Sunday 27 January 2019

Things ain't what they used to be.

   I think I am one of the few remaining Canadians who emigrated to Canada by Ocean Liner, because it was the only way I could afford  to come here and that was the way the poor folk traveled, unless you were rich enough to travel first class and I wasn't.  The rich folk crossed the Atlantic, in those days, traveling First Class, something barely imaginable to me.  Third class seemed like heaven, so how could First Class be any better?   It was like a pleasure cruise and we ate and drank and relaxed and rested  after the exhausting experience of winding up my job and our home in the old country..  Anyway, when we arrived in St..John,  New Brunswick, with our two large trunks and many large wooden tea-boxes full of our lives valuables, the most notable scenario was as follows.
  Customs and excise officer:  (to me, my wife and two year old daughter) "And what have we got here in all these boxes?"
   I probably felt more guilty than a present day immigrant would feel if he had ten kilos of heroin stashed away.   
   "Just personal and family possession, sir," I answered, apprehensively.
   "I'm afraid I'm going to have to open the nailed on lids of these boxes to examine the contents." he said.
   "Okay," what else could I say?
   He started prying off the lid of the first container.
   "What's all this stuff?" he asked in amazement, holding a dozen or more wooden and wire coat hangers in his hand.  "What are these for?
   "They are just hangers, I thought we would need them."
   He was hammering the crowbar under the next lid and prying it open.
   "What's all this?" he said groping around the box of family photographs, cheap prints and other such memorabilia.
    "Just family photos and some pictures." I said.
     He grinned, " I think that's enough.  Never saw so much worth so little.  Welcome to Canada.  Train for Montreal is over there," he pointed, as he nailed the lids back  on the wooden boxes that contained our treasures.

    We boarded the train for Montreal.  My wife had an older sister who had been living in New York/New Jersey for several years.  She had taken the two of the three younger sisters to live with her, when their father died.  The one next to her was already engaged to me, so she stayed behind.   Jo had some friends from her youth in Dublin who invited us all to stay with them for the couple of days layover, before Irene and I traveled on to Regina, Saskatchewan.  I remember it well, because we had forty dollars and a little girl and not much else, apart from a job at the Medical Arts Clinic in Regina and an assurance from them that they would advance me enough money to live on until I earned enough to be self-supporting.
    I've written about our January 23rd arrival in Regina at 4 a.m. and -40 F elsewhere and some of our earliest impressions, including our breakfast welcome at a Chinese convenience store on South Raiway, which then was 'Hooker Row'.  (Nowadays, it boasts a classy Casino, that would do the Strip in Vegas proud!)
   In those days, a pack of twenty -five cigarettes cost 44c and a gallon (Canadian) of gas also cost 44c.   My massive green Chevvy Biscayne with 28,000miles cost $1800 and was without power brakes or power steering and didn't even have a radio.  I wasn't even aware of  such luxuries as power steering or brakes and thought driving a big eight cylinder car was supposed to feel like driving a garbage truck.  I heard President Kennedy's assassination from the tiny portable radio that was perpetually sliding across my dash, depending on which direction I was turning.  I had to  pull over, grab it and hold it to my ear,(while lighting a cigarette), to make sure I had heard it right!
   
   I used  to go for lunch to the Greek owned  'La Salle' Restaurant on Hamilton St. where many of the noted Docs went for lunch.  I remember urologist "Staffy' Barootes and his partners frequently lunched and discussed politics there.  We used to call his group the 'Greek Mafia'.  Nobody took offense.   'Staffy', whose real name was Estafios (I believe) was the supreme promoter of the Conservative Party in those NDP dictated days in Saskatchewan.  He was an eloquent man, small and neat, with black slick well-oiled hair who looked like the actor George Raft, of movie gangster fame. He worked incessantly for the party and was eventually rewarded for his effort with a seat in the Canadian Senate. 
   We used to have a fine lunch at the La Salle, where even a neophyte like myself could well afford the bill.  I remember a well-filled single deck Club House sandwich was 75c, the double decker was $1.25!  They came with fries, of course!  The bottomless cup of coffee was 10c as it still was when  I left Regina almost fifteen years later!    
   Medicare had just come  to Saskatchewan and many well-established physicians had left the Province because they weren't going to practice 'Government Medicine'.  The 'Doctor's Strike' had been settled less than a year with the 'Saskatoon Agreement'.  (I was quickly informed that it wasn't a 'Strike' and I shouldn't call it that! - What did I know!).  The Government set about establishing 'Community Clinics' with very modest success at the time.  The Medical  Arts Clinic, which I had joined had lost several doctors and recruited successfully in Britain and  Ireland.  We became busy very quickly and made friends very quickly with other ex-patriots.  Early on there was great animosity between the general  physician community and the 'Community Clinic' physicians, but most people can't carry on  a grudge forever and with the passage of time an uneasy peace developed.  By the time the next generation of physicians fell into place the whole evolution of health care was so 'governmentalized' that independent thinkers were discouraged  from  clinical practice and the admission requirements for medical school are engineered to produce physicians who see eye to eye with and tug their forelock to government.
   The Saskatoon Agreement ending the Strike was signed on July 23rd 1962.  
   Anyone interested will find the details well documented.
  

 
   
  

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