Read an Excerpt
From Dawn to Dusk to Daylight
A Journey through Depression's Solitude
By Bruce Ross
iUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2012 Bruce Ross
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4759-0745-2
Chapter One
PART 1 Dawn
Genesis
August 18, 1959. Bruce Roderick Ross. Kentville General Hospital, Kentville, Nova Scotia.
Kentville is a quiet and conservative (and relative to the rest of Atlantic Canada, wealthy) town of 5,000 in the beautiful Annapolis Valley, a locale where most indigenous people remain and which attracts outsiders, in part because of the more temperate climate than the rest of Nova Scotia. The Annapolis Valley is one of the few areas of the province suitable for farming; apples are a crop staple. Mom still reminds me that my parade picture from the Apple Blossom Festival made the front page of the Halifax Chronicle Herald when I was 4 years old.
Although Kentville is a farm and tourist centre, my parents lived there for neither reason. In the mid 1950s Dad landed a position with Doane Raymond Chartered Accountants, which had an office in Kentville. Mom and Dad rented a house on 90 Park Street, on the main street heading out of town and only a couple of blocks from the hospital. It was an attractive, white Cape Cod with green shutters, complete with a second story balcony. A brook trickled along the west side of the property.
In addition to me, my parents were blessed with my brother Greg, four years older than I was, and brother Dave, who was two and one half years older than I was. My brothers and I were not close while growing up, although I cannot recall any physical altercation. While it was not unusual for brothers to have distant relationships, many become closer or reconciled later in life. We became even more distant as the years passed.
My father, Kenneth Garfield Ross, was born in Scotch Village, Nova Scotia, a hamlet in the central part of the province. Hamlet is the appropriate term because Scotch Village is more of a benchmark for letters delivered via the post office. It is not even big enough to require a blinking amber light, let alone a set of stoplights. Dad's life growing up was far from ideal. His biological mother, Helen, bore him at a tender age of 16. Helen subsequently married Dad's father, Jack Ross, but the marriage was short-lived. Then Jack exited Dad's life. Dad does not even know what day he was born—Helen swore March 29, the family Bible lists March 30, and his birth certificate states March 31.
As an indication of how disjointed Dad's family was, Dad has a half-sister (Jack remarried) who lived within 20 miles from where Dad grew up. She did not even know Dad existed until she was in high school. A classmate told her that her brother was getting married.
"I don't have a brother," she responded.
"You may not know it, but you do," her classmate assured her.
Helen's mother, Nan, and Helen's younger sister, Donalda (Donnie), raised Dad. Although both were excellent female role models, Dad did not have a father figure to learn from so he could pass on that knowledge to his three sons. The combination of no male role model, coupled with the psychological scars of no fatherly love, surely influenced him and his relationship with my brothers and me.
My Mom, Glenda Lorraine Geddes, had a more normal upbringing. Mom was born and raised in Old Barns, Nova Scotia, a hamlet about 30 miles from where Dad lived.
Mom had five brothers and one sister, making seven children for her mom and dad to raise in a typical Nova Scotia rural home, a modest two-story dwelling situated on a few acres of land that my grandfather farmed. Until my grandparents installed indoor plumbing, we used the outhouse that was attached to the tractor shed. I did not feel that awkward about the outdoor facilities, but what struck me odd was it was a two-holer. I could not imagine sitting on one hole while someone else squatted on the other. Yet why else would two holes exist? I never inquired.
Mom and Dad met in the early 1950s, shortly after they finished high school. They wed in the Old Barns United Church in 1954 and then moved to Kentville for Dad's accounting career and to start our family.
To help me understand who I am today, sometimes I reflect on behaviours and experiences from my childhood. While we lived at Park Street, I endured the typical childhood insecurities caused by a vivid imagination. Our basement consisted of one bare light bulb for illumination, and a large hole had been roughly cut through the wall that led to an unlit and dirt-floored pantry. Visions of rats and mice larger than me skittered in my mind whenever I ventured down the stairs to the basement. When the neighbour caught a turtle in our brook, the fact that it was a snapping turtle conjured up frightening images. To add to the mix, our cat caught bats that flew around our balcony at night.
