I wasn’t just wandering around, though. From an early age, I worked for my father. I was doing tasks beyond my age, such as snowplowing. I was just eleven when my father had his shop customize the bucket on an old Case farm tractor; he then trained me to push snow around the six-acre yard, usually in exchange for a twenty-five-cent hot chocolate. Sometimes, there were accidents. Once, for instance, I got soaked in diesel fuel as I was trying to refuel a truck and had to be rushed home for a quick bath. Another time, while I was scraping doors for repainting, I left the paint thinner too close to some blowtorches, which resulted in a mini-fire. So, the risk of injury was great, but my father made us well aware of that, and no serious mishaps occurred.
I was exposed to the colourful verbal exchanges that are common in a truck yard or any industrial workplace. And, as since this was in the 1970s, the language wasn’t politically correct, to say the least. For example, my father employed two black truck drivers who were called “nigger one” and “nigger two.” This is horrible in hindsight. It was also at the truck yard that I heard an anti-gay slur for the first time. It was directed at a driver, who was referred to by the others as a “gear jammer.” This was a metaphor I understood only later in life. And no recall of a trucking environment would be complete without referencing the volume of naked portrayals of women.
* * *
The family tradition of driving to Florida for a March break vacation began the same year that I was born. All six of us would pile into the family car for the 1,200-mile trek to Daytona Beach or, more often, we’d tack on another 250 miles to Miami. For a Christmas present in 1969, my father gave my mother a brand new Mercury Meteor station wagon. But he could not make the annual Florida trip that year, so we set out in March of 1970 without him. It turned out to be an ill-fated trip.
During a freak intense rainstorm we ran into as we headed back home, an out-of-control car spun through the median and rammed straight into us. No one was hurt, but the brand new Mercury sustained heavy damage. So, we had a layover in Macon, Georgia, waiting for my father to come and drive us all back to Toronto. It was during these few days in Georgia that I had my first encounter with segregation. The motel where we were staying in Macon had a diner, and I started playing with the son of a black woman who worked in the kitchen. The senseless commotion that followed was deeply disturbing to me and still remains as a motivation for my commitment to equality.
My childhood wasn’t all spent on family outings or at the truck yard. My friends and I also enjoyed playing in the ravine beside our house and frolicking in the Mimico Creek or in our backyard pool, which was a magnet for the whole neighbourhood. As young kids, we were afforded a tremendous amount of liberty. For example, we would set out on our own by bus to the Royal York subway station and from there to downtown. For a dollar, we could see Metro Croatia soccer games at Varsity Stadium.
And, of course, I went to school. My formal education began at West Deane Public School, just down the street from my home. (It has since been converted to a Catholic school named after Josyf Cardinal Slipyj, a former Ukrainian archbishop.) I was a keen participant in school-wide speaking contests. When I was in Grade 3, I made a speech to the whole school on “Ten Steps to Becoming a Millionaire.” (My entrepreneurial role model for the speech was Eddie Shack, a former Maple Leaf who at that time was a big vendor of Christmas trees.) Experiences like this helped me overcome any aversions to public speaking. To this day, I can be nervous before a game of shinny hockey but not before speaking to an audience of a thousand people.
* * *
My parents divorced when I was about ten years old. One summer day, my mother said my father was coming home from work early and wanted to talk to me. This was most unusual, so I knew something was up. He took me to the rooftop of the Terminal One parking garage at Malton Airport (now Pearson International), where people often used to go to watch incoming or outgoing planes. There he told me that he and my mother were separating. It wasn’t his idea, so there was no bad-mouthing of my mother. (For many months afterward, my father lived on the faint hope that they would get together again.) “Don’t worry,” he said. “Just because your mother and I are not going to be together, we love you just the same.” On the way home, he bought me a chocolate bar.
It was not a big surprise to me that they were splitting. I had seen the signs of it. One night, my father had too much to drink and caused a big fuss. He didn’t hit anyone, but he made a scene and the police were called. And on a family vacation with my two sisters and grandmother in Acapulco, where I shared a room with my parents, they did not sleep in the same bed. This was noteworthy.
After his airport announcement, my father shared my basement bedroom with me for a few months until he got his own modest accommodation nearby. After the reality of his situation had sunk in, he moved again to a luxury apartment that had the feel of a bachelor pad. My parents told me I could choose whom I wanted to stay with. But given that my father was a little light on the nurturing side, there was no real choice. My sisters and I stayed with our mother.
The family bungalow was soon sold and my mother moved in with a new man, D’Arcy Kelley, who was both my scouting leader and president of my minor hockey league. The three of us (my mother, my sister Christine, and I) shared a brand new condo in Etobicoke with D’Arcy and his son, Michael. So, my mother went from a house with a backyard and a pool to a more modest apartment on the other side of Highway 427. And she traded in her flashy Corvette Stingray for a down-market Mercury Bobcat. In other words, she took a hit to her standard of living to get out of a relationship she knew was not right for her. I deeply respect her for that.
