McVicar Creek was the jungle of our young lives. Above the River Street Bridge, there were pools for swimming and meeting places to discuss secret plans. Below the River Street bridge, we dangled worms to entice the last of the little speckled trout struggling against urbanization and trekked and hunted the strip of woods that clothed the creek’s path to downtown’s edge. This little forest was perfect for conducting war games and for hiding and spying on the people who walked the McVicar Creek path to Algoma or Court Street before veering right into downtown.
We lived in make-believe kiddie pueblos among the rocky outcroppings overlooking the creek behind the intersection of Dawson and Jean Streets. Smooth flat tabletop rocks provided our beds where we lay and stared into the summer skies and let the clouds stimulate our imaginations. The fluffy cloud shaped like a contorted cross definitely was an angel carrying a candle. Others were elephants and airplanes and other objects that sparked eye-of-the-beholder arguments. The smaller rocks were our tables and chairs where we feasted on the snacks our mothers gave us before letting us loose for days that started immediately after early breakfast and ended at the 9 p.m. city curfew with only meal breaks at home as interruptions. Sometimes we shared candies bought at the corner store with the pennies we got from the pop bottles our grandmothers gave us to return. Throughout the day, our playtime business took us down to the creek for exploration, swimming, war games, or searches for adventure.
We roamed as we wished, spending hours at a time out of parental sight. Surely there was evil about in those days, but it didn’t seem to manifest itself often. We knew from our parents’ warnings not to play south of the Cumberland Street bridge because bad men gathered there to drink cheap cologne and shoe polish mixed with pop, anything from which they could get a bit of alcohol. We also knew from our own experience not to play in the trash left on the north side of the creek at Algoma Street by the Port Arthur Brewery, which made beer with a picture of the Indian princess Green Mantle on the label. Rats — black, vicious rats with red eyes and sharp teeth — lived there and more than one kid had felt their bite.
Veronica spent much of her time as a young mother planning how to keep me away from the creek. Her strongest weapon was exaggeration. She laid on me tales of the evil men at the mouth of the creek and the dangers facing little boys who played by the creek. Who knows what lurks in the bushes? Any little boy who falls into the creek is swept away out into the lake and into the clutches of Nanabijou. You’ve heard him roaring, haven’t you, on those stormy days? Interesting, but I preferred the story of the ancestor shipwrecked and found by the Natives. I imagined myself being pulled from the water, nursed back to health, and becoming a member of the tribe, hunting and warring throughout the river forest.
Mothers worry too much and Veronica’s cajoling and stories of danger could not keep me away. There was too much water, too much lure of water, for any mother to keep her children away from it. What she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her, and there was much she didn’t see. Like the day our terrier, Trixie, and I were carried away by the spring-swollen creek. An ice jam saved us from being swept into the arms of Nanabijou, but when we returned home soaking wet and shivering, Veronica made me promise I would never go near the creek again. It was a promise that would be broken many times.
Our home then was the LaFrances’ two-storey red-brick house at 402 Dawson Street at the northeast corner of College Street. They had moved to the new place, three blocks over from 63 Peter Street, the year before Veronica and Ray married.
We originally had lived in the top storey of 331 Van Norman Street, then on Rockwood Avenue in our own tiny bungalow. Veronica used to tie me to the fence there so I could watch all the comings and goings in safety, but we didn’t stay in the little wartime house very long. Things had not been going well over at 402 Dawson Street where Louise and Isidore had become empty nesters. Louise was stricken with arthritis. The pain in her joints worsened, then began to twist her fingers and legs. Walking became difficult and it was soon obvious that she was a victim of the most crippling type of arthritis. Within a year of so of my birth, she rose from her bed only with great difficulty and we moved into 402 Dawson Street, so my mother could help her father care for her.
This marked the end of Veronica’s sheltered and somewhat pampered life. What had once been a life of a majority of joy would be transformed into a string of heartbreaks. Caring for her bedridden mother made for long, hard days and sleepless nights when the pain had Louise crying in the night. Worse was watching the searing pain suck the power out of such a strong, independent woman.
Still, life at 402 Dawson Street was close to as good as it got in the 1940s. For us kids, the neighbourhood was a quiet pool at which to rest before starting the serious part of life’s journey. Dawson Street, once a dirt trail but now an asphalt stream lined with stone curbs and sidewalks that held the roadway back from double-storey houses, tumbled over the Port Arthur hillsides toward the Big Lake. Middle-class working people lived along Dawson Street. My grandparent’s house was not large, but it sat prominently on the northwest corner as one of the nicer places on the street. It was two storeys but tightly designed and looked larger than it was because of the semi-mansard roof that eliminated the typical “A” peak at the front. Its red brick and red mortar gave it a solid protective look.
The neighbourhood was typical of less busy times. Most of the houses were two or two and a half storeys, with the lower levels made of brick and the upper levels cedar or clapboard. All had porches — some open, some closed — for sitting out and watching weather or the kids at play. Grass medians separated the concrete sidewalks from the asphalt road, curbed with black granite rocks. There were no driveways and anyone who owned a car parked it at the rear of their house accessed by the back alley.
There was a telephone pole at the corner in the front of our house and every kid in the neighbourhood had put his or her face to it and covered their eyes while counting down the time to hide in a game of hide-and-seek. I can still feel my face pressed against that pole, nostrils inhaling the bittersweet scent of cedar and creosote, fingers tracing the bite marks of linemen’s spikes in the dry roughness of the wood.
Along the College Street side of the house, there was a white and green fence with a side gate. The fence had a sculpted look because its boards were deliberately cut uneven at the top. At the rear of the property, the fence connected with a white and green clapboard garage with double barn-style doors. Inside was the black early 1940s Chevrolet that Isidore kept spotless for family Sunday drives.
The most interesting feature of 402 Dawson Street was a side portico, an enclosed bricked porch area with country church-style windows along the side and front. It served as an entranceway to the house and a place to sit and look out at the street out of the weather. It was a great place for Trixie and me to hide when we were in trouble, like after our near drowning at the creek.
The McVicar Creek incident was the last great adventure for Trixie. Not long after, she was strolling across the street in front of 402 Dawson Street when a speeding car smacked her. My dad and I bundled her into a blanket and took her down to a vet who operated out of a rough board shack on the Port Arthur waterfront. It was a dark, foul place that smelled of dogs and whisky and mange medicine. The old vet laid Trixie on a kitchen table and put her back together with some rough stitches, but she was blind after that. I remember the mixture of pride and sadness I felt watching her stumble around my grandfather’s house, walking into walls and falling down stairs. I was proud of her courage but saddened by the pathetic images of her trying to exist without sight. None of us, Veronica especially, could stand to watch her and soon we returned her to the old vet, and she didn’t come back home ever again. It was a heartbreaking time, but it taught me a lot about life and my mother — someone with an uncanny understanding of animals.
Not long after the