5. TORONTO, ABITIBI, MARRIAGE, FAMILY, HOMEOWNER, 1951-1961

Abitibi

I sold my car in Winnipeg and in July of 1950 moved to Toronto by train and by boat. At that time the CPR ran pleasure cruises in the summer from the head of the lakes at Fort William & Port Arthur (now Thunder Bay) to Port McNicol in Ontario.  On board the Keewatin I met several young fun loving boys and girls en route that I continued to see in Toronto, which made my introduction to that city much easier  

On arrival in Toronto I moved in temporarily with cousin Norman Shnier and Harry Klamer in their one-bedroom apartment at 1510 Bathurst Street, but soon we upgraded to a two bedroom and I remained there with them. 

John Bain                     Allan Paull                        Norm Hewitt

The job at Abitibi was satisfying and fulfilling with a group of five professionals in a newly formed Operations Research Department. Bill Lumsden who will turn up in the next chapter was one of us.  The OR discipline was new at the time but it was thriving. Using mathematical and statistical methods, we introduced programming techniques that developed ways of cutting newsprint more efficiently into roll sizes specified by customers, resulting in considerably less waste at the mill.  Mathematical linear programming was also used to minimize freight charges which were sizable for heavy rolls of newsprint, by associating shipments from Abitibi mills spread all across Canada, with customer destinations, which were located in several cities in every state and in every province.  In those days computers were in their infancy and much of the calculations were done by hand with the aid of electric calculators. There were several such departments in Toronto and a group of us formed the Operations Research Society of Canada.  In the 1950’s computers used punched cards for data entry.  For complex computations we would feed in data in the evening and let the computer run all night. Today the same job would take seconds.

MARRIAGE AND FAMILY  

I first met Freda in residence at University of Manitoba before the war but neither of us paid much attention to the other.  We were both young and I was not too socially aggressive; those were the days before the Kinsey report and we were all rather naïve sexually. We got our sex education by sneak-reading books like Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and the lingerie section of Eatons Catalogue was our Playboy magazine. I had my Bar Mitzvah when I was 13 but my coming of age was not until I was 18.  I attended a boy’s camp at Watrous, a salt-water inland lake resort in Northern Saskatchewan where boys from Regina and Saskatoon got together; it was a congenial group of young people with a good leader and lots of interesting summer activities. 

Soon afterwards I went off to University, got involved in going off to war, and then getting a PhD in North Carolina. I did not start seeing Freda until I returned to Winnipeg and we dated in 1949.  I still was not ready to take onto myself a wife and I left for a job in Toronto in 1950.  Freda had moved to Montreal a short time before and not until I started going to Montreal on business trips did I date her again. It was at the wedding of Phil and Shirley Shnier in Montreal that Freda came back into my life and she’s been in it ever since.  I’ve never been too good at using words of endearment or showing emotions openly but I have Freda to thank for making the last fifty-plus years of my life the best years of my life.  She’s the one that raised a couple of good kids, Joanne and Martin, without much help from me. She’s the one that taught me how to lighten up a bit and not take myself too seriously.  She’s the one that worked hard at thinking up and planning the trips and other recreational activities that we’ve enjoyed over the years. Although she’s right brain dominant and I left, it provided a certain amount of synergy and also led to a certain amount of friction, but her sharp intuition acted as a good counterbalance to my compulsive perfectionism. But I really wouldn’t want to sit opposite a wife at the dinner table every night talking mathematics.  Over the years we’ve shared many memorable experiences together, some good, some bad, and now in our older years we are fortunate to still be able to share fond memories of them together, some sweet, some bittersweet.

We are lucky and proud to have two good and caring children Joanne and Martin living in town, and these adjectives describe their respective spouses as well, Barry Y. and Sharon Aceman.  We were a bit on the old side of middle age when our grandchildren appeared on the scene, which explains why we did not spend as much time babysitting as we might have liked to.  I was 40 when Martin was born and Martin was 40 when Joshua was born, making me 80 at the time.  Our grandchildren are a joy to be with but, at the present stages of our life and theirs, we don’t get too many chances to see them. 

Joanne and Barry’s daughter is a beautiful 18-year-old enrolled in Engineering Science at the University of Toronto.  She’s immersed in her studies and social life in residence at the University of Toronto and is enjoying her new independent life there. Residence is a village in itself and she emerges rarely.  She used to play the piano beautifully with feeling, but lately not too often. 

Sarah at 9 and Josh at 7 come to our house with Mom and Dad on a Sunday afternoon on their way home from religious school; she runs for the computer and he drags me downstairs to play ping pong. We’re pleased to have our kids in the same city but at this stage of their lives they’re beginning to feel the pressure of the sandwich generation. Joanne and Martin are quite different in temperament and the difference happens to be accentuated by the fact that Joanne and Barry are at a stage in their lives when their daughter is already an adult and they have the means and the will to live the good life; while Martin and Sharon, with more limited means, are busy raising two young children with all that that entails.  Any couple that has gone through that will remember what it’s like.  [I feel I’m walking on eggshells as I write this but like all parents, I’ve tried to impress on them the importance of family closeness, and of mutual emotional support but I sometimes think I’ve failed; at other times I see hope. Neither couple can fully comprehend the situation or the viewpoint of the other nor do they want to.  It’s “why can’t they be like us”.  In the Introduction I promised that I would not imply judgement of others so I’ll stop here.]

Martin and Sharon have two beautiful children that are kept busy with public school, religious school, Hebrew school, soccer, swimming lessons and all the other activities that parents insist on programming into their children’s lives these days.  They are still young enough to be interested in visiting their grandparents.  In December 2003 we had a Family Picture taken and it’s a good one; we should do it again.

Norman Shnier and his wife Roberta became significant people in our lives shortly after we got married.  Norman is my cousin and Bert Freda’s, so the kinsfolk element made the friendship stronger, even to today.  I wouldn’t be too far wrong if I said that Freda and Bert spoke to each other on the phone every day for the past 50 years. Norman and I are close friends in a cousinly way; we take it for granted that we can depend on each other.

          My sister Ruth married Mel Shear a dispatcher with the CNR in Regina about a year after we got married, and they soon had a daughter Gina.  They lived in Regina and were a good support to Mother after Dad died in 1959, but in 1968 Mel was transferred to Saskatoon. Mom stayed in Regina in her own apartment until she was 88, then moved to Saskatoon to live with Ruth. In her later years mother used to say that she wanted to be like Maxwell House coffee: “good to the last drop.”  She almost made it.  She lived to age 96 and in her later years became too much for my sister to handle and in 1981 Mom went to spend her final years in a nursing home within walking distance of Ruth’s house in Saskatoon.  Ruth died rather suddenly of a heart attack in 1992. Gina worked for the CNR and she was transferred to Edmonton afterwards and she and Mel moved there.  Mel died in 1995 leaving Gina alone in Edmonton where she still lives today with her friend Bob. 

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