Finding a Place to Belong

After leaving St-Eustache in May 1961, my life was changing quickly.

Montreal was where I worked and slept, but before long I found myself travelling toward Huntingdon and Powerscourt whenever I could.

My Uncle Gordie had a place near the covered bridge on the Châteauguay River. Those trips into the country became an escape for me.

I could read a little, but I could barely write. School had been a struggle from the beginning, and I left with very little formal education.

I never dreamed that one day I would be writing the story of my life.

Yet here I am, more than sixty years later, returning in my mind to those country roads, farms, dances, friendships and young love.

Huntingdon and Powerscourt gave me something I had spent much of my childhood looking for.

A place where I belonged.

Before Huntingdon, there was Mike.

Mike and I met in early 1961 in St-Eustache while riding our bicycles.

People sometimes ask whether Mike is my best friend.

My answer is no.

Mike is my brother.

We grew up together. We got into trouble together. We learned some hard lessons together. Years later, in 1974, we would even go into business together.

When I began spending weekends around Huntingdon and Powerscourt, Mike became part of that world too.

It was there that he met Sharon.

They fell in love, married and built a family together.

None of us knew then that the friendships we were making would last most of our lives.

I was about fifteen when I met Martha.

She lived with her family on a farm on First Concession, and her brother Jon became one of my friends.

For a city boy from Montreal, their farm was another world.

There were horses, barns, fields, chores and the kind of tiredness you get after doing a real day's work.

I loved it.

I would walk about a mile just to get to the farm. That mile never seemed very long because I knew there were people at the other end who were happy to see me.

Martha became my first girlfriend in Huntingdon.

We dated for only a few months.

The romance didn't last.

The friendship did.

More than sixty years later, Martha was still helping me straighten out the memories and details of these years.

Through Martha and Jon, I met Donna, Bill, Ian, Peggy and many others who became part of my Huntingdon family.

Without Martha, there probably would not have been a Huntingdon story.

Friday could not come fast enough.

If Uncle Gordie was staying at his apartment in Montreal, he sometimes let me use his company Volkswagen Beetle to get back to Powerscourt.

He worked for Underwood Typewriters as a repairman, and the Volkswagen was his company car.

To everybody else, it was a little Volkswagen.

To me, it was freedom on four wheels.

As soon as work finished, I headed down Highway 4 toward Huntingdon.

With every mile, Montreal seemed farther behind me.

My first stop might be Martha and Jon's farm. Then Donna's. Mike and I would pick up whoever else was coming along.

Sometimes there were six or seven of us squeezed into that little Volkswagen.

We didn't think much about it.

We were young.

We were together.

And we were going dancing.

Saturday morning usually meant work.

Sometimes I helped on Martha's family farm, throwing hay bales or doing whatever needed doing.

Nobody cared how much schooling I had.

Nobody asked me to write an essay.

If I worked hard and kept my word, I belonged.

By afternoon, we might end up swimming near the dam by the covered bridge on the Châteauguay River.

Then Saturday night arrived.

And Saturday night meant dancing.

One of our favourite places was the Skyliner near Malone, New York.

There was music, dancing and that feeling you have when you're young and think life is going to last forever.

Afterward, Mike and I often met Bill at Pivan's, the hot-dog and chip wagon in Huntingdon.

Bill could put away five hot dogs and a big plate of fries.

Over hot dogs and Coke, we solved all the world's problems.

At least we thought we did.

Then came one of the biggest lessons of my young life.

In 1964, I was supposed to be heading to Huntingdon to take Martha to a prom.

Instead, I ended up under arrest.

John and I were driving south on Décarie toward Sherbrooke Street in Montreal. My car was having trouble with the generator and battery, and the lights were getting dim.

A Montreal police officer noticed.

He pulled me over.

When he walked back toward his police car with my licence, I looked at John.

“Let's hope he doesn't ask me to open the trunk.”

There were stolen car parts in there.

He asked.

We were caught.

John and I were arrested and taken to Montreal Police Station 15 for questioning.

We cooperated with the police and told them where the parts had come from.

We were charged with eighteen counts involving automobile theft.

From Station 15, we were taken to Parthenais Detention Centre.

I was eighteen years old.

Bail was set at $10,000.

There was no way I had that kind of money.

So back to Parthenais I went.

I spent about two weeks there.

Eventually my mother and her new husband, Fred Riley, came to court. Fred was willing to put their home up as security for my bail.

I have never forgotten that.

I was released to wait for my trial.

About four months later, I went to trial.

I believed I was going to jail.

Then three people stood up for me.

My boss at Bechtel, Gilles Tessier, told the judge about my work. There were times I worked extremely long hours and even slept at Bechtel when there was too much work to finish.

Most importantly, Gilles told the judge that if I was allowed to remain free, my job would still be waiting for me.

My uncle told the judge that I would have somewhere to live.

Then the police spoke.

They told the judge that John and I had cooperated from the beginning and helped them recover property.

The judge listened.

Then he gave me a three-year suspended sentence.

He made it clear that I was being given one chance.

I walked out of that courtroom with my uncle.

I never stood before a criminal court again.

That was a lesson I didn't forget.

