Dad worked hard. He finished grade
eleven in the small Saskatchewan town of Hepburn where he was born. He had
owned his own gas station (called service stations then), and he and mom owned
and operated a coffee shop. They moved to St. Catharines, Ontario in 1947. Several
large manufacturing companies employed thousands and wages were better than
anything in the West, and furthermore, my mom's family already lived in the
city. Assembly line work was strenuous and often exhaustingly hot. Air
conditioning was unheard of in those years. From our Clark Street home, Dad
walked thirty long city blocks to work at Anthes Imperial, a furnace assembly
factory.
Dad tried several jobs at Anthes, starting on the smelter, a wickedly hot job
even in winter. In summer it was intolerable. Ringing wet at the end of a
shift, Dad would walk home in the late afternoon humidity and heat. Arriving,
he would remove his T-shirt and ring it out. As a child I never thought about
this or regarded it seriously. Much later as an adult, having done some hard
labour, I understood dad's family investment. When all three sons were adult
and dad was nearing retirement after forty years of physical labour on an
assembly line, we asked why he stuck at something like that. He replied in a
manner that humbled us forever, "I did it for my boys."
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