Lachute, Love and a New Beginning

Joyce didn't want to date me at first.

One of the reasons was Malcolm.

She didn't like him, and because Malcolm and I were friends and running around together, that didn't exactly help my chances.

Joyce had also gone out with my old friend Bobby Kibbe on a few dates.

But our paths continued to cross.

We kept going to Corfort, one of those places where young people gathered for live music and weekend dances. In those days, places like Corfort were a big part of our lives.

Joyce was born in 1948 and had grown up on her family's farm about nineteen miles west of Lachute.

She had a sister nine years older and a brother. Joyce was something of a surprise because her parents were already getting older when she was born.

Her father was a farmer. The property was about 250 acres, as I remember it, and he sold hay from the farm. The family also had six cottages and a swimming pool that they rented during the summer.

Joyce went to school in Lachute.

When she finished school, she moved to NDG — Notre-Dame-de-Grâce in Montreal — where she lived with her cousins and went to work as a teller at the Bank of Commerce.

That's when our paths crossed again.

By late 1968, I was living at home in St-Eustache with my mother, my stepfather Fred, and my brother Doug.

I was working as a printer and commuting into Montreal.

As luck would have it, my mother and Fred both worked at the Bank of Commerce — the same bank where Joyce worked.

My mother got to know Joyce during breaks and at lunchtime.

I was always asking about her.

"How's Joyce?"

"Did you see her today?"

"Did she say anything about me?"

Finally, I decided to do something about it myself.

I started going to Joyce's bank to cash my paycheque.

Of course, cashing the cheque wasn't the real reason I was there.

I wanted to see Joyce.

I tried to get a date with her.

No luck.

I kept trying for a few months.

Still no luck.

So I did the next best thing.

I got a job at the bank.

I went to work in the basement of the Bank of Commerce as a printer, making cheques for the bank's customers.

Now Joyce and I were working in the same building.

At lunchtime, I would go upstairs and sit with my mother.

Naturally, I tried talking to Joyce whenever I had the chance.

She avoided me.

I'd managed to get myself into the same bank, the same building and the same lunchroom.

And I still couldn't get a date.

Then, about a month later, I tried something different.

I told Joyce I was going skiing up north.

I knew I would be passing right by her family's place near Lachute.

So I asked her:

"I'm going to be passing right by your door. Would it be okay if I stopped in?"

This time she surprised me.

She said yes.

I stopped at the farm and met Joyce's parents.

They were both in their sixties and were very hard-working people.

Their home was an old stone farmhouse. Downstairs were the kitchen, dining room, living room and a bedroom. There were four more bedrooms upstairs.

At the back was what they called the summer kitchen. Today, we'd probably call it a mudroom.

There was also a garage, a shed and a barn.

But some of the things I remember most about that farm weren't the buildings.

They were the little things that happened every day.

At Joyce's house, you ate four meals a day.

Her mother was a great cook. At around ten o'clock at night, out would come the sandwiches and cookies.

I particularly remember her chopped-egg sandwiches.

And when she put food in front of you, you ate it.

Her father had a morning routine I'll never forget.

He got up early and started the day with a shot of whisky to, as he put it, "kick-start the blood."

Then came breakfast.

I remember his eggs looking like French fries.

He would boil water for tea and then pour the hot tea into a saucer to cool before drinking it.

Those little memories have stayed with me all these years.

That first visit to the farm changed everything.

After months of trying to get Joyce to go out with me, we finally started dating.

Before long, we were going steady.

Over the next few months, we went to country music bars in downtown Montreal. I took Joyce to Huntingdon to meet my friends. We crossed the border and went to the Skyliner in Malone, New York.

She came to my mother's house in St-Eustache, and I went to see her at her cousins' place in NDG.

But most weekends, I was at the farm.

I helped with chores on Saturdays and Sundays and gradually became part of the routine there.

When I stayed overnight, I slept downstairs on the couch.

Joyce slept upstairs.

Then early Monday morning, Joyce and I would get up and make the drive into downtown Montreal for work.

We were young, working, driving back and forth between Montreal, St-Eustache and Lachute, and beginning to build a life together.

And one snowy Monday morning on Autoroute 15, we very nearly turned that life upside down.

