On The Canadian Factor in My Life

After dinner this evening I took a big apple out the refrigerator. It had a small tag stuck on that read “AMBROSIA, bctree (I took that to mean British Columbia grown) and CANADA.” My goodness it was a crisp and scrumptious apple! It set me thinking about Canada and all the good things in my life that have come from the country just north of my own.
It could be said I am an “almost” Canadian. My father’s older sisters and brother were born in Quebec of my French-Canadian grand-father. His wife, although born in the United States, was the daughter of French-Candian parents. My maternal great-grandfather was a French-Canadian from Quebec after a sojourn in what was to become Ontario. Both his wives were French-Canadians.
From the age of 6 until I graduated from High School I lived in Sault Ste. Marie, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, across the St. Mary’s river, in those days a brief ferry ride across, was a then vibrant and growing Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada. The pair was called Soo, Michigan and Soo, Ontario. There was, maybe still is, a Soo-Line railroad.
There was a strong and curious cross-cultural Canadian influence in my youth. The Canadian Soo was twice the size (40,000 or so) of the U.S. Soo. This was because the two cities were in exactly opposite geo-political location. The American Soo was in a remote and sparsely populated part of the States while the Canadian Soo was located in the main population belt of Canada, i.e., within 50 miles of the United States.
Industry waned in Soo, Michigan and youth departed for university and jobs. Industry boomed in Soo, Ontario with Algoma Steel mill and a German seamless steel tube mill and the Abitibi Paper Co., generating jobs. Soo, Ontario was filled with new immigrants a couple of generations after the wave of European immigration to the U.S., had ended. There was a large Italian immigrant concentration in the Wallace Terrace section of Soo, Ontario. The Canadian radio station, CJIC, had an Italian hour program once a week. The Italian immigrants spilled over onto the American side so that my Murphy classmate’s mother was an Italian woman from Soo, Ontario. My Calery (sic) classmate’s mother was the same. I was introduced to Fava beans at George Calery’s Canadian relatives home on, yep, Wallace Terrace.
The first television we could watch in Soo, Michigan was the Canadian station, CJIC-TV. The national news we watched on TV was the CBC from Ottawa. The Howdy Doody kids could watch in Soo, Michigan was not with “Buffalo Bob,” the American, but “Timber Tom,” from a CBC studio. The program also had a character named “Ranger Bob” played in 1954 by…, ready for this??… William Shatner, of Captain Kirk fame, who was born in Montreal. Robert Goulet entertained us on a half hour variety show from the CBC before Camelot and Broadway fame. I listened to country and western programs on Canadian radio. Wayne and Schuster, a pair of Canadians hosted a variety show with great comedy that we loved to watch.
About two dozen Canadian youngsters crossed on the ferry five days each week to attend the small Catholic High School where I spent four years. High school in Canada was five years, grades 9 through 13 while only four years in the U.S. Apparently it was easier to gain admission to a U.S., college or university if one attended a U.S. high school. A couple of guys came to school in the states because they were exceptional hockey players. They wanted to gain scholarships to play hockey for what was then called Michigan College of Mining and Technology in Houghton. This small school played lower divisional baseball and basketball against other small schools. But it was a hockey powerhouse and the Canadians on the team were much of the reason. In hockey it played big schools like the University of Minnesota because they would dominate other small schools that dared field a team.
Whatever motivated students and parents, one of them was a Cree or Chippewa Indian young woman, black haired, dark-eyed, with a ready smile and fetching figure. Her name was Jane and she was adopted by a Soo, Ontario family of Scots heritage. She was my prom date. (When I went away to boot camp she sent me a “Dear John” letter. Our sons are grateful that she did.)
Many years after years after I left the Soo and the Canadian factor in my life (I thought) I bought a new Chevrolet in Mobile, Alabama. Chevrolet is a product line of General Motors the huge company in Detroit, Michigan, the “motor city.” One day I was looking over my new “Made in America” auto. On the engine block I found the legend, “Hecho en Mexico.” In the driver’s door frame I found a small metal tag riveted there. It read, “Assembled in Windsor, Ontario.”
End
Postscript—Even the host of our favorite TV game show, Jeopardy’s Alex Trebek? Yep, he’s Canadian. Sheesh!