The Toronto Star Santa Claus Fund
This article was in this week's Toronto Star. It's about Joe's mom, and the photo was taken when she was four.
Boxes followed family from rented room to rented room
Dec. 12, 2005. 01:00 AM
CHRISTIAN COTRONEO
STAFF REPORTER
Through times of struggle and strife, when life unfolded in rented rooms, there has always been a picture of Grace.
It shows a 4-year old girl, wearing a smart new sweater and clinging to a doll.
The portrait, a little weathered from the years, still hangs in Grace McBee's living room, taking her back to her bright-eyed self of 1936.
She was relishing in the gifts she had just received from the Toronto Star Santa Claus Fund.
"That was the first doll I ever had," recalls the 73-year-old today from her Whitby home.
The boxes, which have been finding their way to children from struggling parents since 1906, never missed the family of six, although their addresses changed often.
By the mid-1930s, her father had paid off a loan for his passage from Scotland by working on a farm in Milton. From there, life was a steady succession of rented rooms
"They'd move into a room and it was nice and clean," McBee says. "Then they'd get into bed and be eaten alive by bedbugs. They'd get up the next day and move somewhere else."
But her father found a paltry paycheque as a cook at a nearby restaurant.
"He didn't know how to make pastry so he had to run home and ask his mother," McBee recalls. "But you know what? He turned out to be the best cook anybody would want. His food was fantastic."
McBee's first parcel arrived when her family was sharing a room at 355 Carlton, an occasion that saw her photographed for the newspaper.
"My mother was embarrassed that my picture was in the paper," she recalls. "Because then everyone would know that we were poor."
"But you know, I never knew we were poor."
Eventually, the family could afford to rent a house of their own on Sackville Place in Cabbagetown.
The boxes followed there, but McBee says her father was a "goer."
Never content to stand still, he eventually found a career on the railroad, keeping that job for the next 25 years, and pulling his family from poverty.
"He was a wonderful dad," McBee says. "He'd take us to Riverdale Park, and the zoo was at Riverdale Park. We didn't have TV and we didn't have a radio, but we didn't know any different."
McBee lived in the house on Sackville Place until close to her 21st birthday, when she got married.
It didn't take long for McBee's mother to overcome her embarrassment about the photograph in the newspaper.
The portrait found a prominent place in her parents' home for decades. They passed it down to their youngest daughter, who has kept it in her living room for the last 42 years.
"When you look at that sweet little face who could be embarrassed?"
If you have been touched by the Santa Claus Fund, or have a story to tell, email ccotron@thestar.ca or call 416-814-2751.
4:52:10 PM 
|