One weekend, Joyce and I stayed in Montreal instead of going to Lachute.

We had something important to do.

We needed a place to live.

The baby was on the way, although almost nobody knew it yet. At that point, my mother was the only one in my family who knew Joyce was pregnant.

Money was tight.

I was making about $75 a week, and I was driving a beat-up, rusted Ford. The floor was so full of holes that in places you could look down and see the road going by underneath you.

It wasn't much of a car.

And we certainly weren't rich.

But we were starting a family.

We got lucky and found an apartment we could afford in Ville Saint-Laurent, about fifteen miles north of downtown Montreal, on Ouimet Street.

It was a basement apartment with two bedrooms, a living room and a kitchen.

It wasn't fancy, but to us it was going to be home.

We could move in on May 1, 1969.

We had our first place.

Now we had another problem.

We had nothing to put in it.

We needed furniture, and we didn't have the money to buy it.

I remember seeing advertisements in the local paper, the Victory. Furniture stores were advertising package deals aimed at young couples just starting out.

For around $1,500, you could furnish three rooms — typically a living room, bedroom and kitchen or dining area.

Fifteen hundred dollars might not sound like much today.

When you're making $75 a week, it was a fortune.

We couldn't walk into a furniture store and put $1,500 on the counter.

So we did what many young couples did in those days.

We bought it on time.

Major Furniture, St-Eustache.

We had our first apartment, but almost nothing to put in it.

We bought our furniture on payments — a little at a time.

That's how Joyce and I got started.

That's how Joyce and I got started.

Our parents helped too. Both families gave us things from their homes that we could use in the apartment.

There had been no wedding gifts yet.

There had been no baby shower.

Nobody knew there was going to be a baby.

We took whatever we could get and slowly began putting our first home together.

We didn't have much.

But we had a place to live, some furniture, two jobs and a baby coming.

Meanwhile, the wedding was getting closer.

Joyce's parents were busy making the arrangements in Lachute.

In the beginning, her mother hadn't particularly liked me. She tolerated having me around the house, but I don't think I was exactly the young man she had imagined her daughter marrying.

My mother was different.

My mother loved Joyce.

They worked together at the Bank of Commerce, and they had gotten to know each other there long before Joyce and I were married.

Now the wedding invitations were being prepared and sent out.

This wasn't going to be a little wedding.

The reception was going to be held at the Lachute Golf and Country Club.

About 225 people were invited.

For two young people who had started with practically nothing, it was going to be quite a day.

And August 30, 1969, was coming quickly.

The morning of our wedding, Joyce was at her parents' home near Lachute getting ready. As I remember it, one of her first cousins helped her with her wedding dress.

I was back in St-Eustache.

My best man, Mike, and his brother came to pick me up and we headed for Lachute.

I remember arriving at the church at about 12:30.

The wedding was at 1:00 p.m.

The church was full.

The service lasted about thirty-five minutes.

And there was something nobody sitting in that church knew.

Joyce was six months pregnant.

Joyce knew.

I knew.

And the only other person who knew was my mother, Noreen.

Not Joyce's parents. Not our friends. Not the people filling the church.

Looking at the wedding photographs today, you would never know.

It was a secret the three of us carried through our wedding day.

After the ceremony, Joyce and I left the church and went back to her parents' home at the farm to change before the reception.

The photographer came with us and took pictures around the house.

One photograph I particularly remember involved a piece of black cardboard cut into the shape of a large keyhole. The photographer positioned it so the finished picture looked as though someone was peeking through a keyhole while Joyce and I were in the room changing.

I wish I could find that photograph today.

There we were.

Joyce was twenty-one. I was twenty-three.

We were married.

We had our little basement apartment waiting for us in Ville Saint-Laurent.

We had furniture we were still paying for.

I was making about $75 a week.

And hidden underneath Joyce's wedding dress was the next big change in our lives.

We were going to be parents.

But first, there was a party waiting for us.

About 225 people had been invited to the Lachute Golf and Country Club.

And after the church and the photographs, it was time to celebrate.

We arrived at the Lachute Golf and Country Club to a huge head table, lots of round tables filled with family and friends, and two bands ready for the celebration.

But two things from that day have stayed with me more than anything else.