By then, things between Martha and me had changed.

One evening a group of us were riding around together. Martha and I were sitting in the back seat, and Donna was in the front.

Martha turned to me and said:

“Bobby, I don't want you to be my boyfriend anymore.”

Well, that was that.

I had always thought Donna was beautiful.

When the car stopped, I climbed out of the back seat, opened the front door and sat beside her.

I looked at Donna.

“Would you like to go out with me?”

She said yes.

I was eighteen.

Donna was fifteen.

Neither of us had any idea how important that little change of seats would eventually become.

Whenever I came to Huntingdon, Donna was the person I wanted to see.

We didn't need expensive dates.

Our world was country roads, farms, swimming, Saturday-night dances and long drives around Huntingdon, Powerscourt and Dundee.

Sometimes we would simply sit and talk.

We were young and thought we had all the time in the world.

Donna became one of the great loves of my life.

I wasn't always the young man I should have been. I made mistakes and hurt her.

I don't need to tell every detail.

What matters is that Donna was an important part of those years, and our lives would become connected in ways neither of us could possibly have understood then.

As we grew older, life began to change. Mike and I rented our first apartment together for twenty-five dollars a month. We thought we were grown men.

The apartment was not much. It was cold in winter and had few comforts, but to us it meant independence. We could close the door and feel that the place belonged to us.

Donna was still living at home.

It was at this apartment, after nearly three years of taking our relationship slowly, that Donna and I became physically intimate.

I do not remember that time as something casual. We were in love, and we believed we had a future together. Looking back, I understand how much trust Donna placed in me. I wish I had always deserved that trust.

Donna and I had been together for several years when we learned she was pregnant.

We were young and frightened.

Donna carried most of the burden.

Her family eventually took control of what happened next, and she was sent away.

Whenever I could see her, we talked about our future and wondered whether there was some way we could keep our little family together.

But we were young people living in a very different time.

The adults made most of the decisions.

In the spring of 1967, Donna, Mike, Sharon and I went to Expo 67 in Montreal.

Donna was about three months pregnant at the time.

For young people from a small town, Expo felt as though the whole world had come to Canada. There was music everywhere, people from around the world, new inventions and bold ideas about the future.

We walked through the crowds taking it all in. When I look back now, however, what I remember most is being there together.

None of us knew how much our lives were about to change.

In 1967, Mike and I visited my father Jack near Athelstan, south of Huntingdon.

Jack was working as a steel salesman for Richler Steel and had a beautiful red Plymouth Satellite.

He handed me the keys and told us to take it for a drive.

We were young and liked fast cars.

That drive ended in a farmer's field.

The Plymouth went through a fence and was badly wrecked.

Mike and I got out.

A farmer came over and first asked whether we were all right.

We were.

Then he looked at the Plymouth.

He knew immediately what Mike and I hadn't quite accepted yet.

The car was finished.

The police came, and eventually Jack and Uncle Gordie arrived.

My father was furious.

After that day, I did not see him again until my wedding in 1969.

Our relationship was never really repaired.

In 1967, Bechtel sent me north to Churchill Falls, Labrador.

I worked on the telephone switchboard and also handled the mail.

Every day I drove to Twin Falls to meet the plane arriving from Wabush and collect the mailbags.

Then I returned to Churchill Falls, sorted everything and handed out the mail.

For a young man from Montreal, it was quite an experience.

I even shared a trailer with members of the RCMP.

And, being Bobby, I managed to get myself into trouble.

I became involved in bringing whisky into an area where it was difficult to get. Eventually the RCMP started asking questions.

That was enough for me.

I left Churchill Falls and flew back to Montreal.

Bechtel fired me.

I had worked there for years and loved the job.

And I had thrown it away.

Looking back, there were times in my young life when things were going well and somehow I managed to mess them up.

Maybe some of that was the impulsive kid I had always been.

Maybe some of it was simply making bad decisions.

Either way, losing Bechtel was my own doing.

While Donna stayed at the Catherine Booth Home, there was a small park down the street.

Each day, she was allowed to spend about an hour there.

Whenever I could, I went to that park to be with her. For one hour, that small patch of grass became our whole world.

We sat together, talked about the future, and tried to imagine how we could keep our little family together. I kept asking Donna to run away with me so we could raise the baby ourselves.

I was young enough to believe that love could overcome anything. Donna wanted to believe it too, but she was frightened. She was afraid of her father and afraid of disappointing her parents. She had almost no power over what was happening.

Looking back, I understand the impossible position she was in. We were two teenagers trying to make adult decisions in a world that was not prepared to let us make them.

In the end, the decisions were made for us.

Little Donna was born October 30, 1967, at Catherine Booth Hospital in Montreal.

Donna named her Donna.

Our daughter was placed for adoption and went to a loving family.

At the time, neither Donna nor I could have imagined that many years later we would find her again.

That is another story for another chapter.

In 1967, all we knew was that our daughter was gone.

Her birth connected Donna and me forever, even while life was pulling us apart.

After everything that had happened, my life was unsettled.

So I did something I seemed to do often in those days when things weren't going right.

I took off.

My friend Ian Dagg and I headed west.

