Our Fathers Who Lived on Coleridge

All of the kids on Coleridge were baby boomers, a legacy to the end of World War II. As I noted earlier, there were 72 children on our block of Coleridge alone and virtually all of us played together in a very cohesive group.

After talking to several of the "boys" I grew up with, one thing seemed to keep popping up and that was the fact that virtually every one of our fathers drank alcohol, most of them to excess. Along with the drinking came many other things - like violence, absenteeism, humiliation at our expense and much more. The more we thought about the abuse of alcohol, one thing seemed to become very clear to us and that was the fact that none of our fathers ever talked about the horrors of what they experienced during the war. I am darn sure they suffered from what we now know as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. In those days, the men (and some women) would drown their painful memories in a bottle of booze.

They were all very hard workers and I think they believed they deserved to be able to do whatever they wanted to do when they were finished work for the day or on weekends. I guess it was a habit most of them picked up when they were serving overseas. Booze was one of the perks the Canadian Government would give the men so that they could drown their sorrow. Boy, did they drown them!

I use to think my Dad was the only one who drank to excess but I was very wrong! The more I talk to the "kids" I grew up with, it seems the same story emerged of alcohol abuse followed by physical and emotional abuse. In my house, my Dad would work very hard all day as a mechanic in a gas station for at least 12 hours then he would have a very long trip home on the TTC, which, in those days, was very much in its infancy. My Dad would no sooner walk into the door and my mother would be on his case for one thing or another. Now that I am an adult, I can see much more clearly that my mother was the true abuser and catalyst for violence. She was very vicious, and I have such vivid memories of her throwing a boiling hot pot of coffee on my Dad, heaving heavy glass ashtrays from across the room, aiming at his head and much more. The funny thing was that people thought she was the victim but she was the instigator in every blowout there was.

After talking with some of my friends from the street, I also found out that there was a lot going on behind closed doors that most of us never knew about. More than one of us left home at an early age because of our family situations. I knew that anything would be better than the constant belittling and put downs from my mother and her rages that seemed to come out of left field. I was just terrified to tell her anything all all. I remember one time when I was about 8 years old and the man with the pony came down Coleridge to take photos with the local children. I was so thrilled to see the pony and went up to pet it. The pony bit me on the chest and left a horrible bruise. I was terrified to tell my mother and it was only when the bruise grew up and over my top that she noticed. Of course, I got in trouble for instigating it with the pony, even though I was just standing there. I can still remember my mother taking the wooden spoon to my little brother, Roy, when he was only about 2 years old. She hit him so hard that it left a raised impression of the spoon on his little bottom that was completely black and blue. It took ages for that bruise to go away. My Dad was loud but he never really hurt me physically. He did take a lot out on my brother because Roy preferred to tinker around with building things rather than playing sports with most of the boys.

I really believe that our fathers bore the horrors of the war and it was buried deep within their souls. There were no methods of coping with their feelings in those days - they simply had to "take it like a man", even though they were crying on the inside. They were little more than teenagers when they left for war and were faced with horrific living conditions, battles that left them scarred beyond belief and memories of seeing some of their best buddies blown up before their eyes. No wonder they drank when they returned from war!

These days, if our men and women go off to conflicts around the globe, they are helped through the awful ordeal with post traumatic stress counselling and it is considered an illness now, which is treated, not ignored as in our fathers' cases. Our fathers were off to war for years, not simply months, as is now the case. Back in the Great War, the clothes they wore were often threadbare and they relied on family members to send along home made socks just to keep their feet from frostbite.

I can't excuse the behaviour of our fathers but I do understand that these men were fundamentally changed because of what they went through. I do know that they worked hard for very little money in those days and they really did try their best for the families that grew far too quickly in the post-war era. They left a legacy of bruised and battered children of my era that had far too much to overcome. Thankfully, the people I have reunited with have overcome so much of the brutality they faced and have learned the lessons so as not to repeat the same mistakes. I know that it took a long time for me to overcome the instinct to hit and yell before thinking things out. I am a much wiser, calmer adult now, thank God!

I have deliberately left many names out of this blog entry just to protect my friends. I have, however, used my family as an example and make no excuses for it. Nobody should ever go through what I did as a child and I hope this teaches a good lesson for those reading this blog spot.

Thank you and your feedback is very welcome.