This is a photo of Peter O'Donnell, his wife, Jan and standing beside the conciererge is Diane, Peter's younger sister which was taken in British Columbia in 2006..The past week has been wonderful just catching up with some of my old friends from Coleridge. I swear Tony and Penny Banner are on a roll finding so many of our friends in such a short time.
Last night, I had a wonderful and very long conversation with Peter O'Donnell who lived directly across the street from me with his parents and sister, Diane. He was able to fill me in on many of the details that I had missed since I left home at 17. Unfortunately, Peter's mom died when he was just a teenager and he said it best when he told me that he lost his best friend when she died. I remember Mrs. O'Donnell as being a happy, cheerful and sweet woman and her death at such a young age was a horrible tragedy. Peter and I also shared so many laughs and talked about some of the tragedies that befell what seems like an extraordinarily large number of our friends. Some of our friends who died at very young ages are Neil Osborne who was adored by absolutely everyone he met, including me, then there was Dougie McVeigh who died at the very young age of 34 of a heart problem, Margaret Wagner who suffered such torment, not only by other kids but also her own mind, also died but I don't have the details yet, and my next door neighbours on either side, Bobby Major who was apparently knifed at a bar and died as a result and Arlene Binns who I babysat as a little baby. I simply can't imagine Arlene being dead.
Peter and I laughed at many of the incidents that happened on Coleridge too and one of them involved his next door neighbour. A room was being rented to a very buxom blonde and her man. Every night when it got dark, their lights would flash on and the drapes would be wide open. Then, we waited for the show to begin! Linda Archibald and I would sit on the cement retaining wall in front of my place, while Peter and Bobby Major sat on Bobby's veranda while the two lovers stripped right down to the buff and put on quite a show for us kids. I was only about 11 or 12, Linda a year older and Peter and Bobby were a year older again. None of us had ever seen anything like it before and it was amazingly entertaining. Surely, this was our first taste of sex education! Thank goodness for that too because my mother's take on sex was that it was all an act on the part of the woman to endure and pretend it was good.
I think the most fun we had as kids was playing street hockey. We had 2 areas where we played - one in front of Barrie Wilkinson's place going north to the Osborne's and the other one was up in front of Dougie Hutton's place. Tony Banner's father absolutely hated us playing hockey in front of his place because he was one of the only ones who had a car. He got so mad at the boys one day that he got in his car and ran over all of the hockey sticks! Thank goodness my hockey stick was spared. I used my allowance to buy my stick and it never left my side.
The other thing we adored doing every night (when we weren't watching the sex show) was to play buzz off. We had virtually every kid on the block playing it with us. We literally played buzz off for hours and hours and drove some of the neighbours crazy with our hiding spots. Every child got along with the next and we had hours and hours of crazy fun together. Oh, how I miss those days! And how I miss those kids too!!!
It has been great to find and fill in the gaps of so many years with the friends that we have been able to find. Recently, Tony found Peter Goodale and his sister Lois, who has been living in Nova Scota. She will be returning to Toronto soon and I'm looking forward to meeting with them both. Peter didn't go far from home, as he bought a house on Woodbine Avenue. The same goes for me - except for my time in Cuba, I have always lived in East York - the little town in the big city. East York will always have that small town feel to it and it is a testament to the people who live here. I feel very lucky to live in East York. I feel even more lucky to have found my old friends again!
If you are one of Coleridge Gang, please get in touch with me at forevereastyork@yahoo.ca or wavynavy@gmail.com.
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