When Bernie told me the news, we both had the same thought. Sure enough, a few days later Bernie phoned me from Toronto to tell me our mom had forged his signature on a few checks, draining him of three thousand dollars. That was still pretty good money in those days, enough to buy a new car.
In these situations Bernie and Gail were a whole lot nicer than I was. I told Bernie to put her on the phone. When she got on the line I asked her how could she rob her own son.
She started stammering something about almost losing her condo and a few outfits she had to buy Gail to start her modeling career. And, she added, she deserved something in return for raising three kids single-handedly.
I couldn’t believe it. “You’ve stolen from Bernie,” I told her, “someone who’s been loyal to you. You no longer have three children, understand me? You have two.”
She wouldn’t give up so easily, countering that Bernie had stayed with her rent-free and was eating free too. I had to laugh. I concluded she just didn’t understand what it meant to be a mother. That was the end of our conversation and what remained of our relationship. Characteristically, Bernie never displayed any anger. He accepted our mother for who she was. I couldn’t claim to be that noble.
As soon as Bernie left Moncton Gail showed up, which meant the world to me. Despite my warm welcome to Moncton, attractive women still intimidated me. As soon as Gail made some friends, she introduced me to them, helped me pick out clothes for dates, and built up my confidence, which I desperately needed. She was a godsend.
Moncton had a sizeable modeling agency, so Gail decided to audition for them. I took her on a shopping spree and kept telling her how great she looked. She had poise and style but little self-esteem. As the only girl in our family, she felt devalued. She didn’t play sports—almost no girls did back then—and our parents didn’t talk to her about college or careers, so she thought her only choice was to take advantage of her looks.
When I picked Gail up from her audition she walked out of the agency with the widest smile I’d ever seen and threw her arms around me.
“I’ve got a fashion show in just three days!”
“Gail, I’m so proud.”
We went out for a celebratory drink. She wasn’t too far into her glass of wine, though, when her expression changed. She told me that five years earlier, after they’d moved from Montreal to Ajax, our mom began to frequent a small bar, where she met a series of boyfriends. Because our parents had essentially separated years ago, this didn’t come as a shock.
“Mom kept telling me: ‘Stay away from black men. They’re good for nothing. Just take the prime example—your father.’”
Our mother eventually fell for a butcher who was in the throes of a bitter divorce. Driving to work one day he noticed his soon-to-be ex-wife waiting at a bus stop. He reached into his glove compartment, pulled out one of his butcher knives, and jumped out of his car and attacked her. By the time bystanders pulled him off, she lay dead on the sidewalk.
A court convicted him of first-degree murder and sentenced him to twenty years in the federal penitentiary in Kingston, Ontario. That’s pretty severe for a country that doesn’t have the death penalty.
You’d think most women watching this tragedy unfold would count their blessings that it wasn’t them and let the man rot in prison. But not our mother. She made the four-hour round-trip to Kingston a few times, dragging Gail along each time. In the prison visitors’ room Gail watched Mom apply her lipstick, then trot off to see her butcher.
Even I was shocked by this. I asked Gail if she was okay.
“I’m okay. I promise,” Gail assured me. “I haven’t told anyone else. I needed to get it off my mind.”
“Stay here with me,” I urged her. “Get your career started. We’ve made it this far, but we’ve got to stick together.”
That night, after Gail went to sleep, I called my mother at about 2 A.M., when she had just come home. My voice was eerily calm.
“Gail told me about those trips to Kingston.”
My mother was silent. Barely above a whisper I said the cruelest words I could think of. “Don’t call her, or I’ll be back to ruin your life.” Anger management was still not a strength of mine.
When I watched Gail’s debut in a fashion show three nights later I lit up like a proud father. Her modeling career took off in Moncton, but she was also burning up my long-distance bill calling her boyfriend back in Toronto, a nice guy named Paul. During a break in her modeling schedule she went back to see him—a good sign, I thought.
Meanwhile I was trying to work my way up the minor leagues of broadcasting. Being a sportscaster in Moncton, New Brunswick, didn’t exactly put me on the Toronto Maple Leafs beat, but we did cover Toronto’s top minor league affiliate, the Moncton Hawks. The biggest event I covered that year was a tournament called the Silver Broom, also known as the World Curling Championships. Never heard of it? Neither had I.
The Maritime Provinces, consisting of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and New Brunswick, were also home to a semiprofessional hockey league composed of guys who’d played for Canadian Junior teams, American and Canadian colleges, and even a few former NHLers who had no illusions they were heading back to the NHL but weren’t quite ready to give up the game. The pay matched the quality of play at $75 a game. But they played three games a week, which came to about a thousand dollars a month—pretty close to the $16,000 salary I was making that year from my “day job.” I decided I could use the extra cash, so I tried out for the Moncton Beavers, and I made it. When I discovered that each team was allowed to carry a couple of non-Canadians and paid them $300 a game, I called my old Western Michigan teammates, Bob Gardner and Steve Smith, and told them to “Get your asses out to New Brunswick. You’ll make some money, and we’ll have some fun.”
