Isme Bennie

Coming to Canada…Toronto Actually!

I got the idea for moving to Canada from a most unexpected direction.  Draft dodgers, as the Vietnam War draft evaders were often called, got emigration counseling from various anti-war groups, to facilitate their safe removal to Canada. And that helped me plan my move to the same country.

I didn’t come to Canada directly from South Africa, the country where I was born and in which I grew up, where I went to school and worked for a few years.  I came here via stop-overs in London, Los Angeles and then New York. I had followed a man to this last U.S. stop. And then I followed him again, when he wanted to leave New York to return home to Canada, to Toronto, to a quieter and less aggressive society. New York in the late 60s was not a happy place, it was broke and grubby and in the midst of the Vietnam War.

I planned my move carefully, using the Vietnam War draft evaders’ information. I completed a copy of the questionnaire that I would be asked on arrival, and made sure I had the requisite number of qualifying points. I chose a quiet time to arrive, mid-week, mid-afternoon. And I arrived by plane, a lot more respectable than getting off a Greyhound Bus.

At the airport arrival counter, I said “Please, Sir, I want to immigrate.” It was still quite easy to immigrate at the border in those days. I was taken off to an office, and taken through the questionnaire. The official gave me more points for personal impression than I had awarded myself, and I was in!

We moved into the apartment we had found on a previous recce. A lovely apartment and Toronto so much more reasonable than Manhattan. The weather didn’t help the move, this was Canada in winter, the week before Christmas.

One of the first experiences of that very first Canadian week was going to Honest Ed’s to shop for Christmas gifts. Honest Ed’s has long been a Toronto landmark, a huge discount store visited by generations of immigrants to purchase goods for their first home in the city. When I arrived, they would have been Portuguese or Italian, previously probably Hungarian or Czech. Today mostly Asian, but Honest Ed’s is about to disappear and no new waves of immigrants will pass through its doors and read its humorous signs like “Only the floor is crooked.” Throughout my life in Toronto, I have shopped at Honest Ed’s, mainly for household goods, like English pudding bowls, or woks. I still have jeans and a denim shirt from Honest Ed’s that are probably 20 years old. I live near Honest Ed’s today, and if I feel I need a cultural experience, off I go for a stroll through the store. I will miss that now that it has been sold and will be demolished to be replaced by a large retail and apartment complex.

Perhaps it was winter, but I found Toronto desolate in my first weeks there, the streets barren and bleak, the city dreary. It took a while before I learned my way around a lovely, manageable city with its tree-lined streets, distinct ethnic neighborhoods, its ravine parks. It has become a sophisticated shopping city, but in the early seventies the clothes were dull, epitomized by Eaton’s, the iconic department store, a Canadian symbol!  There was Simpson’s too, but that morphed a long time ago.  I went to Montreal to shop for clothes.

In the Toronto of over 40 years ago, like today, liquor had to be bought from the Ontario Liquor Control Board. But in those days, bottles were not on display, one chose from a catalogue and went up to the counter to make a purchase. I think ID was required. Booze was not allowed in parks or on balconies. No restaurant patios existed. It was still Toronto the good.

I don’t remember my first Toronto Christmas. I do know that a friend and neighbor had an annual New Year’s Eve party. I am not sure I went that first year, but I remember going one time wearing a thrift shop wedding dress that fluoresced under the strobe lights, and a tiara saying Happy New Year in rhinestones. Our host would dance with a woman, throw her to the floor and bite her big toe! The hangovers were horrific.

As we settled into Toronto we hosted an annual Boxing Day brunch, inviting almost everyone we knew, with bullshots to drink, a whole boiled ham, Egyptian Eggs, trays of perogies bought from a Hungarian food store. Toronto’s ethnic diversity lent itself to our entertaining. I always ended doing the cleaning up. Our Boxing Day brunches stopped when we moved, but friends later had theirs, serving Macedonian sausage, again utilizing Toronto’s plethora of food choices. A sausage stall in the St Lawrence Market was the source.  On Saturdays farmers came in to the market and it has been quite the thing to go very early in the morning to buy fresh vegetables, fruit, eggs and flowers.

Kensington Market was the main location for ethnic produce, but for one specific group at a time. When we arrived it was known as the Jewish Market, with Jewish egg sellers, etc. Since then it has evolved through several ethnicities. Right now it’s become Latino, selling tacos and burritos, and the older ladies in house dresses who used to shop for European sausages have been replaced by young people. It’s becoming trendy with more up-market providers selling organic goods, like the excellent butcher and fishmonger and bakeries, and a coffee shop where the young line up for their lattes or whatever.

There were more Hungarian eateries then, on College and Bloor Streets. They were defined by the white boots with cut out heels and toes worn by the waitresses.

In New York City, we would go to Chinatown most Sundays for brunch. I was amazed at how four-year-olds could manipulate chop sticks, while I was still struggling. Toronto’s Chinese restaurants in the seventies were Hong Kong style, chop suey and egg rolls. There was only one that served spicy Northern dishes, a restaurant supposedly owned as a co-op by the waiters. We relied on their suggestions, and the place was a mainstay for quite a while. Now Chinatowns have emerged all over the city, and every regional cuisine can be found, and going for dim sum has become a popular lunch destination.

Korean and Thai and Vietnamese restaurants started appearing, as those populations grew in Toronto, but that has been over a long period of time. There were just one or two Japanese. Now they have proliferated, and in the couple of blocks near where I live, there must be more than half-a-dozen sushi joints, filled with kids who previously would have grown up on hot dogs and hamburgers.

Our cleaning lady when I first came to Toronto was Japanese. In New York I never had any help, coming from apartheid South Africa, it seemed exploitative and made me feel guilty, but in Toronto it seemed different somehow, and the woman who came every two weeks was not a servant, and we enjoyed the Japanese dishes she sometimes brought us, and our incredibly tidy closets, things arranged by color and size. She eventually left to work in the post office. There were several successors of different backgrounds, and then for 25 years Pearl from Trinidad, who eventually came to work by Wheeltrans.

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