15

1955 – 1960

School Daze

Up in the morning and off to school

The teacher is teaching the golden rule

Chuck Berry

A new student in March towards the of the school year is always an anomaly and inevitably creates a disruption. Classes have evolved since September to a level of comfort for students and teachers. This comfortable equilibrium was briefly disturbed by my arrival, a new student in March and a uniquely different one to boot. Fortunately although as a visible minority in a nearly totally caucasian population I was naturally a curiosity, my reception at Central Collegiate in Oshawa was reassuringly pleasant. I was duly registered and placed in grade 10 late February or early March 1955 in a provisory manner since my school documents from Jamaica were probably difficult to assess. The school year was already more than half over. For the rest of that school year I struggled relatively unsuccessfully to adapt to my new school.

The social environment presented challenges. In Jamaica I had been in an all male high school where my main concerns were my rank order in my class and staying out of fights with classmates. I now had to be concerned not only with academic success but also with issues of race and gender. Academically I had difficulty in math and sciences but was quite at home in English, French and Latin despite the fact that Latin nouns and adjectives were declined in a different order in Canada. Canadian history was a complete unknown and Physical Education promoted a North American menu of sports which were unfamiliar to me. I regretted the absence of cricket, soccer and athletics especially since before I left Jamaica I had started to show promise in cricket and athletics.

Although the south end of Oshawa at this time displayed a relative degree of diversity in the origins of the students, the diversity was however more one of nationality since the school population in the late fifties was composed overwhelmingly of recent newcomers form Europe, especially Central and Eastern Europe. I can recall no student of African, Asiatic or Central or South American decent. I therefore enjoyed special status.

At first my physical differences were a bother to me but in time I would learn to enjoy this unique status and even occasionally embellished my differences in an attempt to cultivate my exoticism. I wished, for example, that like some of my Polish and Ukranian classmates I had lived in a country with a language totally unintelligible to my new colleagues instead of the patois corruption of the English language that they already understood. Nonetheless I found myself cherishing the patois of my rural Jamaican origins as a confirmation of my uniqueness and using it whenever the occasion presented itself.

The openness of North American culture helped greatly to create bridges for me. In the late fifties Calypso was a recent discovery to mainstream North American popular music. Of course my classmates were curious about this new kind of musical expression and happy to have an authentic witness of things Caribbean among them. Exploiting my new found expertise on matters of Caribbean folklore and a resemblance some said to Harry Belafonte, I enjoyed a brief moment as a valued commodity in some circles around the school.

Later with Rhythm and Blues and Rock and Roll in the ascendancy, I shamelessly abandoned my expertise in Caribbean folklore and joined the groundswell of teens expressing the treachery and deception of love, about which I knew absolutely nothing, singing the heartaches of loss of a seasonal love at the end of the summer holidays, celebrating school days with Chuck Berry.

The upside of racial stereotyping, blacks being represented disproportionately in popular music, granted me some undeserved credit for musical expression and I tallied a mediocre talent for music and a passable voice into a vocal trio, “the Jesters”. Two classmates and I had a group with the staying power of the half-life of a fruit fly and morphed happily into a more important musical grouping which we loftily named “The Laurentians”. 

The Laurentians had a very fluid composition between four and seven members depending on the season and the caprices of the girlfriends of the members.We played popular music of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s for parties, dances and weddings. Sax, one or two guitars, accordion, bass, drums, marimba and later vibes supplied the music and vocals were an essential element to our band. I played marimba and vibes and participated in the vocals as soloist or lead in our vocal trio. We had a brief shining period of delusions about our prospects as entertainers fueled by a few flattering remarks from inebriated party goers until each of us realized, some sooner than others, that we had to grow up and find niches more likely than music to prepare us for the serious stuff of adult life. We had a two year stint in the Oshawa area and always particularly enjoyed playing for the Christmas parties/dances for departments of General Motors of Canada.

The Laurentians

Of the six young ‘Laurentians’ one pursued a career in music in the U.S., four remained in the Oshawa area and I emigrated to a sometimes damp haven on the West Coast of Canada.

My victories in sports went largely unnoticed since it took place outside of school and in an environment unknown to the larger sporting culture in Ontario. In my late teens I distinguished myself in the Toronto and District Cricket league as an all-rounder topping the statistical tables in batting and bowling for the second division. Oshawa finished on top of the division and were promoted to the first division in 1959. As a result of my success I was named to the Ontario youth team which played against a touring team from England  (M.C.C.) and was selected to a Canadian side that was to tour England. A lack of finances made this selection a moot point and I declined the honour. I participated in track and field as a sprinter and had some success in the 100 yards and the 220 yards around the Oshawa area and also played a few games for a Ukrainian team “Strilla” in the Toronto District Soccer League in 1960.

Music and sports had given me the assurance that I could be successfully integrated into a group with no regard to my superficial physical differences. I celebrated this assurance and cherished the human contacts which were crucial elements in the development of an identity and in the evolution of my new nationality.

Canadian history and practical maths

You’re studyin’ hard and hopin’ to pass

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