That was all they needed to hear. They showed up two days later. I took them to the Cosmo, the best club in town, and introduced them to Linda Boyle, a reporter from our TV station who was having drinks with her sister, Diane. Smitty hadn’t even sat down before he asked Diane, “Do you wanna dance?” She did, and they started dating.
Smitty, Gardner, and I moved into a house that cost $250 a month, split among the three of us. Suddenly my $16,000 salary, plus a few bucks playing for the Beavers, made me wealthier than I’d ever been and led to the most hedonistic phase of my life. We’d play a hockey game on Saturday night, head to the Cosmo, then bring back everyone in the club to our place—maybe 150 people, 100 of them women. The same man who only months earlier had clung to the wall of the Cosmo like a scared cat was now running the Playboy Mansion East—and loving it.
Sleeping around didn’t make me a great person, of course. It didn’t resolve my issues with sex either. In fact, it seemed to reinforce what I’d learned at a young age, which was not a healthy introduction to sex. But my year in Moncton was one of the happiest of my life. It started with long visits from my brother and sister and kept rolling with TV, hockey, and women.
But like all parties, this one had to end. The Beavers traded us in a three-man swap to a team in Chatham, New Brunswick, three hours to the north. It wasn’t hard for me to conclude that my broadcasting prospects were a better bet than my dying hockey career. I stayed in Moncton while Gardner and Smitty went to Chatham. When that team went bankrupt, Gardner went to play in Belgium and Smitty came back to Moncton with Diane. Two years later they were married, and have been ever since.
Gail returned to stay with me that fall, but as Christmas approached, she asked me if it would be all right for her to return to her boyfriend, Paul.
“You have a real shot at happiness with Paul,” I said. “Go back and make it work.”
She worried about me constantly. She saw through my womanizing, realizing that I was still a lonely guy who couldn’t forge a real relationship. Before she left, we went for a walk on the beach. She looked at me with pity.
“Do you ever think about getting married again?” she asked me. “Maybe start a family?”
“I’m not sure about another marriage,” I said, “but I do know one thing: I’m never having kids. I’m scared I’ll be a terrible father.”
My eyes welled up, and she reached for my hand.
“Well, I want to have lots of kids. Maybe five or six. That way I’ll always have someone to love me—other than you and Bernie.”
We decided to call him. Bernie was playing for Cincinnati in the Central League, which was just one step from the NHL. He had arrived as an unknown and became the league’s leading scorer by December. We reached him right before practice and caught up. We were family.
Bernie’s team, the Cincinnati Stingers, folded that week, so their players scattered. But Quebec didn’t want to lose him, so they reassigned him to the Syracuse Firebirds, in the American Hockey League, where he debuted on December 22, 1979.
I figured Bernie’s game would be over around ten-thirty, so I waited until just before midnight to call. Bernie told me he notched two goals and one assist—a really big night. I screamed so loudly I must have scared him. Bernie was living our dream, and it honestly felt better than if it had been me.
Two days later, on Christmas Eve, 1979, I wasn’t too eager to return to my mom’s place in Toronto, Gail was with Paul, my brother was in Syracuse, and Gardner and Smitty were visiting their families in Ontario. I had successfully kept at arm’s length the women I’d dated in Moncton, so no holiday invitations were coming from them.
I woke up on Christmas morning in our empty bachelor bungalow. A small storm drifted over Moncton, dropping a half-foot of snow. The streets were empty. I have lots of good memories of Moncton and lots more of Christmas, but none of that Christmas in Moncton.
My only companion was a case of beer. I tried to drink my way out of my misery, but because alcohol is a depressive, it just makes everything worse. Now deeply depressed, once again I considered killing myself, but circumstances were working against the idea. I had no drugs, no guns, and not even a garage to gas myself. So I just kept drinking. By noon I had knocked off a couple of six-packs and fell into a deep sleep.
Around four o’ clock the phone woke me up. It was Gail. She was with Paul’s family, and she was in a great mood. I told her I had a house full of friends from work and the modeling agency. I was having a ball, I said, and asked her to wish everyone well for me.
Then I went back to my chair and crawled inside another beer bottle. I drank one after another while staring at the TV—and the TV wasn’t even on. I’d have to mark 1979 as the most depressing Christmas of my life.
Later that winter, in early 1980, I started a platonic relationship with Anne, a great looking woman with short brown hair and a sexy French Canadian accent. As winter faded into spring I started to fall for her.
One night, when Anne and I were sitting on my couch watching a TV show about an abusive father, I took one of the biggest chances of my life. I whispered, “I know just how that kid feels.”
Anne turned to me. “What did you say?”
Hesitantly, I repeated my statement.
“What do you mean?” she asked, shifting her body to face me.
I started telling her my story—some of it, anyway. I had been in denial for years. Whenever people asked me about my father, even in my twenties, I continued to make up a character that didn’t exist—a great teacher, a successful businessman, and a role model. Even my best friends in high school thought my dad was a hardworking family man. I’d almost come to believe that fictitious creation was a real person.
