Avenue Road

Growing up in Toronto in 1967 – 1970 while attending Glendon Hall for undergraduate studies was an eventful time of my life.  I am today reminded of those colourful events because I distinctly recollect starting university in what was then a picture-perfect autumn much like today, over 50 years later. I had just graduated from an all-boys boarding school, I was 18 years old and I was studying Philosophy.  While there were several of my boarding school classmates who had also chosen to attend Glendon Hall it was of course a gateway to a new crowd. Most of the students within my orbit lived in residence. In that respect the place was very much like boarding school; viz., there were (separate) residences for men and women, and the residences were identified by individual houses (which, if I recall, were no more imaginative than A House, B House and C House). The women’s residence (l think it was collectively called Hilliard Residence) was located on the opposite side of the huge grassy courtyard that separated the two.

It was a small university campus, technically a satellite of York University located on a much larger campus on Keele Street in northwestern Toronto. The residents of Glendon Hall routinely rallied in the dining room for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Of course it wasn’t long before the tables were established by location and accommodation for repeat membership. I didn’t seek to preserve my prep school associations, at least not to the discredit of other possibilities.  I was anxious to get to know people.

You may recall as do I that 1967 – 1970 was the era of The Beatles.  The song which I remember in particular is “Hey Jude”. I learned to play it and even performed it to a full house during a mock comedy production reminiscent of The Firesign Theatre.

Hey Jude” is a song by the English rock band the Beatles that was released as a non-album single in August 1968. It was written by Paul McCartney and credited to the Lennon–McCartney partnership. The single was the Beatles’ first release on their Apple record label and one of the “First Four” singles by Apple’s roster of artists, marking the label’s public launch. “Hey Jude” was a number-one hit in many countries around the world and became the year’s top-selling single in the UK, the US, Australia and Canada. Its nine-week run at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 tied the all-time record in 1968 for the longest run at the top of the US charts, a record it held for nine years. It has sold approximately eight million copies and is frequently included on music critics’ lists of the greatest songs of all time.

Glendon Hall was the former Wood residence and estate.  It was not unsurprisingly located within a lovely area of Toronto, circled by streets such as The Bridle Path, High Point Road, Park Lane Circle, and slightly further afield from Mt Pleasant Road, Avenue Road, extending ultimately to St Clair Ave E intercepted by Dunvegan Road, Forest Hill Road, Lonsdale Road eventually southerly to Poplar Plains Road winding back to Yorkville Avenue. During my studies at Glendon Hall I circled about those pathways for various reasons with various people. It hardly made for a dynamic introduction to Toronto society but it is nonetheless memorable.

Now by contrast I have the unique privilege to tricycle upon roadways which bear the names of people whom I have known over the past 48 years in Almonte. This morning following my impromptu piano performance at Fairview Manor I met Ricky Minnille (Deputy Mayor of the Town of Mississippi Mills) wheeling his new electric bicycle about town. He laughably recounted having expropriated Joe Clark’s newspapaer on Parliament Hill when he (Ricky) and Keith Blades (also an Almonte denizen, one the first whom I met here) were undertaking improvements to the masonry of the Parliament Buildings.  Then, after parting Ricky’s company, I ran into Chris who accounted dealing with Ricky’s son in a domestic masonry enterprise. My only response was, “I knew Ricky’s parents.”