My Early Childhood

I am guessing that we moved into 178- East 17th Avenue in the Spring of 1952.

One thing I learned from my Mother is that she asked my sister to look after me sometimes. My sister was about 7 years old at the time. Brigitte would take me in a stroller for walks in the neighborhood.

My sister went to live with my Aunt and Uncle back in Alberta when she was about nine years old. 

My father's mental health wasn't very good at that time.  A Pastor and some other family friends decided with my parents that it would be better if she was brought up by my aunt and uncle.

I remember going to the train station at Terminal Avenue in Vancouver to see her off.  Mr. Oesterreich, a family or church friend, went with her as her guardian. 

It was around this time when my father went into the Crease Clinic, a mental health clinic in Coquitlam. where he had electric shock therapy.  I am still bothered by memories of that time.  Everyone was doing the best they could.

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When I was about twelve years old I lived near 17th and Main in Vancouver. There was a Dad's Cookie factory about a kilometer NE of where I lived. One of my friends told me that the factory threw out or gave away irregular batches of cookies (i.e., that they couldn't sell) but you had to be there early in the morning. So, one summer about five of us kids went there at about 6AM to the back door of the large building at 468 Kingsway.  I knocked on the door but nobody answered, so Jim Povah and I climbed a tree together so we could look in a window to see what was going on. 

We saw two people pushing carts with trays, but we couldn't see much else. We slid down the tree and walked around the building and found a door that was open, and the five us went in. A woman wearing a dirty apron with a net covering her hair came over and asked, "What do you want?" We told her that we were hoping to get some cookies from a bad batch. She said she would get us some, and left. Fifteen minutes later she came back with five individual paper bags with a mixture of about two dozen cookies each. There were some butterscotch chip, chocolate chip, plain and some other varieties. We were thrilled. On the walk home we ate a bunch.

My mother was  inquisitive about how I came across the cookies, but said something like, "That's interesting."

 

 I think we may have gone back one other time, but I think it was no longer it cool to eat cookies.

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