by Hugh Hood
It happened unluckily that the Phelan boys were the sons of a dentist in our parish whom my father particularly despised for his jumped-up ways. He raised an expressive eyebrow at my mother, as one who regrets an ill-considered action.
“Bog-Irish!” he exclaimed. It was a favourite phrase for he was a man of many prejudices, none of them violent but all irritating to him. He also disliked French-Canadians, which made things difficult with his in-laws, who all had names like Esdras, Telesphore, Onesime, Eugenie, and the like. My mother smiled at him shushingly.
“They’re all in the Band,” she said, and it was the first time I ever heard about the Band, the famous Oakdale Boys Band, an organization whose structure was to preoccupy me for a dozen years. The Brothers conducted parish schools in Toronto but also, and pre-eminently, a private high school, Oakdale, “in a park in the center of the city” as their advertisements had it. It was an institution that one paid to attend which in those Depression years meant that it was exclusive, if only in the sense that you had to be employed to send your sons there. The chief ornament of Oakdale was its famous hundred-piece drum and bugle Band which took part in all the major Toronto parades, the Garrison Parade in June, the Armistice Day Parade, the Argonauts’ half-time shows, and ever so many more. The Band travelled all over the province making paid appearances at religious and civil functions. I had never heard of it before and at six years had no suspicion that such marvellous institutions even existed.
“Perhaps you’ll go to Oakdale and be in the band,” said my mother, off the end of her tongue, making my father glance at her in some perturbation. He didn’t say it in front of me but he was likely thinking “yes, and perhaps you won’t.”
But my fate was sealed, and the sealing was confirmed on Dominion Day weekend when, to my intense gratification, the dozen or more boys at camp who were buglers, and another dozen who were drummers, suddenly blossomed forth early in the morning in gorgeous uniforms, a dress of an absolutely inconceivable splendor. They wore navy blue officers’ caps with gold metal cap-badges and white naval cap covers, white gloves, navy blue high-necked tunics with brass buttons, and red, white, and green trimmings at the wrist, and gold-trimmed collars, a golden rope-lanyard across the chest and around the left shoulder, navy blue trousers with a rich gold stripe at the seam and, most bewitching of all, long navy blue capes fastened around the neck and depending in soft folds below the waist.
These capes were lined with golden silk, and the most distinctive mark of the Band uniform was the bright glitter of the silk. It was regimental to make three precise folds in the cape, so that two broad bands of gold hung from the shoulders to the waist. I had never been so captivated in my life and at this revelation would willingly have exchanged my home, my cozy family life, my brother and sister, for the chance to live with these marvellous boys and dress like that. We soon heard that the rest of the Band would appear in the early afternoon for the patriotic ceremonies.
A few of the biggest boys wore medals.
At one-thirty three fat old busses appeared at the gates with seventy other bandsmen, the two bandmasters, Mr. James and Mr. Thompson, the bass drums and tenor drums, and wonder of wonders the mascot, a boy smaller than myself though older, named Jimmy Phillips, who marched in front of the bandmasters and swung a small baton. I have never since seen anything to compare with it for glitter.
Jimmy Phillips was the son of a man who owned a house on the lowest corner of the Oakdale property in Toronto. He had in some way been a benefactor of the school and still lived in the house on the grounds with his family, and his boy was the Band mascot until he outgrew the job. I don’t know just what Mr. Phillips’ connection with the Brothers was, but it was certainly a matter of money and/or property. And because of it, Jimmy Phillips marched in front of the Band and carried a silver baton … it was my first faint intimation of the uses of influence and wealth.
When he grew out of the job, he was succeeded by Fred Crawley, the son of a wealthy Catholic stockbroker whose benefactions to the school must have been indeed munificent because Fred wore a special white and gold uniform (which the Phillips’ boy hadn’t) and held the post of mascot long after he had ceased to be as wonderfully small (isn’t he darling!) as a mascot should be. At last he was succeeded by the Bandmaster’s son, little Billy Thompson, who lasted out my tenure with the Band. This time, the Brothers had to pay for the white and gold mascot’s uniform.