But not that night. For the first time I came clean about my father—and about me too. The real me, without any lies. It also marked the first time I’d openly admitted to myself what had happened to me. It was one of the most cathartic nights of my life. That moment also opened the possibility that maybe, just maybe, I was okay, and hiding from the truth all those years hadn’t been necessary.
I was lucky that Anne was the first person I told. She couldn’t have been more caring and concerned, understanding and sympathetic. If she hadn’t been, I’m not sure I would have ever tried trusting anyone with my story again.
I hadn’t given much thought to the promises made to me a year earlier by citytv’s sports director, Dave Reynolds. But in early May, with one year in Moncton under my belt, he called to say they liked my work and wanted me to join them in Toronto, starting July 1. This was great news, but it also meant my days in Moncton were numbered.
I took Anne out to a restaurant and told her. She was quiet, then finally said, “You don’t know how much I’m going to miss you.”
“Aw, we’ve got a couple months left,” I said, trying to play it cool, “and you guys can always come visit me.”
“No, John. I really care for you.”
I didn’t have the guts to admit I had feelings for her too. I had already risked enough by telling her about my childhood. I reached across the table, squeezed her hand, then leaned over and kissed her—our first. Walking back to her apartment, we talked like giddy kids.
“How long have you felt this way?” I asked.
“At least a few weeks,” Anne said.
“Same here.”
“Guess we wasted a month,” she said. “And now we only have two more left.”
That night we made love, but there didn’t seem to be much of a future for us. Anne came from a large French Canadian family that had lived in Moncton for years, and I didn’t think she would ever leave. I’d already had a long-distance relationship, and I wasn’t eager to try it again.
The night before my going-away party Anne and I had a final dinner together. We sat in a dark restaurant and held hands across the table. Anne looked troubled.
Finally, she whispered, “I love you.”
“I—I—think I love you too,” I stuttered.
She started to cry. I wanted to call Toronto and tell them, “Sorry, but I’m not coming.” Instead, I said, “Come with me.”
“And do what in Toronto?” she asked.
“You’re ready to model in a big city. All the top agencies are there.”
But Anne didn’t feel her English was good enough, she felt at home in Moncton, and she wasn’t going to leave. When she took me to the airport we said we’d see each other soon and hugged tightly, but we both knew it was over.
CHAPTER 17
Bright Lights, Big City
AFTER JUST FOUR YEARS IN THE BUSINESS, AT THE RIPE age of twenty-five, it looked like I had achieved my dream job in Toronto. But it came with a few catches.
First, despite all the history between us, I had to stay at my mother’s condo until I found an apartment. My welcome-home gift was an eviction notice my mother waved at me. She was behind on her rent.
“How could that be?” I asked.
“Gail has some sort of blood disorder,” she said.
What?!? I ran to Gail’s room in a panic. Both Gail and my mother were vague, suggesting she might be suffering from leukemia. Immediately I applied for a loan, with my new job as collateral. I figured I’d pay off my mother’s debt, and the rest could help Gail. My loan was approved. To speed up the process I made the check out to my mother.
When I got home I called Bernie to find out what he knew of Gail’s condition. He had just found out himself and planned to head home as soon as his hockey season ended in three days. When Bernie arrived, the four of us sat around the kitchen table and cried. Our mother did the talking.
“The diagnosis isn’t good,” Mom said. “Gail might only have two years left.”
Bernie and I were so torn up that we pledged to do whatever we could.
“Well, the money helps,” Mom said.
A month later my mother was evicted from her condo anyway, and the money I had given her was long gone. Gail apparently recovered from her blood disorder. It wasn’t long after my initial relief that Gail would survive had worn off that Bernie and I figured out we’d been duped—again.
Our mom was many things, but stupid wasn’t one of them. She knew B
ernie and I were done giving her money, but she also knew we could never say no to our sister. I would love to tell you we were never suckered by my mom’s tricks again, but she knew how to tug on our heartstrings for our sister.
I’d been hired to be the third member of Toronto’s citytv’s sports team, the roving reporter who would fill in when the top weekday and weekend sportscasters were out. But within a week of my arrival the top newsman left. The top sportscaster replaced him, then they jumped me ahead of the weekend sportscaster for the top sports spot. It was a gigantic break for me, but it didn’t feel like it. They paid me $17,000 a year, just a thousand more than I’d been making in Moncton, which is a much cheaper place to live.
I moved out of my mother’s apartment as soon as I could, but that created another problem: I was broke. For an apartment with no roommates in the middle-class suburb of Scarborough Junction, rent ran $600 a month, which took a good chunk out of my $1,417 monthly check, minus taxes.
One morning I left my apartment with just 40 cents, a dime short of a subway ride. I figured if I just started walking, I’d come across a dime somewhere. But I never found one, and I ended up walking all the way to Toronto, almost three hours! Lesson learned: carry at least two quarters in your pocket!
After a month of this I gathered the nerve to ask my boss, a guy named Fred Klinkhammer, for a raise. I walked down to his office in the basement, where I saw a huge man with a giant head sitting behind a desk.
I knocked on his open door. He waved me in without looking up. Finally he spoke. “I heard you wanted to talk to me.”
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