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Childhood Memories: The Price of Happiness

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In 1953, we left our one-bedroom basement apartment on 7th Street in New Toronto to live in the small town of Tottenham, Ontario. We moved into a three-bedroom flat above a hardware store. There was no central heat or hot water, but I thought it was a palace…

In 1953, we left our one-bedroom basement apartment on 7th Street in Toronto to live in the small town of Tottenham, Ontario. We moved into a three-bedroom flat above a hardware store. There was no central heat or hot water, but I thought it was a palace, compared to the tiny apartment we had left. The centre of activity was the huge kitchen, where a massive Finlay wood stove kept us warm in the winter months. Pale green cabinets sprawled along the opposite wall. They came to an end at the four-burner Frigidaire range. Every week, my mother would get down on her hands and knees and apply a coat of Johnson’s paste wax onto the green-and-white checkered linoleum floor. When we arrived home from school, my brother Stephen and I would delight in wrapping old rags on our feet and “skate” all over the floor, bringing it to a glossy sheen. This was my mother’s Tom Sawyer act, and it worked every time. I have fond childhood memories of this time. [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]

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2 Responses to Childhood Memories: The Price of Happiness

  1. Doris February 14, 2013 at 12:51 AM #

    I enjoyed reading her story and could relate to the way Gillian warmed her pajamas in “The Price of Happiness.” I, too, warmed my clothes by the stove in the 50’s but I lived several hundred miles south in New Mexico.

  2. Denis Ledoux February 14, 2013 at 12:29 PM #

    Doris, do you have a story that we could post on this blog? I’d love to hear about life in New Mexico in the 1950s.

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