That first wonderful day I saw the Band, wheeling and counter-marching in intricate patterns in front of the Administration Building, I noticed many things. For example, the two Bandmasters were of slightly unequal rank. Mr. James was Drum-Major, and Mr. Thompson was merely Sergeant-Major, and the former’s gold was shinier and less brassy. There didn’t seem to be any animosity or competition between them.
I noticed as well that there were some strutting little boys, scarcely bigger than myself, marching in the cymbal section. I call it the cymbal section, but the line of eight included three awfully small boys who played triangles. As far as I could tell, playing the triangle demanded no musical skill beyond the ability to keep time with a striker, loud enough to be heard in the uproar. I decided right then and there that as soon as I should be sent to Oakdale I would try out for the triangle.
It’s singular how sharply the child’s mind will calculate. I could foretell at six a course of action I would follow exactly over four years later; and in the interval I forgot not one detail of my plan.
At ten years, having completed the sixth grade, I was finally allowed to quit parochial school and begin at Oakdale. This was a considerable step for my parents to take, because it implied seven years of fees for me, and the like for my brother later on. In 1938 Toronto was by no means fully recovered from the Depression. The parish schools and the public high schools were free whereas my father had to pay for me to go to Oakdale. The fee wasn’t outrageous but it was something, and as my father’s affairs were at this time not uninvolved, it was a damned decent thing for him to do. To tell the truth, he couldn’t afford it, then or long after, but he tried his best to manage the thing gracefully.
So I went, and on one of the first of a series of tender sleepy fall days, hardly fall at all, the soft gold end of September, a meeting for Band recruits was announced for after school in the Cafeteria. I was there with bells on, already clutching my triangle in rapt anticipation. The senior NCO in regular school attendance, a full-grown man of nineteen, spoke briefly. That was Sergeant-Drummer Johnny Delancey, killed two years afterwards in a burning Wellington bomber, over the railway yards at Hamburg. He spoke of the Band’s traditions and its reputation.
“You won’t see any of us with ten medals on our tunics,” he said, with a certain heat. He had a posthumous DFC later on, the only medal he ever won. He was making a dig at the Saint Ursula’s Boys Band, also conducted by the Brothers at a parish school way downtown in a slum district. Saint Ursula’s school went through the tenth grade, so they were able to maintain a band almost as big as ours, and there was a sharp rivalry between us. Saint Ursula’s went each year to the Band Competition at Waterloo, Ontario; and every year they won their class competition, so that everyone in their outfit had a medal for every year he’d been in the competition.
The Oakdale Band disdained the competition as a rather plebeian thing. Only those very senior NCOs who had been awarded an Efficiency Medal at the annual inspection of the Band and Cadet Corps wore anything on their chests. We Oakdale bandsmen gave out that we were above competition, and we regarded the Saint Ursula’s medals as an unseemly display, or at least we were tacitly encouraged so to regard them. A medal in our Band meant something. Johnny Delancey never won one.
“You’ll find me conducting practices after school,” said Johnny Delancey, “but ‘Tommy’ Thompson runs the Band, and don’t ever forget it. He’s the best Drum-Major in Canada, he used to play with a British Army Band, and everybody at the Armouries —
even the Queen’s Own and the Army Service Corps — wants him. But he’s staying right here and we want you to appreciate him.”
I pondered this. There had been two Bandmasters up at camp. Where was the other one?
“Now we’ll take your names and the instruments you mean to learn. We need some tall fellows for the Tenor-Drums. You there, you’re big enough.” He pointed at a gangling boy near me, named George Rait.
“I was going to try out for the bugles.”
“Tenor-drums,” said Johnny Delancey peremptorily, determining forever the shape of George Rait’s Band career. “Corporal McGarry will take that side of the room and I’ll take this.” They began to move along the lines of recruits. I was way down at the end, and I grew more and more overawed as big Ted McGarry came nearer. A Corporal! Finally he looked down at me and smiled.
“What would you like to be, sonny, mascot?”
“No,” I said indignantly. After all, I was ten, and going into Junior Fourth (Grade Seven as it is now) and I couldn’t quite allow “sonny.”