I Couldn't Get a Word Out

At some point during the reception, it was my turn to stand up and make a speech.

That terrified me.

Speaking in front of people had been one of my greatest fears for most of my life.

I stood up in front of more than two hundred people and tried to speak.

Not a word came out of my mouth.

Nothing.

Finally, all I could do was say I was sorry and sit back down.

My best man, Mike, took over for me.

For years afterward, speaking in front of a crowd remained one of my biggest fears.

It's funny how life changes.

More than fifty years later, I finally found something that helped me get past that fear.

Karaoke.

I started getting up in front of people and singing.

The young man who couldn't make a speech at his own wedding eventually learned how to stand in front of a room, take a microphone, and use his voice.

My Father Was There

There was something else I remember clearly.

My father was sitting in the front row with his new girlfriend. My Uncle Gordie and Aunt Giga were there too.

My relationship with my father had never been a good one.

That wedding day was the first time he met Joyce.

He was about forty-five years old.

He never saw her again.

He never came to see the home Joyce and I built. He never became part of our children's lives. There were no birthday cards or Christmas presents for his grandchildren.

He lived in Huntingdon, and over the years I went to see him twice.

Once I brought Karrie.

Another time I brought my second daughter, Nancy.

By then my life had changed. I might pull into Huntingdon driving a Jaguar or a BMW. If my father was at the Legion with his friends, suddenly he was proud.

"This is my son," he'd tell them.

I always found that difficult to accept.

He could be proud of his successful son in front of his friends.

But he hadn't been there for the son who needed a father.

And he hadn't been there for his grandchildren either.

That stayed with me.

There is one more thing I remember very clearly about our wedding reception.

I got very drunk.

By the time the party finally ended, there was no question about who was driving.

Joyce was.

It was around two o'clock in the morning, and we hadn't made any plans about where we were going to spend our wedding night.

So there we were — newly married, Joyce six months pregnant, me drunk, and driving around looking for somewhere to sleep.

Eventually, Joyce found a motel in St-Eustache.

She went inside by herself, got us a room, and then came back out to get me.

She opened the car door.

I fell right out onto my face.

There were people nearby watching this performance.

One of them looked at Joyce and said:

"Lady, your troubles are just starting."

They may have had a point.

Somehow Joyce managed to get me into the room.

It wasn't exactly a honeymoon suite.

The place was a fleabag motel. It was terrible.

But I wasn't in any condition to care.

Joyce helped me through the door. I looked around, spotted the bed and said:

"You found me a bed!"

And that was it.

I passed out.

So much for our romantic wedding night.

The next morning, we got ourselves together, climbed back into the car and headed south.

Our destination was Waterville, Maine.

Our honeymoon had begun.

The next morning, August 31, 1969, we woke up just outside St-Eustache and got on the highway for Waterville, Maine.

It was about a six-hour drive.

Joyce's sister Marg and her husband Don had a cottage on a lake there, and that's where we were going to spend our honeymoon.

It was a great place. They had a Boston Whaler, and we had the lake right there. After the wedding and everything leading up to it, we finally had a week to ourselves.

We got there, settled in and started enjoying our honeymoon.

The next day, Marg dropped by unexpectedly.

Joyce was lying back in a chair, sunning herself. She had quite a belly by then. She had been six months pregnant when we got married, but almost nobody knew.

Marg took one look at her.

“Does Mom know about this?”

Joyce said, “No. No one knows.”

Marg couldn't believe it.

“When were you going to tell her?”

Joyce answered, “When we get home.”

So even after the wedding, her own family still didn't know there was a baby coming.

We stayed at the cottage for a week and had a great time.

Don and I played golf. Don was a very good golfer. He played in the 70s. I was playing in the 80s then. I really didn't become a good golfer until I was in my late forties.

After our week in Maine, it was time to go home and begin married life for real.

We drove back to our new home on Ouimet Street in Ville Saint-Laurent — our little basement apartment.

The honeymoon was over.

Joyce went back to work, and so did I.

By September, we still had about two months before the baby was due, and our lives were about to change again.

I was also thinking seriously about my own future.

I was working as a printer, but I already knew I didn't want to spend the rest of my life in the printing business.

