Deserres Street Memories

In 1923, when I was about 5 years old, our family moved to Cartierville, a small village, which is now a suburb of Montreal. Because of particular events, I can still remember each of the two locations on Deserres Street in which we lived. One event concerned an uppity canary that didn’t fly and the other concerned a friendly girl who did fly.

Our first place, on Deserres, was an upstairs flat and the scene of one memorable event.

It happened one day, soon after we had moved in, when my older brother and I visited the people downstairs. While Mickey was talking to them, I tried to make friends with their canary. He seemed to be quite uninterested in me and I took this to be a sign of snobbishness. I would have turned away, rejected, but I noticed that the cage hung on a coiled spring attachment.

When I pressed down, even lightly, on the cage, and let go, it sprang back up. I had never seen such a magical arrangement. I became quite fascinated and said to myself, “Here we go, Mr. Uppity Canary.” Soon, I had that cage going up and down, up and down, at a great rate and it traveled faster and further each time that I increased the pressure before letting go.

While all this was happening, I had not thought much about the canary but now I saw that he was flapping his wings quite wildly and actually looking at me accusingly. It was only when I lowered the cage to the spring’s fullest extension and was about to let go, that the lady of the house noticed what was happening. She darted over to grab the cage and thus stop it from further travel, bottom to top, top to bottom. By now, the poor exhausted canary lay on the bottom of the cage, among the loose feathers, cowering.

Our hostess, quite upset that her poor canary had been mistreated, was nervously flitting about, every-which-way, eyes and lips twitching, while uttering frustrated, whimpering sounds. Her actions reminded me of the way the canary itself had acted except for the rage I saw in her bulging eyes; rage that I knew she directed at me.

I was scared, not knowing what this strange woman was going to do to me. As I ran out, leaving my brother to absorb the abuse that followed, I stopped “for one brief and shining moment” and I sneered at that stuck-up, trouble-making, flightless bird.

In time, the canary recovered; Madame Giroux accepted the apology that my mother insisted that I make; Mickey punched me out to make a point and friends again, we went on to further adventures.

Nettie Grayson and her family lived nearby and she was a friend of my older sister. I’ve always remembered her as bubbly and cheerful, and now that I am older, I think, not unkindly, that maybe she was a feather-brained sort of person. Anyhow, she continued to visit when we moved to the downstairs flat of our second Deserres Street address, only a block away.

It was there, that Nettie along with Arnold, a long nail and a case of measles, all featured in the second memorable event.

My cousin, Arnold, a young man of about eighteen, had come to Montreal and was staying with us, while looking for work. Even as a young child I could see that he was especially skittish when Nettie came to visit and, in turn, that the frequency of her visits had increased since his arrival.

One day, I was playing at being a carpenter. I attempted to drive a four-inch spike into the wooden sill of the kitchen window. The sill was only about two feet above the floor of the back verandah, making it an ideal height for a young workman like me. The hammer was heavy but I managed to drive the spike, at least, part way into the wood. Then, frustrated and tired out, I simply left. But, the nail remained, sticking out about two inches, awaiting developments that were to follow.

Soon after my carpentry episode, I got the measles and we were accordingly quarantined. In those days, a Department of Health Inspector came, explained the rules and placed a quarantine sign on exterior doors. Parents could come and go, more or less as usual, but children were confined to the house for several weeks. The quarantine also meant that outsiders could not visit the house. That was the law and it was strictly enforced.

Fortunately I only had a mild dose of measles. I was soon as frisky as ever and probably more of a nuisance than usual, being confined to barracks as I was. Because of the unusual circumstances, I was allowed to stay up a little later, at night, and that’s when I learned how to play cards.

It was a wonderful time, for me, with everybody sitting around the kitchen table truly enjoying the games, and each other, and feeling the security of the assembled family in a warm lived-in kitchen.

It was on such a night that Nettie came to visit. She wasn’t going to run the risk of being caught breaking the quarantine rules, so she sneaked into our back yard from Martin Street and quietly padded along the verandah. Seeing the card game in progress, she hesitated for a moment, then knocked discreetly on the glass. Arnold was the first to react. He jumped up and opened the window. Nettie moved quickly to get in before all the neighbours and any lurking Inspectors saw her.

She leaned over and moved her head and shoulders in through the open window, grasping Arnold’s outstretched hands. Then she swung one leg into the kitchen, planning to sit momentarily on the sill before swinging her other leg into the house. It was a good plan, but that’s when her whole weight sat directly onto the head of the protruding two inches of my four-inch spike.

A great deal happened in the next ten seconds.

There was a wounded, piercing cry, audible I’m sure in L’Abord A Ploffe, as Nettie thrust herself skyward with all limbs flailing. The startled Arnold was lifted off his feet to fall in a heap on the floor, where he provided the landing pad for the descending Nettie.

At about the eleventh second, Nettie, slowly untangling herself from Arnold and holding her tender bottom, looked him in the eye, grinned and said, “Ow . . . that hurts.”

There was a brief moment where everyone’s mood changed from hushed concern. Then, there were sighs of relief before the laughter erupted.

That’s the story of the friendly girl who completed her first solo flight in our kitchen on Deserres Street, courtesy of the four-inch spike.

It’s seventy years since these events took place but they are still quite clear in my mind. I realize now that my enjoyment of both events was rather sadistic and I must admit that the Nettie incident is my favourite, because to this day, no one had ever known of my involvement.