“I want to try out for the triangles,” I said, abashed but outspoken, the way I’ve always been.
Ted McGarry was very decent. “Triangles it is!” he said, writing down my name. “One of the most important sections in the Band.” He passed on to the end of the line. Afterwards they announced the hours of the recruit practices, telling us that we would have to learn our instruments, how to march, the meaning of the various commands, and how to care for a uniform, before we were accepted. Those who didn’t co-operate with their instructors, and those who couldn’t maintain a decent standard of drill, would be rejected and would have to join the Cadet Corps. Then they let us go and I ran all the way home to tell my mother.
Toronto is not a beautifully-built city by and large, though you can find good-looking buildings if you know where to look. But the natural situation of the city is attractive, the long gentle slope of the hill rising off the lake. And the light can be superb, especially in the spring and fall, a clear but oddly smoky light softening and enriching the raw green of spring and especially grateful to the mellow browns and yellows of early fall. All through late September and early October of that year the weather held on beautifully, the air soft and clear, and the lovely Toronto light — something nobody in the city ever talks about, as though they hadn’t noticed it or took it for granted or were afraid to praise lest it should disappear — the faintly smoky hazy yellow light ran on and on as we little kids drilled and practised our rhythmic noises on the campus, under the direction of the junior NCOs.
Just before Armistice Day we were told whether or not we would be accepted, so that the successful candidates might march in the big memorial parade to the Cenotaph. One Friday afternoon we were admitted to the Bandroom, a cubby-hole on the ground floor of the Cafeteria, where the sixty-four bugles could be racked up line on line in a glass case, to draw our uniform issue. Brother Willibald was there, the teacher in charge of Band activities, and he presided as chief outfitter as one by one we were herded in and matched to tunics and trousers and, best of all, our capes. None of the uniforms was quite new and the gold on some of the capes was a little greenish when you saw it close to; but if anybody noticed it, nobody said anything, we were all too excited.
They had a little trouble fitting me, I was small for my age and for a moment I was terrified that I might be turned down. But kind Brother Willibald, seeing my desperation, rummaged at the very back of the closet and came out with an old discarded uniform of Jimmy Phillips, the ex-mascot.
“Have your mother adjust the cuffs,” he advised, “and be sure you have the whole uniform cleaned and pressed before Armistice Day.” I nodded mutely, frozen with excitement. “Are you sure you know how to clean your buttons?” I nodded again, afraid that at the last minute he might change his mind and not give me the uniform. But then he smiled and handed it to me, and told me to pick a triangle and striker off the rack. I did as he said and left the Band-room as quickly as I could for fear somebody might take it into his head to shout after me, “You’re too small!” I was always hearing that.
But no one did, and in common with the other recruits I appeared at Band Practice the following Wednesday night for our first formal practice with the Band. When the weather was clement we practised outdoors on the lower campus, and the sound of the music could be heard rolling across the city a good three miles and more. After I left the Band years later, when I was living down on Sussex Avenue, over two miles from the school, I used to hear the music of the evening practices as clearly as if it were coming from the next room. God only knows what the apartment dwellers next to the parade ground thought of these practices, for the music was indeed cacophonous; they made constant efforts to have them stopped, or at least muted in some degree, but nothing ever came of it.
As it was now early November and the yellow light had gone blandly grey, the late fall rains setting in, we practised that night upstairs in the Cafeteria, the tables and chairs shoved to the wall, and you can imagine the impression made upon the nerves of the recruits by the noise of thirty-two snare drums, eight tenor drums, two bass drums, sixty-four bugles, and eight cymbals and triangles. It was Homeric in scope, at least as far as volume was concerned; musically it was constricted. We were then using the conventional British Army brass bugle on which an ordinary bugler could produce five notes, or if he were better than average, six. To these bugles could be fitted a “crook” which changed the key of the instrument by lengthening the air column. Another four to six notes could be produced with the crook, in the key of the dominant, and these ten to twelve notes constituted the whole musical range of the Band, the drums and percussion being tuned to no key. And yet we had a repertoire at that time of over sixty marches from the simplest, “Cry Baby,” to a pretty jazzy number called “Susan Jane,” which Mr. Thompson had just put into the book, and which we supposed him to have composed himself. As a matter of fact he hadn’t for he got his new material out of British Army manuals, or by attending other band practices at the Armouries, but we didn’t know this and we regarded him as an accomplished musician and composer. He used to teach us new marches by humming them to us, first the open and then the crook parts:
Dee-dickety-dee, dee-dee, dee-dee,
Dee-dickety-dickety-dee, dee-dee.