The saddest moment of the divorce for me was Halloween in 1975. I was eleven, and Halloween was still a big deal for me. We had not yet moved out of the family bungalow, but I came home from school to find the house was dark. My sisters were out and my mother was in pursuit of her new relationship. I was crestfallen. But Christmas 1975 was a different story. We had just moved into the condo with my stepfather and his son. The new family dynamic proved to be extraordinarily beneficial for the children, insofar as one measures happiness on Christmas Day by material possessions. The parents went on a spending spree in an attempt to atone for the obvious disruption they caused. To this day, I remember getting from my father a pair of customized disco platform shoes that made a loud click as I walked down the hallway at school. This was the fashion highlight of my entire life. Never since have I been more in style, and that year I made my second speech to the entire school.
At the risk of underestimating the trauma of divorce for children, I have to say that I feel that in my case there were positive outcomes from my parents’ split, and not just at Christmas. Both of my parents ended up with partners that were much better suited to them. D’Arcy was a good match for my mother. He shared her thirst for knowledge and sparked her interest in nature. They went canoeing in Algonquin Park, drove a fifth-wheel trailer all over North America, and raised honey bees at their beloved farm (named Darmarg, after the two of them) atop the Niagara Escarpment.
The divorce also forced my father to take on more of a home-making role, a task that had previously been delegated entirely to my mother. For the first few years after the divorce, my father had a bachelor pad with enough space to accommodate me and my sister Christine on weekends, which the divorce settlement stipulated we would spend with him. So, he had to make sure we brushed our teeth and washed our hands and all the other mundane things parents struggle to get their kids to do.
Eventually, my father was remarried to Marilyn, an Orillia farm girl who went to the same high school as Gordon Lightfoot and whose parents were very active in the Progressive Conservative Party. She brought stability to my father’s life — although there was still a sense of adventure. They bought a cabin cruiser and toured around Lake Ontario together. My father has long since passed, but I still see my stepmother, or “Grandma Marilyn” to my kids. Each year, just after Christmas, we drive her down
to her winter escape in south Florida. She has been a big influence on me and my own children. Originally, I had her pegged as a conservative person, because her parents were. But she turned out to be a lot more progressive in her views than I had imagined and we enjoy an unpredictably close connection.
* * *
Then there is my brother, Art, eight years older than me and with a rebellious streak. As a teenager, he wore his hair long and sold drugs. His car reeked of hash. He was in constant conflict with my father
The rest of the family had serious problems with Art, too. Once, when I was a little kid, he pushed me into wet cement at a construction site. Later, when my sexual identity began to emerge, Art physically assaulted me. It was really hard for me to deal with this attack. Difficult as it was, though, I later learned my hurt was minor compared to what my sisters suffered. My mother regretted until the day she died that Art’s assaults had caused so much emotional harm to my sisters.
When my father died in 1992, his will left my brother less than my sisters and me. This reflected the fact that my father had already bailed Art out of so many financial jams. But Art was so offended that he cut us all off, and we have had no relationship with him since. At first I was concerned. But after speaking with my sisters, I realized we were all relieved.
* * *
In middle school, we all had to take a standardized aptitude test to aid in our streaming. The results told me that I should be a truck mechanic. It was as if the test read my mind and discovered my experiences in my father’s truck yard. At that point in my life, a career as a mechanic was not my personal ambition, but changing a car tire seemed like a good skill to have. I ended up attending Burnhamthorpe Collegiate in Etobicoke, a school with a strong vocational program that included auto mechanics, electronics, welding, plumbing, and drafting courses. I enjoyed all of that but struggled with some of the academic courses, especially math and the sciences. In my first term at Burnhamthorpe, I got failing grades in math, even though I am actually good with numbers and can juggle them with ease in my head — a skill that came in handy later in my life. (When I was minister of health, I frequently demonstrated a remarkable recall for numbers, sometimes to the chagrin of deceptive bureaucrats.) But advanced mathematics stumped me, and that narrowed the options for me farther down the academic stream.
While I was an academically unfocused student in high school, I was not a shy one. I enjoyed lively debates with my teachers and mixing with my fellow students, although the outcomes were not always positive. Once in Grade 9, I tried to sit at a table in the school cafeteria and was told to get the hell away by a jock. He said the table was reserved for football players. Decades later, when I was health minister, the same guy came to my office to lobby me for something. I reminded him of that incident in the cafeteria; unsurprisingly, he did not recall it as vividly as I did.
Precociously, I ran for student council president in Grade 10. My campaign consisted of going from classroom to classroom handing out candy. There were no real issues, but my team took the campaign very seriously, and I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to put my recently discovered political skills to work. I beat the incumbent (a girl who had the same birthday as me) with 83 percent of the vote.
Extracurriculars were not a big part of my high-school days because I tended to have after-school work. I did try out for the football team in Grade 11. By then, I was about 220 pounds, or lineman size. I lasted one practice. I fared better in the dramatic arts. Burnhamthorpe had an eccentric but inspiring drama teacher who organized an annual event called the “feast of fools,” a potpourri of student-written plays and per-formances staged at venues throughout the school over several nights. One year before the fall of the Berlin Wall, I played the role of Leonid Brezhnev, the corpulent Soviet leader, in a play based on the Cold War and the John Lennon song “Imagine.” I remember enjoying myself on stage. It was an experience that I carried over to politics, where performance is part of the job of convincing people.
