The age of innocence

Category: Reminiscense

Back in February 2005 a co-worker forwarded a story to me that his ex-wife had sent him. Her article was called ‘To all the kids who survided the 50’s.

In response to her story I sent her the following letter:


There aren't many days when I don't think similar thoughts. I think I was eight years old when I first saw a television broadcast. The broadcast was from CJOH which, to my recollection, was the first broadcaster in the Ottawa area. For me this meant that my early childhood years were spent outside playing in the traffic (as my dad was wont to say).

Sure we watched the ‘Carol Burnett Show’ and The Twilight Zone and Shock Theater and a few other favorites but I don’t recall that television was ever a big part of my childhood.

I grew up in a village in Hull Quebec (Hull is now called Gatineau) just this side of the Gatineau Parkway and I was playing in the Gatineau hills long before the roads leading through the parkway were built.

Yes I fell from trees. Yes I cut myself. And yes I probably drove my poor mother to distraction. I have six brothers (no sisters) and we all got into all kinds of scrapes, some serious, some not so serious. I count seven visits to the emergency ward just for myself.

My wife and I have no children but I observe other people's children as they walk to school with their heavy backpacks and their slow gait. I don't see much jump and joy in their walk.

One morning I commented to my wife how kids walk with their backs to traffic instead of facing traffic like we were taught. You never see a child turn around to see if there is danger. It's like they don't care if something happens. It's a shame and it's not the kid’s fault. Children inherit what is handed down by adults.

When I was a boy I was always running. I always had the wind in my hair.

Sometimes, on the way home from school in winter, I would lie on my back in a field of hard-packed snow and ice, using my leather backpack as a sled, and I would push myself across the field with my big boots as I mused at the cloud patterns overhead.

I was a lucky boy.