If there were any special effects for the drums he would illustrate them until the NCOs caught on; then they taught them to the other drummers in the afternoon. Our repertoire seemed almost illimitable to us, but to the un-instructed listener it must have seemed as though we were always playing the same tune, just as Corelli, Torelli, Boyce, Vivaldi, and Handel sound alike to the ignorant.
“Tommy” Thompson — the very senior NCOs called him “Tommy” but to the rest of us he was always “Mr. Thompson” — was a remarkable man in his way, though not a musician. He had formerly been second-in-command with the rank of Sergeant-Major, and people sometimes forgot and referred to him as “Sergeant-Major Thompson.” The Brothers sometimes did this, whether accidentally or to keep him in his place I’m not certain. But his former superior, Drum-Major James, had quarreled with the Brothers of “Oakdale” in some obscure way, and had left the Oakdale Band and gone over to Saint Ursula’s where he now fed the flames of his resentment by attempting to bring the Saint Ursula’s Band to the same pitch of reputation and excellence as that of his former command. When I found out about this it explained much of the attitude towards Saint Ursula’s of the older boys and men (there were some grown men) in our outfit. It was a romantic feud and conflict of loyalties which impressed me powerfully.
Mr. Thompson was at this time securely in the saddle at Oakdale. In fact he was one of the most universally liked and respected men I’ve ever known. I guess he was then about thirty-eight, he must have been the same age as the century or thereabouts, because he had been a bandsman with the rank of Boy at the outbreak of the first war. He had served right through i
t, three years as a drummer and the last year-and-a-half as an infantryman. He was very, very short, not more than five feet one or two, but he didn’t seem small because he had a solid square head and a big chest and a perfect, very striking, military carriage, shoulders well back, chest up and out. One never thought of him as small; I considered him enormous during my first years in the Band. He had a firm tanned red impassive face, and neatly clipped brown hair beginning to grizzle. Looking back, I would guess that he was not a highly intelligent man but he was purposeful and disciplined and so got by, which is all anybody can hope for.
In his other, less romantic, daytime life he was a salesman for Canada Packers, a moderate to good one but not the best or most productive. Away from the Band he had a pleasing natural diffidence that would have held down his sales. He was economical; the year I joined the Band he bought a new car, a compact Willys sedan, and he maintained this car superbly and was still driving it a decade later. Once a year without fee the Band put on a demonstration at the main Canada Packers warehouse out past St. Clair and Keele Street, in a sort of plaza bounded by loading platforms and railway sidings and dominated by a monumental stench. All the employees and, I suppose, some of the managers, maybe even J.S. McLean himself, used to watch leaning out of windows. It must have proved annually to his superiors that there were places where Mr. Thompson too was admired and obeyed without question. His uniform was always particularly regimental on these occasions.
He was buying a home in one of those Toronto districts where lower middle-class English people used to congregate. It might have been in lower Parkdale, or a few blocks west of Dufferin north of Bloor. But in fact, as I remember, his house was on Belsize Drive or one of the shorter streets parallel to it between Mount Pleasant and Yonge. Could it have been Davisville? No. Too much traffic, and he would have lived on a quiet street and a modest one. It was one of those five-room brick houses with a veranda and a wooden railing painted white, with Gothic cutouts in it, the veranda floor painted a sturdy battleship grey. There were shrubs and geraniums in front of the veranda and a big maple tree and a neat cement walk. We used to ride past his house on our bikes on Saturdays; it made us oddly confident to know that he lived there.