Call Me Russell

by Russell Peters

  I think that’s what so many immigrant parents hope for: not necessarily a great life for themselves … but at least the promise of an easier one for their kids.

  England or the States. I’ve become who I am not just because of who my parents were but because I was able to grow up in Canada—and not just in Canada, but in Toronto, and, of course, Brampton.

  As I write this, I’m on the cusp of turning forty, the same age my dad was when he arrived in this country. It’s humbling to think of him landing here with only a hundred dollars in his pocket versus where I am at the same age. All my stuff—and it is just stuff—the houses, the cars, the money … it all started with that hundred dollars in his pocket forty-five years ago.

  A LITTLE-KNOWN FACT: I was supposed to be a girl. Yep.

  My dad wanted a Dominique, but he got a Russell instead. He had this thing about a perfect “million-dollar family”—a family with a boy and a girl. Now we are a million-dollar family, just not in the way Dad imagined back then.

  I was born in Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto on Tuesday, September 29, 1970. My parents and six-year-old brother were living on Indian Road in the west end of Toronto. Dad had purchased the house—the first home he and Mom ever owned—a year earlier. (I guess if you’re from India and don’t know where to buy, Indian Road is the obvious choice.)

  After Brother, Mom and Dad tried for another baby. Mom had a miscarriage before having me, but I’m pretty sure that if that kid had survived, there would be no Russell Peters.

  When I was still a bump in Mom’s belly, Dad was willing me to be a girl. When it was time for me to disappoint him, I did it my way. Mom’s water broke at the very convenient hour of four in the morning. My parents didn’t want to wake up the neighbours, so they just put my brother in their bed and told him to stay put while Dad took Mom to the hospital. They called a cab, locked the door behind them and jumped in the taxi when it arrived. When the taxi driver realized the woman in the back was in labour, he started “having kittens”— Mom’s polite way of saying he was shitting his pants. He was sure she was about to pop a baby in the back seat of his cab. To calm him down, Mom asked, “So what’s your name?”

  “George,” the taxi driver said.

  “Tell you what, George. If I have this baby in your cab, I’ll name it after you.”

  Now the name George works for George Clooney, but I don’t think I’d make a very good George, so I decided to hold off being born until George the cabbie was out of the picture.

  At five-thirty, while Mom was in the labour room, Dad rushed home to look after my brother. At 10:14 in the morning, out I popped.

  When Mom called Dad to tell him the news, Dad clammed up completely. He was totally crushed that I was a dude. He had his heart set on a girl, and, well, I’m really, really not one. The closest I get is when I take a really cold shower.

  When Dad got to the hospital, he didn’t even want to look at me.

  When Dad got to the hospital, he didn’t even want to look at me. Mom urged him to go to the nursery and see me for himself, and all he could say in response was “Give me time.” He did go and check me out later, and according to Mom, I won him over.

  Mom had asked one of her co-workers to be my godmother, and the woman agreed on the condition that Mom call me Russell, so it’s a good thing I wasn’t born in George’s cab or there could have been a problem. My middle name, Dominic, is my grandmother’s choice … kind of. A strict Catholic, she prayed to St. Dominic for my safe delivery and agreed to name me accordingly if all went well. Dominic was also the name of my Italian godmother’s husband.

  My mother claims I was a delightful baby, as most mothers do. She compared me to my brother, who would stay awake all night and sleep all day. He also wouldn’t let her leave his sight. She says that I was the opposite—slept when I was supposed to, happy, cheerful. Who knew?

  A rare photo of me as a child, bawling.

  We moved from Indian Road to a two-bedroom basement apartment in a four-story building on Barrie Place in Waterloo when I was one. Dad decided to pursue his real love, journalism, and was studying at Conestoga College.

  After about a year in Waterloo, we moved back to Toronto, to another one-bedroom basement apartment on Brock Avenue. The building is still there, but it’s all boarded up now. It looks completely out of place on the street.

