08-04 The Canoe Club

It was September 1943, and five ten-year-old boys were chatting it up at recess outside Forest Hill Public School. They were David Rae, Paul Richards, Ralph Hull, Bob Rabjohn and myself. I had already met Paul who lived across the road from our home on Richview Avenue. A friendship began that has lasted over 70 years.
The day is stuck in my memory because Ralph, out of the blue, said he knew how you create babies. He immediately assumed a leadership role in our group.
Sweet memories from the early days. Dave and I played football on the 110-pound team. And I raced against Bob at the annual public school track meet. At the time he was a head taller than me.
It was in the 70s that we started to get together once a year, and we all met near a body of water of some sort so we could go canoeing. That is how we began calling ourselves the "Canoe Club".
The group was joined by Nancy and Peter Williams. Peter lived near Bob Rabjohn and joined us at Forest Hill in grade 13. The group became Dave and Marilyn, Bob and Mary, Paul and Marjorie, Ralph and Sherrie and of course Mary and I.
Talk about friendships over the years. Peter, Paul and I were all in Engineering together. And I met Mary through Nancy, who was a Wellesley nurse-in-training like Mary. And during that special blind date when I met Mary, she was dating Tim Clark, someone Paul and Ralph met on a trip home from Europe. Thus Tim and June became part of the Canoe Club.
In this group shot, we are meeting at the Rae residence. We loved recounting our old dates and girlfriends. Our favourite was a time when Dave and Marilyn had broken up for a couple of weeks at least. I got Dave a blind date with a cute nurse who had huge feet even though she was of normal height. It was at a bowling alley where Dave had to order size 8 for himself, and size 11 for his date.
In the final photo, our son Peter was the chef at Dave’s home. Peter had just enrolled at Ryerson in their Hospitality course. It was only about three years later that Peter died, so this photo means everything to all of us.