All the way to Vancouver.

Ian and I made it across Canada and found a room at the Welcome Hotel on Hastings Street.

It cost us a dollar a night.

We needed jobs.

The unemployment office basically told us there wasn't much work and that we should go home.

I stayed and looked for printing work because that was something I knew from Bechtel.

I found a job.

Ian didn't.

After about a week, Ian was homesick.

“Let's go,” I said.

I quit the job.

And we headed east again.

We were travelling in my 1958 Ford with a big Edsel engine.

Somewhere in the mountains, the transmission gave out.

Eventually we found a repair shop, but the mechanic couldn't get the parts.

I finally made him an offer.

Take the car in exchange for enough money for two train tickets home.

He agreed.

That was the end of my Ford.

Ian and I climbed aboard the train.

It took us five days to get home.

When I arrived, Mike picked me up.

Not long afterward he said:

“Let's go to Newfoundland.”

So we did.

Mike and I headed for St. John's, where much of my mother's family lived.

We stayed at the Newfoundland Hotel.

One evening we went out and met a beautiful young woman who told us to call her Linda.

We talked, played pool and got to know each other.

Before Mike and I left Newfoundland, I told Linda:

“If you ever get to Montreal, look me up.”

I gave her my telephone number.

At the time, I didn't think much more about it.

Mike and I also visited my Aunt Babs and Uncle Ernest and my cousins.

They had a large flour-mill and chicken operation.

Naturally, Mike and I asked about work.

Aunt Babs found a couple of things we might be able to do.

Let's just say our Newfoundland employment career was short.

The next day Aunt Babs gave us $100 and told us to go home.

So we did.

That was Aunt Babs.

Before leaving St. John's, I borrowed Mike's Ford Falcon and went to say goodbye to Linda.

The car was parked on a hill.

Somehow it started rolling and hit a steel parking meter.

The Falcon was damaged.

The next morning Mike and I started the long drive home.

At one point, after we stopped, Mike noticed the damage.

I looked at him.

“What did you hit?”

Mike looked at me.

“I hit nothing. It was you.”

I didn't tell him the whole story until years later.

Some friendships survive almost anything.

Mike and mine certainly did.

Uncle Gordie gave us two weeks to find somewhere else to live because there were already too many people staying at his house.

So the next morning, Linda and I had a game plan. I went to work while she looked through the newspaper for a job and an apartment. I wasn't making enough money to support both of us and pay for an apartment on my own.

Within about two weeks, we found both.

We rented a small furnished one-bedroom apartment down the street from Uncle Gordie's house. It had a kitchen and its own entrance, and within a couple of days we had moved in.

Linda found a job at Super Sex, a club in downtown Montreal. She worked from four in the afternoon until midnight, four days a week, so we didn't see very much of each other.

During the day, when she wasn't working, Linda sometimes spent time with Uncle Gordie because he wasn't working then either.

What I didn't know was that something was going on between Linda and my uncle. I wouldn't learn about that until years later. I also discovered later that there was more going on at Linda's job than I had understood at the time.

Whatever was happening during the week, I still looked forward to the weekends.

Uncle Gordie, Aunt Gita and the kids would head out to Powerscourt, and Mike would meet us there. By then, most of us had our own cars, and the old gang was still connected to Huntingdon and the surrounding farms.

Bobby Kibbe had a beautiful 1963 two-door Ford Galaxie convertible. He was dating Lori Dagg, Ian's sister, whose family had a farm in Dundee. Sharon's family also had a farm there.

Donna was living just across the border in Fort Covington, New York, and she was dating Matt.

Tommy Shanly usually came out alone and went home the next day. Tommy didn't have a girlfriend then, but he could certainly cause his share of trouble.

Bill, Martha, Jon, Patsy and Pat H. were still part of the group around the Huntingdon area. Eventually, Pat would marry Peter Dagg, Bill would marry Peggy, and Donna would marry Matt.

Uncle Gordie also had a neighbour whose last name was Biro. His son, Denny, was about my age.

Saturday nights still meant heading across the border to the Skyliner near Malone, New York, for drinking and dancing.

I have to admit that part of the reason I brought Linda along was to show off my new girlfriend — and probably to make Donna a little jealous.

That didn't work out quite the way I had planned.

The boys certainly noticed Linda, especially Denny. What I didn't realize at the time was that Linda had noticed Denny too.

For the next five months, we continued going back to Huntingdon and Powerscourt on weekends.

After Linda and I had been together for about six months, we separated. She went to live with Denny, who had a good job and lived in downtown Montreal.

I never saw Linda or Denny again.

I went back to live with my mother in St-Eustache.

When I think about those years now, I don't remember them as a straight line.

I remember people.

Mike.

Martha.

Donna.

Uncle Gordie.

Sharon.

Bill.

Ian.

The Huntingdon gang.

I remember Highway 4.

The covered bridge.

The Châteauguay River.

Pivin's.

The Skyliner.

Expo 67.

Cars.

Mistakes.

Second chances.

And friends who gave a Montreal kid somewhere to belong.

I came to Huntingdon looking for weekends away from the city.

I found something much bigger.

I found family.