It was back in the later thirties when I was living with Mother that I first met Einar. She did not approve. “Isn’t he a Finn?” she asked icily. In this small northern Ontario town, most of us of British stock assumed we were superior to these recent European immigrants; ‘we were us’ and ‘they were them’. ‘They’ being Ukrainians, Scandinavians, Austrians, Poles, Finns and Italians. We knew almost nothing about them.. What we didn’t know, we imagined.
We didn’t mingle with the newcomers. They worked in the bushcamps, the sawmills, the coal docks, or on road gangs. Many, especially the women, spoke little English. Once or twice a year when our shoes needed repair, we took them to the gentle Nick Los over on Van Norman Street. For an occasional treat we walked down to Secord Street and bought a loaf of melt-in-your mouth rye bread from the Kivela Bakery. Mother, if she needed a taxi, called Oikonen’s.
We all knew the Finn Hall down on Bay Street was a gathering place for bush workers when they came to town: Lumber and Sawmill Workers, other Wobblies. Radicals. A tough bunch, everyone knew. Years afterwards, of course, the Finn Hall’s Hoito became ‘de rigeur’ for Sunday morning breakfasts. Even for tourists. Lineups out the door and down the street. But that was later.
Mother’s feelings about Einar didn’t soften. When his first letter came, I‘d been skating with Jenny and Sally down at the Co-op Dairy rink with its ice made from leftover skim milk. A night that was cold and crisp, the sky full of stars, and me higher than the moon as I walked home. That feeling didn’t last. As I opened the front door, Mother was waiting in the front hall waving a letter at me. “Just who do you know in Toronto,?” she demanded angrily.
“Don’t you remember?” I reminded her. “I told you about Einar. He’s on his way to Spain.”
“A Finlander!” she exploded. “Where did you meet him? He’s a Communist. Why did you give him your address? You will not answer his letter!”
Tight-lipped, I snatched the envelope from her hand and went to my room. She stormed off to the kitchen, pointedly banging the pots.
She needn’t have worried. It was far from a love letter. Simply his impressions of Toronto: how people there seemed more proper than those back home. No one carrying a lunchpail. He described his enlistment for Spain at the Seaman’s Union Hall on Spadina Avenue; meeting up with a couple of buddies he’d known when he worked in the bushcamp; finding a reliable person to sign his passport, a passport that included a warning forbidding travel to Spain. That certainly would have alarmed Mother. What he was doing was illegal.
His ship was to leave from Montreal, a city he seemed to fall in love with. Mother, who instinctively disapproved of this French, Catholic Gomorrah, would have been aghast at his enchantment. The city’s contrasts excited him: its prosperous mansions high up on the ridge overlooking the working-class neighbourhood that edged the railway tracks below; the bustle and noise of downtown traffic, gradually giving way to the quiet serenity of the wooded Mont Royal. The gray stone architecture—wrought-iron railings leading up to second floor flats, or seductively down a few steps into secluded grotto-like cafés; the old-time calèches drawn by horses clip-clopping along amidst the rest of the traffic. Some street signs in English, others in French.
Sight-seeing along Sherbrooke Street near the university, Einar had met a friendly “bon homme”, time on his hands, eager to talk.
“I don’t see you before,” the fellow began, and when he heard Einar was on his way to Spain, he couldn’t wait to describe the rally he’d attended earlier that week in the huge protestant church down on Dorchester Street..
“L’invité, speaker, you say? is André Malraux. You know the guy is writer from France, très passioné, tu sais, he tell us about Spain. Franco. The take-over, you say? Coup d’état. Illégal! He tell us about Spanish people, civilians, bombing! Civilians! People poor, worse like us. Ils font rien! Nothing ! Killed by bombs! Franco and Hitler.” He stopped.
Then started to laugh.
« But Premier Duplessis, you know ? He is drole, you say ? Joke on Duplessis. When he ‘ear about meeting in arena, he cancel it. He know Malraux. What he will say. So he cancel arena. Mais, meeting people act quick. Très vite. Move meeting to big church on Dorchester. Church is packed. To the doors. I am there!” And he laughed again. “Duplessis ‘as egg on ‘is face. That is how you say?” And off he want, still chuckling.
***