  My own memory of my life kicks in around the age of four. I vividly remember the house we lived in on Norval Street in the west end of Toronto. It was like we were living two lives at the time: one during the week and another on the weekends. On weekdays, my brother and I would go to school and both Mom and Dad would work. I was in junior kindergarten and my brother was in Grade 4 at St. Cecilia’s Catholic School on Evelyn Avenue—St. C’s, as it was and is still called today. We’d take two TTC buses from Norval Street just to get there.

  This was sort of the beginning of my brother taking care of me—he’d hold my hand to and from school and join me at lunchtime to make sure I ate my lunch. I had a little red lunch box shaped like a barn, with a milk container shaped like a silo that fit nicely inside. Lunch was a peanut-butter-and-jam sandwich or SPAM or a cheese sandwich. When my brother and I got home, he’d usually make a snack for us to eat—macaroni and cheese, toast, wieners and beans—and we’d wait until Mom and Dad got home.

  Evenings were a mad rush of Mom ironing all our clothes, making our lunches and cooking dinner. She was now working in the accounting office at The Globe and Mail on Front Street. Dad was working as a federal meat inspector with the Department of Agriculture in the slaughterhouses along St. Clair Avenue between Keele Street and Runnymede Road. It was a steady union gig, but Dad would come home exhausted at the end of the day. He used to describe what it was like walking around in two inches of animal guts and sticking his hands inside carcasses for eight hours each day. When he got home, he’d have a nap, a pre-dinner drink and then dinner—by himself—at around nine-thirty or so. There wasn’t a whole lot of time for anything else but preparation for the next day.

  This was a far different life from the one my parents had in India, where at the end of the workday there was afternoon tea and often friends or family dropping by in the evening for drinks or potluck dinner. The cook would have dinner ready by seven or eight. Your clothes would be cleaned and pressed by the dhobi, and the flat would be cleaned by the sweeper. Your lunch for the next day would be made fresh in the morning and delivered in a tiffen-carrier by the cook or a tiffen service to your office. Meanwhile, as any immigrant will gripe, life in Canada (and America) is all about work and working.

  On weekends, my parents made up for the day-to-day drudgery of the work week. Saturday was the best, a giant adventure in the Peters household: shopping day. Groceries were a family affair. We’d all hop in the car and head over to IGA or A&P. Dad scoured the papers all week and cut out every coupon he could find. Then we’d go from store to store, buying whatever was on sale at each one.

  Next, we’d go to the Dufferin Mall or the Galleria, two west-end, working-class shopping malls, and we’d window-shop for much of the afternoon; my brother and I would head straight to the toy sections of the various department stores. There wasn’t the frivolous consumption that we’re used to today, but Mom and Dad always made us feel like we had everything. There was never any sense of wanting or doing without. At three in the afternoon, we’d stop at Woolco or at the food court for tea. This was a big deal for Mom and Dad and usually involved a lot of discussion about what they’d have with their tea: Jamaican beef patties, samosas or Maltese pastizzis.

  After that, it was time to head home and get ready for Saturday night. There was always something to do or somewhere to go. My parents had a huge circle of extended family and Anglo-Indian friends from back home, so after tea, we’d head home and clean the house if people were coming over or get ready for a night out.

  Nothing would make Dad’s blood pressure rise more than the task of cleaning. He would kvetch the whole time
about this “bloody back-breaking work” with a lot of “damn and blast!”, “bloody nuisance,” and so on. There was no having to clean up after yourself or vacuum or clean your own bathroom in India. But in Canada, Mom and Dad suddenly found themselves working full time, raising two kids and keeping a house all by themselves. But every Saturday, after the tension-filled cleanathon, everyone would unite when guests started to arrive.

  There were friends, and friends of friends; aunts and uncles who were blood-related, and a whole bunch more who weren’t but might as well have been. Dad would immediately start to relax as his friends and relatives came over. There were cousins my age, and some older or younger, and we’d tear around the house together while the adults got progressively more drunk. There was always Johnnie Walker Black or Red Label, beer and a ton of food. Sometimes at Uncle Eugene’s place, there was a guitar and singing, all of the aunties and uncles belting out the Tom Jones classic “The Green Green Grass of Home” and getting nostalgic for a place they’d never live in again. There was reminiscing about the old days, tinged with the melancholy knowledge that they could never go back, but also a sense of success at having survived and made a new life for themselves here in Canada.