Mostly, however, I used my after-school hours not for extracurricular activities but for making money in various jobs. This began in middle school, when I had a paper route. With the help of my mother, I delivered the Toronto Star daily to 150 households in Etobicoke. (If I wasn’t delivering papers with my mother, we were going to Blue Jays games together. She was a big fan. We would buy grandstand seats for $2 apiece. In the team’s first year of existence, we saw forty-two games, including the opener!)
My after-school work continued during my high-school years, mainly because I needed the money to pay for my car, a used 1973 Datsun that I had bought in the spring of 1980, at age sixteen. It cost $1,650, and the money was fronted by my father. The car paid for itself, in a way, as I used it to do deliveries for Clem and Joan Neiman, who had a law practice in Brampton. (Joan was a senator, appointed by Pierre Trudeau, and she and Clem ran the first election campaign I ever worked on.) They hired me to deliver documents to registry offices and clients downtown. (I used my position as school president to have secretaries field my calls from the law office until I got a pager.) I earned much more doing that than in my other job as a truck-washer at my father’s yard.
* * *
My social life in high school was less adventurous. That is, my sexual awakening was delayed. The awareness was there, but the manifestations were slow to come. Contributing to this were my insecurity about my weight and my inklings about my sexual orientation.
I think my love of sugar and penchant for binge-eating began in the womb. There my system was shocked because my mother was stressed out by the assassination of John Kennedy. I was always a chubby kid, which meant I had to endure lots of teasing and bullying. Plus there is a whole basket of stuff that comes with being named George and being pudgy. I must have had the nursery rhyme repeated to me several thousand times: “Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie / Kissed the girls and made them cry.” Why are the girls running away? What did I do? Is this why I am gay? Probably not, but it’s definitely been built into the mix of who I am and it influenced my instinct for hectoring.
In my father’s shop, the mechanics called me the Pillsbury Doughboy. I have also often been compared to “Bib” the Michelin man, which is ironic because I actually sold Michelin tires for a year or so. At one point, my high-school gym teacher thoughtfully intervened and referred me to a program at Sick Kids Hospital, where I was monitored and counselled on better eating habits and the like. Mostly what I remember is eating candy on the way there and back. Even today, while my eating habits have improved, I think like a fat guy. That is, I think I am fatter than I really am. To some, I might appear out of shape, but I can still walk nine miles. No matter how fat I have been, I have always been physically active — playing hockey and tennis, running, and cycling. This is not to say that one completely offsets the other. But were it not for my physical activity, the strong probability is that I would have type 2 diabetes by now. That’s why I promote the idea that walking is freedom.
So, weight was an issue, and as I said, my sexual orientation was also one. I went on a few dates with girls, including school proms, but there was never any romantic connection. Nor was there a lightbulb moment when I realized I was gay, but there were lots of hints and signals all through my adolescence. Through high school and into my early twenties, I was topsy-turvy. I was transitioning but not on a consistently clear path. In high school, I was not sexually active, with either boys or girls. In my final year, I heard about AIDS for the first time. I have always considered myself fortunate that I only later became sexually active, doing so then with a full awareness of the risk involved.
In my final year of high school, my mother discovered some gay magazines in my room. She and D’Arcy sat me down for a talk. I don’t remember it as a difficult conversation, although I am sure it was. I assured her I was just reading the magazines, not acting on my feelings. I’ll never forget my mother’s response: “We love you no matter what, and all we want for you is to be happy and healthy.” These
are words every LGBTQ questioning kid ought to hear. Subsequently, I actively dated a few women. It was a confusing time for both me and my mother.
I never had the same sort of conversation with my father when I was a teenager. But about a decade later, when I was twenty-six or so, I had something close to it on a brief motor trip to Florida to visit his in-laws. He raised the issue of marriage (to a woman), and I made it clear to him that was not in the cards for me. The penny dropped for my father; he never raised the issue again. (This is a quite common story in the gay community: the conversations with mothers are very different from the ones with fathers.) But the conversation did not damage our relationship.
* * *
I got my Grade 12 diploma at Burnhamthorpe Collegiate despite being called a “dropout,” but I obtained just four of the six credits I needed for Grade 13. This put a crimp in my dreams of going to university and then law school. I set out to complete my high-school education through correspond-ence courses, but I never did finish them. Instead, I did what Smithermans do and joined the work force.
My father didn’t think it would be a good idea for me to work for him. Although I was a bit pissed off, I could see the picture clearly enough. So, he arranged a deal with one of his primary competitors, which, like my father’s business, did a lot of hauling for Algoma Steel in Sault Ste. Marie. I began as a rating clerk at Trans Provincial Freight Carrier’s terminal in Mississauga. Within a few months of my starting, the terminal manager in Sault Ste. Marie died and I was sent to replace him, at the ripe age of twenty. Despite my lack of experience and my youth, my pedigree, presence, and profanity must have been enough, because I only remember being well received in the role.
Unconventional Candour Page 2