This is a work of creative non-fiction based on an incident that occurred in the early 1960s, shortly after my parents moved from downtown rooming houses (on Oxford Street market and Baldwin Street, respectively) to a flat on Oak Park Avenue in East York. The story is oft told by my mother, Maria do Ceu Henriques da Silva. All of the details she can remember, including some dialogue and her impressions of the two police officers, have been incorporated into the story. Any additional backstory is of my own extrapolation.
EXTOLLING THE SUBURBS OF TORONTO as places where you could truly breathe free, Paulino Santana, newly-minted homeowner, successfully solicited a number of Portuguese compatriots to fill his house in East York. There weren’t many Portuguese there yet, but he swore there would soon be an eastward exodus. Downtown, the air was foul, there wasn’t a patch of green anywhere, and the miniscule yards barely grew a few stunted tomatoes. The coal-grimed, narrow downtown houses, with drafty Victorian rooms no bigger than closets, were positively squalid compared to Paulino’s detached, bright two-storey. A hop on the streetcar got you to St. Mary’s for mass, or downtown for cheap vegetables or fresh killed chicken. Paulino also promised that every Saturday night he’d drive everybody downtown to the First Portuguese Club dance in his VW Beetle!
Flush with a full house on Dominion Day long-weekend, Paulino decided to host festivities to forestall any tenant nostalgia for the nascent Portuguese community in the Jewish market on
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Humberto da Silva is a Toronto boy, born and bred. He worked in aviation, martial arts instruction and as a trade union representative. His collection of short stories “Compassion Fatigue” was published in 2023. He lives in Cliffside with very patient wife Lina, and a self centered black cat called Montie.