After my appearance on the scene, Dad's next major achievement was building the
Merretts' new house on Ontario Avenue.
It still stands at the north-west corner of Ave. de la Musée and Blvd.
Docteur Penfield
(which latter did not then exist east of Simpson St. where it was called
McGregor St.) It was built of buff brick, stone trimmed, with a slight nod to
the Tudor: the fron door had a suggestion of tracery in the side lights, and
the dining room was panelled in oak linen-fold! It was a large house and quite
luxurious in keeping with most of its neighbours, though out-shone by some (in
particular those belonging to a Molson, a McLennan, a French senator and at the
top of the street a Forget). To run it, Mother maintained a staff consisting of
a cook, two maids (Scottish girls named Margaret and Daisy) and, for a little
while, a nanny for me; and there was also an itinerant furnace-man-cum-gardener
(though there was no garden other than a few tulips, only grass to cut).
I occupied a large bed-playroom, filled with built-in drawers for my clothes and a vast toy cupboard. Off this room was a verandah; the door to it had brass weatherstrip which in certain winds would howl like a banshee, often in the middle of the night, evoking echoing howls of terror from me. When not being taken for ``walks'' in my carriage or sleigh I was aired on this verandah. I well remember the white bunny fur coar and hat and its hanging to dry out on the radiator close to my bed. During the first few years I spend most of my time, in that household of grown-ups, in the company and care of Dorothy my nurse whom I liked, and then I became one of the gang of kids living on our street, or nearby.
Being a cul-de-sac (were we ``dead-end kids''?) there was not much traffic on
Ontario Avenue and we played more or less unrestricted up and down it and in and
out of our neighbours' houses and back yards (few of us had gardens as such). In
winter we kids would swish all the way down to Sherbrooke Street on our sleighs
and wait for a horse-drawn delivery cart from Dionne's the grocers, or Morgan's
or Godwin's
,
to hitch a ride up again. We dug houses and tunnels in the huge snowbanks
between the ploughed road & sidewalks. We helped spring along by cutting
channels in the street ice to guide the water run-off and dammed them up again.
All these activities caused our mothers worry that we would be smothered by
cave-ins or squashed under the wheels or runners of what little traffic there
was.
One of the few restrictions imposed on me, and only me, was never to ride my
bicycle lower down the hill than our own house and I have a vivid memory of
ignoring it---to my grief. We all had ``tickers'' on our bicycles---cards
clipped to the front wheel fork with clthes-pegs, which we would flick on with
a toe to engage the card in the spokes and make a fine clatter. A bunch of us
started down the hill and I, intent on switching on my ``cut-out'' at a given
signal, swept past the imposed limit, flicked the clothes-peg engaging my
ticker and also my toe in the spokes. I went over the andlebars at high speed
to be picked up all bloody and helped limping home to a very upset Mother. I
think my injuries were considered sufficient punishment, and it was a lesson
remembered.
At one stage of my upbringing while on Ontario Avenue, doubtless pre- or early
school, I was subjected to a governess---as far as I knew the only one of my
pals thus afflicted, and I suppose it was, again, because my family was
relatively so much older. In memory, Miss Fairbanks was a bit of an ogre: she
had a visible mustache and beard, and I visualize her now as resembling The
Ugly Duchess. She was very churchy and got on well with Mother whom she must
have matched in age. When I was later confirmed at Ashbury she gave me a prayer
book, and all in all she was probably very good to me, and just possibly for me.
She would arrive after lunch and take me in charge until supper time. When
weather permitted---that is, no actual cloudburst or blizzard---we would
walk, and those long walks served me well in later years
.
A favourite route was up the steps to Pine, west via Cedar (and the No. 25 Fire
Station with its white horses and brass pole to slide down) Côte des Neiges,
The Boulevard, Mount Pleasant & Wood Ave., Sherbrooke and home, having watched
tiny men finishing the dome of the Mother House at Atwater. Sherbrooke Street
had wooden board walks with several steps at each of the street intersections,
particularly Drummond where one stopped to watch the Ritz Carleton being built,
on an alternate walk eastward to McGill.
Come summer we would have our ride on the ``Round the Mountain Car'', also known as the ``Flying bedstead'', predecessor of the sightseeing bus. All gilded wrot iron and electric lights, it was a stirring sight. (Anachronism above---neither the Cross nor the Shrine existed at the time---they appear only for orientation!)
Other Ontario Avenue memories include water shut-offs heralded by a man ringing a handbell, and once involving buying new ashcans to be filled from a water cart. And once a gas leak caused all the manhole lids to blow off, in sheets of green flame, all up and down the street.
In 1922 the Bank Merger (see 
) caused a drop in Dad's income and he had
to sell the house. I recall being very upset and suddenly very aware of what a
lovely house it was. It was the year I was sent to boarding school: I left from
that house and returned at Thanksgiving to a terrace house on Crescent Street
which Dad rented for a year before buying another on Westmount Boulevard, where
Mother and Dad lived until Father died in 1958.