’s mother’s lawyer, but we were never close.
We were married at Stewart Memorial Church in Hamilton and went on our honeymoon to New York, where we stayed with my aunt Iris. My wife was very pretty, and while we were there a man began flirting with her in an elevator. Yvonne was very naive. There were two handsome men on that elevator, and I realized they were pimps. One of them said, “I wonder what the penalty is if I touch her,” and I said, “Death.” They just clammed up. I wasn’t going to put up with anything like that. I was a husband now.
We had a wonderful marriage. I’m very fortunate in that regard, because I have friends who do not have wonderful marriages. I did everything for her. I put her up on a pedestal. That’s why I was so determined to succeed with my schooling. When I enrolled in law school, I knew I had to be somebody. As a lawyer, I knew I could be my own boss.
It was with much trepidation that I headed off to law school. I had a young family, and there were the ever-present worries about how I would be treated due to my colour. Some of that concern was eased immediately at registration when a friendly fellow first-year law student, John Mills, came over and introduced himself. His gesture certainly eased my inner tension, and who could have known that short incident would launch a friendship that was celebrated early in 2006 with the fifty-third reunion of our class.