The Old House and My Father

I don’t have a lot of memories of my father. He died of a sudden illness when I was 12, but one of my favourite memories comes from the time we lived in this old house.

The house is in Uxbridge, Ontario which is located northeast of Toronto. This picture above was taken from Google Street View and doesn’t even show its full size. The trees around the house make it very difficult to display the house in all its glory. David took the other photos 3 years ago when he happened to be driving through that area. It certainly was a massive old structure!

We lived in about 2/3 of the house on the left side. When I say we lived in that side, you can take that as a loose description of what actually occurred. The house, being of such a vintage character, was very drafty and hard to heat. As a result, we didn’t spend much time in the living room on the far left end. In fact I only recall being in that room when it had a Christmas tree in it. Our time was mostly spent in the central area where the kitchen kept things warm; our bedrooms were located above that on the 2nd floor.

We stayed in that old house for a few years, I don’t know exactly how many, but it was around the time I was 6 or 7 years old because I remember Hurricane Hazel whipped through Uxbridge when we were living there.

My memory of my father comes as a result of one of the special “features” of the front bedroom where my parents slept. There was a chimney going down into that room to a fireplace which had been used in the past to heat the upper floor.

One night my sister and I were awakened by my mother’s loud shrieks coming from their bedroom. If you knew my mother, you would know this was not a common occurrence. My mother would never shriek. I stumbled out to the hall to witness the end of the battle. My father was chasing a bat around their room with a rolled up newspaper while my mother ducked under the covers whenever the creature came near. Quite the ruckus!

Eventually my father subdued the creature and the evening’s adventure was over. We all crept back to our beds and I imagine my mother at some point settled down to sleep again. I know that my thoughts about my mother were changed that night. I had never seen her afraid before, but that image of my father heroically battling the flying demon remains one of my favourite memories.