St.Paul's Crusaders 1945
October 5, 2002
Victoria BC
Dear Linda,
I thought you might like a few remembrances I have of your father that may be novel for you.
Your dad and I were first together in St. Edward's parochial grade school on Arlington St. (and Yarwood) in the west end of Winnipeg---he thought it was Grade I (1936), and I thought, Grade 2 (1937). I hadn't known he was a full year older than I was until we reconnected a few years ago. He probably started school a year later than normal, because he was always too bright to have ever been held back in Grade I.
I remember Ed as always being independent minded, doing well academically and playing sports---strong and swift. St. Edward's was one of the many Manitoba parochial Catholic schools in those years that received no funding from the Province. The school was financed from meager Sunday Church offerings of late depression and WW II times. The buildings were in poor and sometimes unsanitary conditions. Students who lived relatively close to the school would sometimes prefer to go to their home rather than use the school's washroom facilities. The Sisters of the Mission were our teachers---some good, some poor, few if any with university degrees, but all reasonably well intentioned. In all our years at Catholic Grade or High schools we never heard of any abuse of students. The parish priest, Msgr. Rheaume would appear to give out the bi monthly examination results, calling us up in the order of who achieved the highest marks. Your dad was invariably one of the earliest to be called. Msgr. Rheaume might also appear in winter time when the janitor needed furnace room help. To economize Msgr. had installed a sawdust burning furnace and he usually selected the brightest male students to put in an hour's worth of shoveling sawdust into the blazing furnace, thinking we guessed, that we could afford the time away from the classroom. It was tough work, but there was always an element of play as we horsed around in the vast sawdust pile. Ed and I were often chosen---which meant that we usually needed a change of clothes when we went home for our luncheon meal. Our desk ink wells, of a winter Monday morning, were invariably frozen when no heat was provided to the school over the weekend.
In looking back on our grade school days, some have said that it might have been better if these schools had been closed down by the Province: the buildings were in very poor conditions; there were no instructional materials for the sisters to use in class; there was no library; the sisters generally lacked any modicum of advanced education themselves. I'm not so sure they should have been closed---possibly because I was a survivor. I recall having to "catch up" to the other students when I moved on to High School. Most St. Edward's students went on to Public schools for Grades 9 to 12---a few of us went to St. Paul's, the Jesuit High School. To my knowledge Ed and I were the only students from our graduating grade 8 class (of 30) from St. Edward's that went to University.
At St. Paul's, better students were streamed into selected classes. Somehow Ed was missed out in the first year, but the very good Jesuit teachers became aware of his abilities and we were rejoined in Grade 10. I played basketball, but your shorter and much more fearless father played football. I think he was the only Grade 10 student to make the senior football team, and that despite being but half the size of the Grade 11 and 12 boys. He always said that the practice sessions were tougher than the games. I think that in both years he played, St. Paul's won the Provincial Championship and in one of those years, the team played a final exhibition game against Vancouver College out here on the west coast. I accompanied Ed and the team that year as the water boy. Ed wasn't the star of the team in either of the two years he played, but he was always admired for his pluck and determination in going up against others who were twice his size.
We had an exceptionally bright class of students in Grade 11. Nearly all of us went on to University taking in our first year there the equivalent of what would otherwise have been Grade 12 in the High School. I learned from your father in the last couple years that he received a small scholarship from the Jesuits while at University. I know they had their eye on him as a potential priest. We often discussed philosophical and religious matters as we walked to and from the High school and later in first year University. Ed was always questioning the logic of the Church's pronouncements and I think it was in the latter years of University that he fell away from his Catholic beliefs. Most of us who hung on may have simply been less honest than your father, somehow less concerned with or upset by all the rules and pronouncements or less given to paying attention to every detail of Church teaching. The example of the Jesuit priests was very good, but there was no one there (or he did not ask!) to give Ed the big picture and put some of his difficulties with the Church into a broader perspective. Certainly, no fellow student was capable of giving that.
If I recollect correctly, your dad transferred out to the main Fort Garry campus of the University after first year, and so we lost close touch, though we occasionally got together. I recall that he spent one University summer out of Kenora at the Lake of the Woods working on a tour boat called the SS Argyle---which name I think crops up in his email address. And I recall that one of his first full time jobs after University was with a national wire service (British United Press?). I thought I was being paid poorly at a Trust company until I heard about your dad's pay. We actually saw little of each other after graduation. I was immersed in the Chartered Accountancy studies and Ed went to eastern Canada.
On a couple occasions in the last 25 years, when visiting Toronto, I called a few "Hammonds" in the phone book, but obviously without success. It was only through another mutual High School and University friend living in Rochester ( Dr. Jim McPherson) that we once again connected, about five or six years ago. Over the telephone and on the few occasions of a Toronto lunch, we picked up exactly where we had left off: reminiscing on past school days; sometimes praising, though more often decrying politicians; or wondering how indifferent some of our institutions and businesses are to human lives. I think your Dad secretly enjoyed recounting the "run-ins" he had with the incompetence he sometimes ran into in the medical profession.
It was one of the joys of my retirement to revive our friendship. What we respected in each other from early school days endured. Ed's characteristic qualities never deserted him: thoughtful, intelligent, considerate, sometimes eccentric and oh, so terribly honest and truthful! A couple years ago, he thought that he would make a trip out here to the west coast and visit with me. Unfortunately that did not come about. I saw him last in Mt. Sinai in the fall of last year and then in his home with your mother last December.
I continue to remember your father in my daily prayers and Mass.