Saturday, December 3, 2022
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I met Graeme Decarie when he was seventeen years old, and I was a 6-year-old. He was a councillor at the Northmount YMCA in St. Laurent, behind Norgate Shopping Center, Canada’s first shopping center put in place in 1949. It was 1950 and my mother had enrolled my older brother and me in the summer day program. I remember the playground where we met the buses, I remember the Go Around which gave me a scarred finger I have to this day. It was on one of the trip days to a beach in St. Rose, I think it was. While others swam, I was taken to a doctor for a couple of metal clamps to close the wound. We went to various beaches, but I remember St. Rose especially because that was where I received a certificate for swimming 10 feet underwater. Graeme Decarie was always there.
We went everywhere on buses back then, many of the places giving us an education that would last a lifetime like the Canada Dry Bottling Company. Saturdays were for movies at the Northmount YMCA sitting in large numbers on the main hall floor. Tarzan was a favourite of mine. Throughout the next five years or so, Graeme Decarie was always there. He always remembered me and my brother and especially my mother who would bring us to the park on the No. 17 Streetcar for our day’s outing, generally with a bag lunch. Then she would turn up to take us home later in the day. Once we learned the route we were on our own.
I remember so many more things with my photographic memory, especially him. I remembered Graeme Decarie visiting Cartierville school to find out what the kids wanted to do as activities. I played Buck-Buck there and loved the exercise but like most LD children response programming was delayed, and I answered the next question he had moved on to that afternoon with the simple repeated words BUCK, BUCK, BUCK, BUCK, BUCK, BUCK. Seventy years later he was still mentioning it to tease me.
I was a good runner back then, and Graeme would take me to the local park in St. Laurent to test my skills and time my running. On competition day, I represented the Northmount YMCA and won 7 ribbons in 7 races thanks to his support. I ran a total of about 3 miles that day at full speed.
I went to The Highschool of Montreal for three years and found out what failing was all about. Three years later I was at the new Malcolm Campbell High School (1960-1987). After a broken neck one year, and a kidney removal and lung collapse the following year, I made it finally to Grade 10 on December 5th. 1962. Failed that year too.
Graeme Decarie was my history teacher in Grade Ten. History was one of the few courses I passed that year, as my move to advanced math classes did not otherwise work out. I could not do what my brother could do. I left Montreal in 1966 for the west to Calgary and Saskatoon for three years in promotions with Birks. Eventually, I would leave Birks and return to Montreal to do a degree at Sir George Williams University (now renamed Concordia). From what I understood Graeme, was off teaching English in the Netherlands and China somewhere. I did not see him again until I visited my married brother in Kingston, Ontario where they were both doing a Ph.D. It must have been ten years later at least. Guess who arrived for dinner. In 1972 I resettled in Toronto as there were few jobs left in Montreal for people like me looking for new opportunities. For the next 30 years, I kept up with Graeme through Concordia magazine while he made a name for himself in Montreal. I had left the city for a second time, and it was not until I was about 48 years old that I read something that told me I had been learning disabled all my life. It was confirmed by tests.
Although I never graduated from MCHS, I came up with the idea of a 40th Anniversary celebration in Montreal in the Year 2000, and 1,200 people attended. I met Graeme Decarie there coming out of the restaurant used for registration. It was almost like I knew it would happen. A 55th Anniversary gathering at the Old Mill in Toronto in 2015 for those who did not make the Y2K reunion in Montreal saw an additional 150 in attendance. By then, I was in a wheelchair
Remarried at some point, Graeme retired and moved with his new family to New Brunswick. That marriage did not last but produced three children to add to the older daughters from his first marriage. So next, he was writing a blog from Moncton, New Brunswick.
From there it was a move to Ottawa, but it was boring for him, so he finally settled in Kingston where he died recently. My good friend Jaan emailed me and told me he had just died. Graeme lived to be 89, I just turned 78. We had communicated a great deal over the years since he moved to Ottawa, and I was told a lot of great stories along the way. My good friend of more than 72 years, on and off, has died. So ends an era. R.I.P.
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