Once when Dad returned from Halifax, where he had been auditing that week, he brought a boomerang, for which Dave had asked. Dave's comic book advertised a boomerang that would do a nifty, 360-degree return to the owner's hand. In reality, once it left Dave's fingers, it haphazardly fluttered around and then crashed to the pavement. My first exposure to false advertising. However, the fact that Dad demonstrated an interest in us was meaningful.
My first lesson in exploitation was the night my brothers and I spent what seemed liked countless hours collecting empty pop bottles at the ballpark across the street from where we lived. We intended to cash them in for the deposit value at the local corner store, but when we were ready to leave, the ballpark attendant arrived to thank us for collecting all the bottles for him. For compensation, he traded us one measly full bottle to share. What could we do? At ages 5, 7, and 9, either we did not recognize what had just happened, or we were not in position to do anything about it.
One day Dave and I became ticked at Mom. I do not recall the specific reason, but our solution was to run away. We grabbed a blanket and some cookies, and off we went. Not only did Mom not show concern, she just said, "Okay" when we told her what we intended to do, and she kept on baking. We entered the woods behind our house, and after hiking no further than a couple of hundred feet in, we came across a clearing and spread out our blanket.
Now what? we pondered.
After a few minutes of deliberation, we packed up and returned home. Running away was not the solution we thought it would be. I would learn that lesson several more times later in life.
Kentville's elementary school was only a couple of blocks from home. On the first day, Dave and Greg walked with me, and then I was on my own. After our teacher settled us in and went through the usual first day routine—blunt-nose scissors only, no talking during class, et cetera—the bell rang. I assumed it was lunchtime and scooted home. I left the school alone, wondering why the other kids remained on the school playground. The reason was simple: it was recess, not lunch. When I reached our house, Mom turned me around and sent me back. I recall the insecurity of wondering why I was the only pupil that did not understand the concept of recess.
One morning I walked to and reached the school ground alone. As I passed by a couple of older kids who were playing on the jungle gym, one of them blurted at me as she swung from the bars, "You're late, you're late, it's quarter past eight!"
Although I was too young to comprehend the complex concept of time, I did recognize I was not late, but that was not the point. For some reason, she singled me out. I felt naked, exposed, and alone. I took her biting comment personally. Forty-plus years later, I could return and point out exactly where this otherwise insignificant encounter took place.
It is funny how early life insecurities continue as you get older, only in different forms. I would experience insecurities many times later in my life, and I believe that is one reason I have taken extraordinary steps to minimize the discomfort of such as an adult.
We only lived in Kentville until I was 5 years old, when Dad obtained his chartered accountant (CA) designation.
It was time to move on.
Dartmouth
In the summer of 1965, we moved to Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, a bedroom community of 60,000 people, across the harbour from Halifax. Halifax is the largest city in Nova Scotia at over 300,000, and the provincial capital. Dartmouth has always resided in Halifax's shadow. I have met many Canadians who have never heard of Dartmouth, let alone were able to place it on a map.
Our first of two Dartmouth abodes was a modest, two-bedroom apartment on Maple Drive. Although the building was nothing to write home about—a three-story, yellowish brick structure—it was attractively situated on a hill that overlooked Mic Mac Lake, one of the largest of the 23 lakes in Dartmouth; for obvious reasons, Dartmouth's slogan is "City of Lakes."
We lived on Maple Drive for less than one uneventful year. I do not recall even making any cursory friends, let alone any who instilled a lasting impression. For the most part I kept to myself, which upon reflection may have been the prelude of my later life. I attended Mary Lawson Elementary School for grade 1. It was nondescript wooden structure about 25 years old and located less than a 10-minute walk from where we lived. My memories of Mary Lawson feel even more distant than the actual years that have passed.
From Maple Drive we moved to Fairfield Avenue, in the heart of Dartmouth. Mom and Dad live there to this day.
Two Fairfield Avenue was a significant step up from our Maple Drive apartment; it was a middle-class, three-bedroom bungalow located in the new Wyndholme subdivision. As an added bonus, the subdivision was situated on a plateau that overlooked Lake Banook.
Our neighbourhood was a jewel for sure. It had new homes, and unlike most subdivisions today—which all have the same style houses if not clones of one another—each house was uniquely designed. Most were wood-shingled, had shuttered windows, sat on large lots, and had no isolating fences between neighbours. To top it all off, Wyndholme was located next to Oat Hill Lake, which was about one-third mile long and several hundred feet wide. Oat Hill's outlet brook ran by our house, flowed down the hill, and emptied into Lake Banook.