  There were jokes, too, usually at somebody’s expense, and on the really wild nights, the furniture would be moved out of the way so the dancing could begin. Mom and Dad would break out the vinyl: Frankie Laine, the Platters, Elvis, Engelbert Humperdinck, Tom Jones, Johnny Mathis, Nat King Cole, Cleo Laine, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, the Mills Brothers, the Ink Spots … Dad loved the Ink Spots, especially “To Each His Own,” because of how the tenor reached those high notes. He also loved Jim Croce’s “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.” But Dad never cared for Sinatra. He felt he was a better actor than a singer, much to the chagrin of Uncle Eardley, Aunty Eileen’s husband, who idolized Sinatra.

  There was always music playing in our house, and my parents had a real appreciation for the music of their youth. The first record that Dad ever gave Mom was Andy Williams’ “Moon River.” To this day, my brother has it on his iPod and still gets choked up every time he hears it. The line about two drifters who go off to see the world—that’s what really gets him. Of course, my brother gets choked up about anything, whereas I tend to keep things inside more.

  I still remember Mom and Dad taking to the living room floor and jiving to Bill Haley and His Comets. They were great dancers together, jiving, waltzing and just having a good time. They took ballroom classes for a while, and even when Dad was in his seventies, he still loved to dance. At weddings and parties, guests would clear the floor to watch Mom and Pop do their thing.

  Their favourite song to waltz to was Anne Murray’s “Could I Have This Dance.” It really was their song. When I hosted a fund-raiser for Gilda’s Club in 2007, Anne Murray appeared in the show. She started singing “Could I Have This Dance.” My brother and I were standing at the side of the stage, and I caught his eye. We were both tearing up. As I read this, I know it sounds pretty gay. But hey, that was Mom and Dad’s song, and in that moment, we both knew it. After Dad passed, Mom cut back on going to any functions where there was dancing—it was too much for her to bear without her dance partner.

  But back to the parties. This was the time before the extended family drifted apart, as families often do, before uncles and aunties started passing away, and when the novelty of everyone being together here in Canada was still new. One of the topics for the men was politics. The discussions would often get heated: Dad with his leftist, union-oriented, anti-establishment leanings and some of my uncles who were more right wing, pro-American and pro-English. Dad wouldn’t hesitate to call them out on their positions and would often suggest that they move to the States if they liked it so much or move back to England if it had been so great. The drinking would continue until it was finally time for the men to eat. Dad wouldn’t drink after he ate, so he often had dinner at eleven-thirty or midnight at these functions, his plate piled high with everything being served.

  When I think about it, these get-togethers with aunts and uncles, cousins and friends from “back home” was the closest any of them got to going “back home.” The men could regain their sense of what it meant to be men—not clerks, salesmen, meat inspectors or assembly-line workers. It was at family functions like these where I first became aware of, well, being aware. I became conscious of the idiosyncrasies of my various uncles, their speech patterns, accents—their humour. My cousin Mikey and I would sit around and mimic my dad and my uncles, and laugh hysterically at our imitations. We even started recording them. We would sneak under the dinner table while the men were eating—remember that they’d all been drinking all evening—and tape them while they were talking. Then we’d go off and listen to the tape and perfect our imitations.

  Mikey (left) and me at the cottage.

  If there wasn’t a get-together on a Friday or Saturday, Dad would be miserable. He missed the camaraderie of his pals, the interaction and just the opportunity to escape the blood and guts of the slaughterhouse floor.

  In the mid-’70s and into the ’80s, instead of the Saturday get-togethers, we would often go to a rented cottage on the Trent River with my cousins—Patty (Uncle Arthur’s daughter) and her husband, Alex (better know as “Bunty”), and their four boys: Gordon, Bruce, Andrew and Mikey. Mikey was born here, in Toronto, shortly after Patty and Bunty arrived and is the youngest of the four brothers. He’s been like a brother to me ever since moving here.