My game plan was to get out of printing and get myself a sales job.

I didn't know it then, but that decision was going to have a lot to do with where my life eventually took me.

I ended up leaving the Bank of Commerce and went to work for All Canadian Group in their printing department.

It turned out to be a good job.

I was put in charge of the print shop. My boss was a man named Codwell who, as I remember it, didn't have a clue about printing.

After a while I told Codwell we needed another person in the print shop.

He told me to go ahead and hire somebody.

I knew exactly who I wanted.

Mike.

Mike and I were together again.

Every morning we would drive from Ville Saint-Laurent into downtown Montreal. All Canadian was around St. Catherine Street and Crescent, on the eighth floor.

The print shop was in a separate unit from the main office, which meant Mike and I were pretty much left on our own.

That gave us a lot of freedom.

Probably more freedom than we should have had.

By November, Mike and I had another idea.

We started our own little company.

BMJ Printing — Bobby, Mike and Gilles.

It wasn't much in the beginning, but it was our first business.

If All Canadian had a printing job that needed bindery work or equipment we didn't have, I would tell Codwell:

"We'll have to send this one outside."

He would say, "Go ahead."

So we did.

We sent it to BMJ Printing.

Sometimes we did the work ourselves at home. Other times we subcontracted it to somebody else. We added our markup, I made up an invoice, handed it to Codwell, and All Canadian paid BMJ.

Just like that, we had our first little business going.

We also started picking up outside customers of our own. At night, we would sometimes run their jobs on All Canadian's printing equipment.

Codwell never knew.

I remember him coming into the print shop one time while I was running a job for an outside customer.

He asked me what I was working on.

I'd tell him something like:

"Reports for Mr. Ditto."

He'd say okay and walk away.

Mike and I would look at each other and keep right on working.

We kept BMJ Printing going for about a year and a half. Eventually All Canadian closed the print shop, I needed to find another job, and BMJ came to an end.

At the time I didn't know it, but once again, something that looked like bad luck would turn out to be a blessing.

Mike and I were pretty hot-headed in those days.

One morning we arrived at All Canadian and maintenance had all the elevators tied up.

We worked on the eighth floor.

There was no way Mike and I were going to walk up eight flights of stairs, and we told the maintenance guys exactly that.

We jumped into one of the elevators and pushed the button for the eighth floor.

Two maintenance guys jumped in after us and tried to throw us out.

Away we went.

The elevator seemed to stop at every floor, and every time those doors opened, the fight started again.

They were trying to get us out and we were fighting to stay in.

Somehow we finally made it to the eighth floor.

Our shirts were torn and we looked like hell.

The maintenance guys didn't look too good either.

About an hour later, Codwell came into the print shop.

He looked at us and asked what happened.

We told him.

All he said was:

"Don't do that again."

Then he walked away.

Mike and I looked at each other, laughed, and went right back to work.

I don't remember ever seeing those maintenance guys again.

On the night of November 12, Joyce and I were home in our little basement apartment on Ouimet Street.

At about 10 p.m., Joyce started having labour pains.

At first, the pains were fairly light, so we waited.

Then, at about 1:15 in the morning on November 13, her water broke.

Now there was no question about it.

The baby was coming.

I cleaned Joyce up, got her into the car, and we took off for the hospital.

I raced down Decarie and then Côte-des-Neiges toward the Montreal General Hospital.

I wasn't stopping for red lights.

We arrived at the hospital at about 2:00 a.m.

I got Joyce into a wheelchair, and a nurse immediately started pushing her down the hall as fast as she could go.

I was running along behind them.

In those days, fathers didn't go into the delivery room. I was sent to the waiting room.

Everything happened very quickly.

Just twelve minutes after we arrived, at 2:12 a.m. on November 13, 1969, our first child was born.

It was a girl.

We named her Karrie-Ann Noreen Monette.

The name Karrie-Ann came from "Carrie Anne" by The Hollies. That was the song playing on the radio, and it became the inspiration for our daughter's name.

Her middle name, Noreen, came from my mother.

Joyce stayed in the hospital for three days. That was normal back then.

And just like that, less than three months after our wedding, Joyce and I weren't only newlyweds anymore.

We were Mom and Dad.