07-02 Then There Were Three

Robert Ray was brother number three, was born in August 1942, when we lived at Bowie Avenue, a small three bedroom bungalow in the Dufferin Eglinton Area. He got his middle name from Aunty Ray, who was killed in a motor accident on New Year’s Eve 1942. Mother was pregnant at that time.
It was about 2:00 AM New Year’s morning, when the phone rang and it was Uncle Jack telling Dad that Aunty Ray had been killed. I remember mother wailing for hours. “I’m going to lose the baby”, she screamed. That was what frightened me the most. I did not know Mother was expecting. Dad went to Uncle Jack’s home to pick up Linda. That evening Linda, Ian and I slept in the same double bed.
Mother was never the same after that. She and Aunty Ray were very close and always spoke in Yiddish when they were together. Mother never spoke Yiddish again.
This is a great shot of mother holding Robert when he was six months old. My memories of Robert as a child was that he was always smiling. He was animated and “full of beans”, to borrow an old expression.
Probably the most famous family photo ever taken was when Dad caught Robert taking his first step at eleven months of age, on the flagstone at the back of Bowie Ave.
When we moved to Bowie in 1940, the back yard was part of an old field, and Dad dug it all up and moved the earth up to the house to make an elevated landing, which he covered with flagstones. He did everything himself in the evenings. On weekends, we went off visiting the camps, where Dad took orders for officer uniforms. He worked so hard for his growing family.
Our Uncle James lived two doors away in another small bungalow. He could not get gas to drive a car, so he went to work with Dad. He was Dad’s first salesman at the tailoring shop.
Every weekend, usually a Sunday when Dad was home, we would go to our favourite spot, which was High Park in Toronto. We always headed to the small zoo, and gave out bread bits which mother saved during the week. I have always loved the photo of Dad with the three of us sitting on a fallen log at the park.
Our other favourite Sunday treat was to go to the Island on the ferry. I had gone to school there for three months, while waiting for the final construction of our Bowie Avenue home. Here is another shot of the three of us at Hanlan’s Point. We would ferry over to Centre Island, walk over to the Point, then ferry back.
Not every so-called family excursion was a real treat. In this final picture, we are getting older, seen at a Plymouth Brethren conference in Detroit.
Not an intellectually challenging experience. However, if you are the kind of person who loves watching paint dry, you would love those endless discussions of some remote verse of the Bible.
My job, as always, was to look for Robert. We never quite knew where he disappeared to when we were at those Bible conferences.