Banook is more than half a mile long by about a quarter mile wide and was the focal point of paddling, rowing, and swimming activities in the summer, as well as skating and pond hockey games in the winter. In fact, the 2002 book Hockey's Home by local author (and my ex-schoolmate) Martin Jones provides compelling evidence that ice hockey originated on Lake Banook.
Despite the Oat Hill-Banook brook connection, the lakes were dissimilar. Banook had four sandy beaches and buzzed with swimmers, paddlers, rowers, and other boaters in the summer. In contrast, Oat Hill was secluded with woods encompassing two sides, had no sandy beaches and only granite rocks, and had lily pads lining its shores. Bass, perch, and a few eels inhabited the lake; a muskrat even made Oat Hill its home. It was more of a Canadian Shield lake than a summer vacation lake. However, like most things in life, it did not last. A few years later houses stood instead of the trees, the city installed a culvert where our brook trickled, and the perch (and muskrat) disappeared.
That summer I acclimatized to my new environment. I was only 6 years old when we moved in, 7 by the end of the summer. Like most kids of that age, I made friends quickly and superficially. There was no judgement process that adults went through. Because advanced concepts like prejudice, religion, politics, and other perception-shaping perspectives had not yet been ingrained in me, I accepted other kids as instant pals.
I met Hugh Marshall and Ken Russell, two kids the same age as me, that summer, and they would remain lifelong friends. Hugh and Ken already knew each other, having lived in the subdivision longer than I had. Mom still recalls answering the doorbell shortly after we moved in, and there stood Ken and Hugh, canvassing for charity.
Ken lived on 52 Tremont Street, which ran parallel to Fairfield Avenue and, like our street, ran off and was perpendicular to Lorne Avenue. As the case in our household, Ken's was male dominated, four boys and no girls. Mr. Russell worked at the Air Canada office in downtown Halifax, and Mrs. Russell was a stay-at-home mom.
Hugh lived on 14 Benview Drive, one street over from Ken and two streets over from me. Mr. and Mrs. Marshall proudly displayed their Scottish heritage with a Union Jack that fluttered on a flagpole planted in their front yard. Moreover, occasionally Mr. Marshall (appropriately named Scotty) has been known to wear a kilt. His career was with Maritime Tel & Tel, now part of Bell Telephone. Each day he walked the 30 minutes to the ferry terminal and, like hundreds of other Dartmouthians, crossed the Halifax Harbour to work in downtown Halifax. Hugh's mom was a nurse by training but spent most of her life volunteering and raising seven kids.
While growing up I was always nervous around Mr. and Mrs. Marshall. They were intimidating, no-nonsense Brits through and through. When I visited them after their kids had grown up and Mr. Marshall had retired, it appeared as if a gentle transformation had taken place. I am sure after having endured the challenges of raising seven kids, it truly did.
Findlay
Findlay Elementary was my new school and was located less than a mile from where we lived. By today's standards, that would be a long way, and many parents would drive their kids. I can't remember Mom or Dad ever driving me, but I did not expect them to; walking to and from school was the norm for most kids.
Grade 2 was a watershed year for me. This was where I met and got to know many of the friends I still keep in touch with and consider as friends. Hugh and Ken had attended Findlay since primary, and we solidified our friendship.
Greg Murphy (Murph), a new friend, lived on Tremont Street, a little further away than Ken, Hugh, and me but still less than a five-minute walk from our house.
Greg Smith (Smitty) was another grade 2 classmate. Although I did not know it then, Smitty would become my best and most important friend years later. Smitty had boyish looks, which sounds strange to say because one would expect boyish looks in all 7-year-olds, but Smitty's was more accentuated than the other kids', and this trait would remain until high school. The boyish face coupled with a less than average height and a lack of athletic prowess would contribute to some tough early years for him. Smitty lived on Joffre Street, around the corner from Murph. Smitty's dad was an engineer with the Canadian Navy, although he didn't spend time at sea and was not transferred around the country like many personnel. His mom worked at a downtown health clinic.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from From Dawn to Dusk to Daylight by Bruce Ross Copyright © 2012 by Bruce Ross. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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