  When Patty and Bunty moved to Canada in 1970, we were still living on Indian Road. My dad and brother went to meet the family at the airport, but through some miscommunication they had already left the airport and were waiting for my dad at our house. Gordon, Bruce and Andrew were playing on the street, riding my brother’s toy tractor. When one of the neighbours asked where they were from, they said they were Indian. “If you’re Indian, who’s your chief?” the neighbours asked.

  My cousin Mikey and I would sit around and mimic my dad and my uncles, and laugh hysterically at our imitations.

  Bunty was crazy strict with the boys as kids and didn’t hesitate to pull out his belt and swat them if they got out of line. It seemed over the top to me, even though my own dad was a disciplinarian too. But I guess you need to crack the whip when you’ve got four boys like that.

  Mikey and I would pal around, go out with our dads and Uncle Arthur on one of those aluminum boats, fishing for bass or whatever else we could catch. Most of the time we’d just end up catching sun-fish, but we had a great time. Once, Uncle Arthur decided to put one of those aluminum folding lawn chairs with the woven seat and seatback in the boat to sit on. Uncle Arthur, although quite short, was a large man, kind of like my brother, but bald. When I was a kid, I used to think that the Laughing Buddha statue at Patty’s house was a statue of Uncle Arthur. Anyway, with the lawn chair in place on the boat, we pulled away from the dock. As soon as Bunty gunned the Johnson outboard, over went the chair, and into the Trent River went Uncle Arthur.

  The cottage meant spending time with our dads when they were at their most relaxed, drinking and having a few laughs. Patty was and still is a fantastic cook, and the food was great. Mom didn’t care for the cottage life too much. She was a city girl and liked it that way. The sooner we’d get back home, the better for her.

  (Back row, from left) Cousin Bruce, my brother, Cousin Andrew, Floyd (not a cousin), me (front row, right) and Cousin Mikey.

  Mom, Dad and me, relaxing at the cottage.

  Much as Dad romanticized his youth hunting and fishing in Burhanpur, I can do the same: from the rented cottage on Trent River to the rented cottage on Blackwater Lake to the cottage that Uncle Arthur bought on Lake Manitouwabing. As kids, we learned how to fish, bait and remove a hook, use a lure and troll. It was all very Canadiana, but with an Indian twist: Patty’s fish curry, vindaloos, stir-fries, fish fillets, Uncle Arthur’s chapatis that he’d make fresh every morning with fried eggs. All good. We
kids would have an entire room to ourselves, with three bunk beds for all of us. We’d stay up late, joking, laughing, farting … and making fun of our parents.

  MY DAD has been—and continues to be—one of the biggest influences on my life. We lost him to cancer on March 15, 2004, a day that is both hard to remember and hard to forget. The only way to really understand me is for you to first get a handle on the force of a man that was my dad.

  Eric Peters was fast with his words and quick with his temper. Although he wasn’t physically imposing, my father had a strong aura, and he was never one to shy away from an argument. He always felt bad about being such a little guy, but what he lacked in size, he made up for with personality. He was a pint-sized Clint Eastwood—the strong, silent type, always ready to pull the trigger. He wasn’t violent, but if he was forced to defend himself, his attacker was in for a surprise. Dad was a fighter by nature and a boxer by training, and if you pushed him hard enough, you’d come to regret it. I have inherited Dad’s short fuse—for better and for worse. Dad worked hard to keep his temper in check, and I often find myself having to do the same. Once I lose it, though, I really lose it.

  If Dad was pissed off, he wouldn’t hesitate to express his displeasure. If he was in the checkout line in a store and things were moving too slowly or someone was trying to butt ahead of him, he’d let fly. When he’d tell us of his altercation, he would describe it this way: “I could see it in the man’s face when I asked him what the hell he thought he was doing. I could see he wasn’t expecting me to speak English. His mouth fell open—’dah’—you know that blank bloody look these people give you when you challenge them? You see, this is what you have to do. You have to stand up to people like that or they’ll walk all over you!”